Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Seventy-Four

Seventy-Four

We stayed imprisoned together for a few days. Natalya brought us food and escorted us to the lavatory. I tried to pull away from her once, but she grinned with her pearly teeth and her grip on my arm tightened. Tightened like she tightened her hand around my brother Benjamin’s neck… I shivered. This woman was ruthless. I couldn’t stand being in her presence, my brother’s murderer.

We still had no idea where we were and I was still coming to terms with the discoveries of the past days. In a way I just wanted to turn back time and forget I ever heard that I wasn’t the Kingston Heiress, and that my own sister wanted me dead. Betrayal and hurt were still making cracks on my heart as the truth of it all sunk in. It might seem strange that we did not plot to escape, but what could we escape to, how could we go back to our old lives?

*****

I began to understand why Natalya was keeping us locked up when she came to us one morning.

“I will let one of you out. You must go and find someone or something that proves you are the real Kingstons.” I looked at my parents. I would’ve liked to be out in the open air, away from Mary, away from Natalya, but Mother was pregnant and deserved it more.

Even if she did bare a boy, they wouldn’t overrule me as the Kingston heir. We weren’t Kingstons, and Natalya couldn’t bear that. She wanted my inheritance, but it wasn’t my inheritance. It was actually Rose’s. The reality of all this felt like cold water being splashed in my face, so suddenly. Mother turned.

“Albert, you go.”

*****

Father was gone over a week. I became rather worried- what could have happened? What was he even doing? There was nothing that could prove we were really the Kingstons. Time passed ever so slowly. I talked to Mother, but I ignored Mary. I couldn’t forgive her. I don’t think I could ever forgive her.

We talked into the night, sleeping on little but a blanket. Mother confided in me that she had sent Father to find King and to get Anastasia released from Bedlam, so he could bring them here and prove we weren’t the Kingstons. How would Mother cope with seeing King with his wife, reunited after all these years? And Father being reunited with his estranged parents?

Mother held me every night as I thrashed out and sobbed in my sleep.

The Zeppelins, the Zeppelins, they’re coming to get me, they’re coming to get me…

*****

Natalya came storming into our room the next morning. Usually she would bring us some newspapers, and I would check and re-check the lists of soldiers who had died, were wounded, or missing in action. My heart would leap every time I saw the name ‘John’. I wondered whether he was thinking of me, his unfaithful wife. Was he even in the trenches now?

Natalya leant close to Mother, baring her teeth.

“Where is Albert?”

“I don’t know,” Mother said, “I don’t know.” She told her over and over, Natalya pressing harder on her wrist. You could see the hunger and desperation in those eyes of hers.

“Stop it!” I cried. Natalya threw me a thunderous look, and strode into the corridor. We heard muttered voices, as I asked Mother if she was alright. She nodded, fighting back tears. I reached out for Mother. Then Natalya ran back into the room, wielding an object. I screamed. I was going to die. She was finally going to kill me. I scrambled up. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to hide. I whipped around. And then something heavy made contact with my head and I spun into the blackness…

*****

I woke up and the smell of the sea overpowered me; salty, cold, damp. I looked around groggily as my eyesight began to sharpen, head spinning. I barely took in the rotting brown boards that made up the room around me. Mary was huddled in one corner, gaping. Mother lay in the middle of the room. Her face was red and glistened with sweat. She was letting out a series of heaves and gasps, clutching her belly. I stared at her in alarm as she looked over at me in horror.

“The baby,” Mother panted, “The baby’s coming.”