Silver Lining

27. Mermaid hair and foggy eyes

9 days after

Apparently there was another girl that Michael kidnapped.
Someone else had been through it.

The police had contacted us, and Theo and I were on our way to meet her. They told us her name was Tanya. I tried to imagine what Tanya would look like, but I couldn't. All I could see was a faceless, nameless girl handcuffed to the wall in the room of eyes.

We arrived at the police station at the same time as Zoe did. She wanted to be there when we met, and she thought it might be good for me being able to talk to someone who went through the same thing.
I doubt it. And I doubted Tanya wanted to speak to me.
I'm sure, like me, she just wanted to forget, to continue with her life.
And now that it had happened to me too, she was being forced to speak to me and open up all these old wounds.
I felt terrible.

Zoe came over to us, and walked next to me into the police station. "It's not your fault," she whispered quietly enough so only I could hear it. I gave her a smile.
I wondered if she could tell when someone was fake smiling. Apparently your eyes crinkled or something when you were smiling properly.

The first thing you noticed about Tanya was her eyes. They couldn't be described as blue or grey or green, they were the colour of fog over a lake. Her eyes had mist swirling in them, wisps of smoke and haze. They reminded me of the smoke over the trees after a bush fire. The second thing you noticed about Tanya, was that she had mermaid hair, dyed every shade of green and blue imaginable, getting towards the lighter shades at the bottom, like a blue green ombre. I wondered if she dyed her hair such an eye catching colour so that her eyes didn't stand out so much, so that people noticed her hair, rather than her eyes. You still noticed her eyes first, anyway. There was a young boy sitting on her lap, around one or two years old. He smiled at me when we walked into the room, wrapping a pastel green lock of Tanya's hair around his fist.

"Hi, I'm Tanya," she said, offering her hand.

I shook it. Her pale hands were like ice, even though it wasn't cold today. "Hi Tanya, it's so nice to meet you. I'm Madison. And this is Theo and Zoe." Theo and Zoe waved, and the little boy sitting on Tanya's lap waved back at them, looking a little confused.

We all laughed. "This is Jacob," Tanya said, and Jacob smiled.

"Hi Jacob!" I said, waving at him. "He''s really cute," I said to Tanya. "Is he yours?"

She nodded with a small smile.

A police officer walked into the room, and placed a bunch of folders on the table. "I'm detective Seeley Ryan. Basically what we need you girls to do is figure out if Michael did and said the same things to you." Wow, this guy was straight to the point. I couldn't look at Tanya. It was my fault she was here.

"Well maybe they could get to know each other a little bit first, before we jump straight into the personal stuff," Zoe suggested.

"Excuse me, but who are you?" The officer asked Zoe.

"Zoe Everett. Therapist and PhD's in counselling and forensic psychology," she said, sounding slightly annoyed at the man. "One of your collegues asked me to be here today, but if you want, I can leave."

"Uh, no it's fine. Stay," he stammered. Zoe gave him a nod as if to say 'I thought so'.

So Tanya and I talked for half an hour or so while everyone else left to get coffee. We left a huge circle around the subject of Michael, not even acknowledging the fact that we went through the same shit.
It was better that way.

"I'm really sorry you had to do this," I told Tanya right before all the others came back into the room. "It's kind of my fault you're here today."

"What? No, of course it isn't. You can't help that it happened, Madison. It takes a while to realize it isn't your fault, but I eventually I realized I couldn't of done anything to change it, and you'll realize it too. It just takes time," Tanya told me.

At that moment, the others came back into the room. The other detective was gone, and in his place was a lady. "Hello again Zoe, I'm detective Molly Beckett. I was with the team that found you that night. And you must be Tanya, it's lovely to meet you."

"You too," Tanya said, shaking the detective's hand.

"I know that this is hard to talk about, but the more we know about him the better. Of course if you feel uncomfortable about talking about something you don't have to tell us. You might of had to tell us everything if there was a trial, but luckily there isn't one."

Tanya and I nodded, and looked at each other.
"Did he chain you up in the room of eyes?" I asked Tanya after a while. Maybe it would be easier if me and Tanya just talked to each other, rather than the others who had no idea what we were talking about.

"Do you mean the room that had the iron loop sticking out of the wall? Yea." Her voice shook, and I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it was probably more of a grimace.

"Oh right, sorry. I nicknamed it the room of eyes because..." No one else knew about the room of eyes. I hadn't even told Zoe because it was just too sick. "Because he had stuck photos of me all over the walls."

Every single person in the room gasped. I couldn't look at anyone in the face, so I studied my fingernails. I could feel everyone eyes on me and a lump formed in my throat. Maybe I shouldn't of told them about the room of eyes.

"And he'd get so drunk, and then have ridiculous mood swings," Tanya said after a while, taking the attention off of me. Thank goodness for Tanya.

"What do you mean by mood swings?" Detective Beckett asked.

"Well, a lot of the time if you didn't do what he asked straight away, he'd get really angry and make threats," I said quietly, and Tanya nodded. Theo's hand found mine under the table, and he squeezed my hand comfortingly.