Cruelty's Daughter by Anna Willett

Author:Anna Willett [Willett, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: THE BOOKFOLKS best-selling Australian crime fiction and suspense thriller publisher
Published: 2018-05-11T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

It was fully dark when the pulsing pain in her hands pulled Andrea from sleep. For an instant, just before dreaming dropped away, she forgot where she was. But the fetid smell of the toilet bucket and the unrelenting cold brought her back. She clamped her mouth closed and listened: water dripping… a tap tap of drops against the roof. The room cloaked in black revealed nothing.

“Is someone there?” Her voice sounded alien, like that of a very old woman. She waited. If he was in the room, he wouldn’t answer. But in her dream, a voice had been calling her, singing her name over and over again. For some reason, the woman she’d met at the college the night all this madness started, popped to mind.

The dream seemed so real, her heart still skittered with the memory. She sat up and wrapped her hands around her knees. She could detect no movement in the room. He sometimes came at night, but maybe the rain kept him away. If that were true, she wished for a flood, lashing rain that would continue until the building she sat in washed away. Drowning would be better than this slow crawl towards death.

A cough, deep and wet rocked her body. She pressed her cheek to her knees and tried to recall the dream. There’d been a woman, Andrea could almost see her: pale eyes, wearing a black cloak or hood. She looked like Regina, the girl in Andrea’s book, Moon dance. Or at least how she imagined the beautiful protagonist would look. Tall, with perfect features set in pale skin. Similar, she realised, to the woman from the college. Regina was strong and resourceful, everything Andrea wasn’t.

It was ridiculous, she knew, but nevertheless Andrea tried to imagine what Regina would do in her situation. The young woman in Andrea’s book was only a figment of her imagination, but she embodied everything that was strong and indomitable. Regina was the woman Andrea could never be. She wouldn’t lay here snivelling. Andrea swiped at her nose with the inside of her wrist, taking care to avoid the back of her hand.

Regina would have never let herself be abducted in the first place, she’d have fought back. Andrea wondered if fighting would have done any good. He was strong, brutal. If she’d tried harder, could she have broken free? Since the first night she’d spent in that room, she’d gone over those moments. She’d tried to struggle but he hit her so hard. She’d never been hit before. A few girls at school—the ones that called her baby pig—had pushed her, but that had been more of a sly shoulder as they walked past. The way he’d punched her, it shocked as much as it hurt.

It wouldn’t do her any good thinking about what she didn’t do; what mattered now was what she did next. She closed her eyes and summoned an image of Regina. She could almost see the tall slim figure moving around the room, her dark hair fluttering out behind her like wings.

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