Sitting on the bed, he watched her bottle feed her baby. As he did, Alexander remembered how she had laboured for hours, sweating, screaming in pain. She had been so glad when her child was born, the pain was over, but — more than that — she had brought new life into the world. Her gift, she said. It had been magical — until it wasn’t. Watching her baby being taken, wheeled out the room away from her, Pandora had said she didn’t mean it. That she didn’t want to give the gift anymore.

  Pandora looked up from her child and smiled at Alexander. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  He swatted the memory away and smiled back. Simple swine, he told himself. She’s probably forgotten all about it.

  With the bottle empty, it was time to take her back. Alexander positioned himself close to the mother and her baby, so that he could slide the child out of Pandora’s arms and into his. Gently, he guided her head into the crook of his arm, strands of Pandora’s hair tickling the side of his face as he leant in closer to support the baby. She was in his arms now, a trail of milk drooling down her chin. As he pulled away, drawing the child to him, Pandora’s face was in front of his. Their noses contacted, just for a second, and then, unexpectedly, she moved forward and kissed him on the lips. It was a simple kiss. Short, sweet, soft. Over before it had started. Pandora pulled away and apologised, and then, eyes solid and wide, thanked him yet again.

  Baby in arms, Alexander quickly stood and stepped back from the bed. ‘Sure, no problem,’ he said. He mumbled something about needing to put the baby back in her crib and hurried out the room.

  Just get the baby back in the crib, Alexander. Just get the baby back.

  Terrified he was about to drop her, or worse, that, for some reason, his father would decide to come down and check on him, he rushed down the corridor to the room with the cribs. A flash of his keycard and he deposited the child into the plastic container, before clutching the rail of the incubated crib trolley with both his hands.

  Breathe.

  He breathed.

  That’s better.

  He had no idea what had just happened or why it had happened.

  It’s your fault. You should never have let her see the baby.

  He breathed again.

  Why did she do it? What was she thinking?

  There was, of course, one explanation for the kiss and that was that Pandora was too simple-minded to even realise what she was doing.

  A feeble-minded, high-grade defective.

  Alexander loosened his grip on the trolley and ruffled his hair with his hand, before letting it slide down the side of his face to his chin. He stood there, chin in hand, for a moment, before straightening himself and moving to the door.

  Go home, Alex. Your mother’s made cake.

  He breathed, walked out the room and to his father’s office to retrieve his coat. As he arranged the thick collar of his coat around his neck, he brought his hand up to his forehead and sighed.

  The IV bag.

  He had not yet changed it. Not bothering to swap his coat again, Alexander walked back to Pandora’s room. As before, he unlocked the door and slipped inside. She was lying down, her back to him. Silently, he walked to the sink and washed his hands, before picking up the fresh intravenous fluid bag and moving to her bed. She rolled over and watched him as he removed the old, almost empty, bag. He kept his eyes on what he was doing, not saying anything, until the new bag was attached and the old one was in the bin. He washed his hands again and walked to the door.

  On the bed, Pandora fidgeted. ‘See you in the morning,’ she said.

  Alexander nodded and said, ‘See you in the morning,’ before slipping back through the door.

  The farm buggy was where he had left it and he climbed inside and started heading back up towards the house. It had started to snow, a light flurry, powdery and delicate.

  A white Christmas.

  On the driveway, sheltered by the darkness, he could see his family inside the house through the sitting room window. Happy silhouettes, laughing and talking. His mother’s head on the left-hand side, bobbing up and down, probably talking as she sat on the sofa, unmoved from where she had been when he left. A shape that could only be his grandfather hobbled in front of the window, seemingly going out through the door into the hallway. And there, standing, long-necked and slender, her silhouette in the centre of the window, Mary.

  Alexander pushed his hand inside his pocket and pulled out the compass. The metal was lukewarm, guarded against the cold night air by the warmth of his body. He placed it on the palm of his hand and opened the lid. The ruby caught the light as the needle span, oscillating back and forth, determined to remain indeterminate.

  Twenty-Eight

  ‘Are you a religious man, Clifford?’

  On the bed, the young man didn’t raise his head. Robert stepped out of the shadows of the corner of the room and closer to him.

  ‘You’ve heard of Eden, no doubt?’

  Still the man said nothing. Robert crouched beside the bed, rearranging the fabric of his trousers as he did.

  ‘It was a garden, a perfect garden created by the Lord. Adam and Eve—’ Robert paused and looked up at the man on the bed. ‘You know of them?’

  Clifford was silent.

  ‘Adam and Eve, the first man and woman created by the Lord, lived there, in the garden of Eden, until, one day, they couldn’t live there anymore.’ Robert’s brown eyes hardened. ‘Do you know why that was, Clifford?’

  The other man raised his head to look at him. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said.

  Robert’s face softened into a smile. ‘It would surprise you to know the number of times I have been called that,’ he said. ‘Crazy. Monstrous. Evil, even. But,’ the soles of his shoes squeaked as he readjusted his footing on the tile, ‘I am rather of the opinion that you,’ he nodded at the man on the bed, ‘are the crazy — indeed, monstrous — one.’

  Clifford laughed. ‘Yeah, okay, whatever you say, man.’

  Robert sighed and stood up. Clifford’s eyes followed his movement. Honey-skinned and athletic, the man on the bed was wearing only a thin cotton vest top and a pair of boxer shorts. A vein in his neck rippled as he clenched his jaw.

  ‘Perhaps a different story,’ Robert said. He was back in the corner of the room, his silhouette bleeding into the shadows. ‘It may be a little too sophisticated for your palette, but I shall tell it to you nonetheless.’

  A moment of silence as if he were organising his thoughts. On the other side of the room, Clifford would have leapt up from where he sat and charged the man in the white coat, only his arms were chained to the frame of the bed.

  ‘In Ancient Greece,’ Robert began, ‘there were many gods and goddesses. Zeus and Poseidon, Athena and Apollo — all very important, all very well-known, even today. Each had a task.’ Watching, Clifford strained his eyes, trying to focus on the shadowy figure of his tormentor. ‘Some even had multiple tasks,’ Robert continued. ‘A pantheon of divine beings associated with specific aspects of life. People prayed to these gods, worshipped them, asked them to intervene in their lives, to help make them better. What do you think of that, Clifford?’ Robert moved and the dim light of the room illuminated his face for a second. ‘Do you think that made them feel powerful, being given so much responsibility?’

  In a low voice, Clifford said, ‘Yeah, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘It is what I think,’ Robert replied. ‘In fact, there was another who believed in this idea so strongly — that being given such responsibility made him powerful — that he dedicated his life to becoming a god.’

  Clifford laughed.

  Robert breathed and said, ‘You laugh because you do not understand — but he did.’ He walked the edge of the room, tracing his finger along the tiled wall. ‘Dionysus was his name — or at least the name he chose for himself.’

  ‘Dionysus?’ the man on the bed asked.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Like the wine?’

  A short laugh. ‘Yes, Clifford, like the wine,’ Robert smiled. ‘Dionysus, the Greek god, was associated with wine and winemaking, but, more than that, he was the god of male fertility and virility. Do you understand what that means?’

  ‘Of course I know what that means,’ Clifford spat.

  ‘Well,’ Robert continued, ‘this man wished to become Dionysus. He wished to take all of the power and responsibility of Dionysus, to become all of that power and responsibility, but to exercise it here on Earth—’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Clifford interrupted, ‘this guy is you, right?’

  Robert stopped walking and chuckled. ‘No, this man — for all his nobility — was a lunatic.’

  ‘So, he couldn’t have been you then?’

  ‘No, Clifford, he couldn’t have been me,’ Robert said. ‘As it was, it was a symbolic act. To become a god — chained, here, on Earth. To become Dionysus — god of winemaking, fertility, virility and, even, quite fittingly, insanity. And so,’ Robert looked at the man on the bed, ‘he did. Dionysus gave up his life and became a god. Liberated. Powerful.’

  Clifford reclined so that his back was touching the wall. ‘What’s this got to do with anything?’

  ‘Ah, I was hoping you would ask that.’ Robert moved closer to him. ‘You see, Dionysus lived a long time ago. Never again was there one such as he.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Until, quite possibly, now.’

  Clifford looked down at the chains that bound his wrists to the bed. A god, chained, here, on Earth. His skin prickled. Robert was right beside him now, smiling down at him. I have to get out of here.

  ‘So, what do you think, Clifford?’ Robert asked. ‘Would you like to become a god?’

  Before the young man had a chance to respond, Robert looked up to the corner of the room and said, ‘You can let them in now.’ Clifford turned his head to follow the man’s gaze. There was a click and then the metal door, which marked the only way in and only way out of the room, opened. Through it, a woman was pushed. And then another. And then another. All three were naked. They held onto each other, wide-eyed and buxom, quivering wordlessly in the corner of the room. The door closed and clicked again.

  ‘A god is all powerful, Clifford. A god,’ Robert gestured to the women, who scampered closer to him at his command, ‘can take whatever he pleases.’

  Clifford tried to shuffle away as the naked women crowded around the man in the white coat. When he spoke, his voice was low. ‘What are you saying?’

  Robert smiled at him and said, gentle and with soft eyes, ‘I am saying, why reign up in heaven, when there are so many delights to be had here on Earth.’

  With one hand, Robert guided the most curvaceous of the three women forward, taking her by the shoulder and nudging her closer to the bed. She had pink, soft lips and they parted like a budding rose as she lowered herself onto the mattress. Tumbling in front of her as she clambered across the bed on all fours, her hair was thick and shiny and eager to be touched. The second woman, whose dark skin looked pearlescent in the meager light of the room, approached from the other side. In the middle, Clifford didn’t know where to look. When the third woman, wide-hipped and amorous, blocked any exit he might have wished to make from the bed, his body betrayed him.

  Robert took a step back. He smoothed the sleeves of his coat and said, ‘I shall leave now and let you consider our conversation.’

  Outside, sitting on a chair in the corridor, Mary was half-watching the proceedings in the room via the monitor on the wall in front of her. When she saw Robert approach the door, she pressed a button and then turned her eyes back to the pages of the book she was reading.

  ‘Done?’ she asked when Robert appeared through the second door. He nodded and she pressed the button again, making sure both the inner and outer doors to the room were locked.

  Robert combed his hair with his fingers before moving a chair from further down the corridor next to hers. ‘What are you reading?’ he asked as he sat. Without lifting her eyes from the page, Mary tilted the book so he could see the front. ‘It looks a bit dark,’ he said, nodding at the image of a noose that dominated the cover.

  ‘It’s a classic,’ Mary replied, still reading. ‘You’d find it amusing — it’s set on an island and there’s a doctor in it.’

  Robert stretched his legs and yawned. He sat there for a moment, and then, referring to the monitor on the wall, said, ‘There shouldn’t be any issues.’

  Mary turned in her chair and looked. A mound of flesh, writhing on the bed. ‘No, doesn’t look like it.’ She pressed the button to turn the screen off and returned to her book.

  ‘We’ll see how he does with these and keep increasing his supplements. After that, we can think about introducing him to some of the unwilling ones,’ Robert said.

  Mary hummed and nodded in agreement.

  Twenty-Nine

  There were seven of them now.

  It had been days, weeks — who knows how long? — since they had helped Pandora through the metal door of their prison. In the time since, they had heard nothing of her, save for the agonising screams that had floated down the corridor and under their door for hours after Robert had taken her. When it had stopped, Samantha had surprised herself. She realised she wanted to learn something of the young woman’s fate. Was she okay? Was the baby healthy? The answers to these questions never came, and so she was left wondering what had happened to her, and if she, too, would one day disappear through the door, fate unknown.

  Here, time was irrelevant. The hours were measured by the intervals between the meals that were deposited through the hatch in the wall, and the days by the regular appearance of vomit in the two toilets of the women’s communal bathroom. Evelyn still threw up, although — mercifully — with declining frequency.

  Today, Jade was in the bathroom with them, slouched over a basin, staring at her breasts in the mirror.

  ‘They’re getting bigger,’ she said, cupping the left one with her hand. ‘That’s not normal. It’s too soon, right?’

  Behind her, Evelyn’s body shook and ejected a mouthful of vomit into the bowl of the toilet. Samantha was slouched on the floor, back against the door, her hand resting on her stomach. She felt gassy; her belly was bubbling. ‘Shut up, Jade,’ she moaned. ‘No one gives a shit about your boobs.’

  At the toilet, Evelyn’s hand slipped and a clump of her hair tumbled into the sick.

  ‘Definitely bigger,’ Jade said, squeezing her other breast and looking at Samantha on the floor. ‘Yours are going to be huge. Milk machines.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Samantha said. It was passive and low effort. Jade shrugged and returned to looking at herself in the mirror.

  Still shaking from the sick, Evelyn crawled across the bathroom floor to the other sink. She took a moment, then, hands clasping the rim of the porcelain, dragged herself to her feet, turned on the tap and put her mouth under the water. Grains of sick had got stuck between her teeth, so she rinsed the water back and forth, side to side, around her mouth. On the floor, Samantha could hear the liquid rush against the inside of the other woman’s cheeks. Evelyn spat the water out and wiped her mouth.

  ‘You’re in your second trimester already,’ she said, inclining her head in Jade’s direction. ‘Of course they’re getting bigger.’

  Here, time was irrelevant.

  Breast still in hand, Jade glanced at Evelyn out the corner of her eye. ‘You’ve got sick in your hair,’ she said, pointing. Evelyn looked down, sighed, scooped her hair up, and shoved it under the tap.

  Samantha felt the door move behind her. When it didn’t open, her body blocking it and keeping it shut, there was a light knock on the wood and a whisper from the other side. ‘Can I come in?’ it said. Samantha shuffled across the floor on her bottom to allow it to open.

  It was the green-eyed woman. When she saw the three of them, she looked at each of them in turn, as if she were seeing something other than what they were, an image of themselves that lay beyond the mortal senses, metaphysical, and, to most, beyond the boundaries of vision. Our celestial mission. ‘Ladies,’ Mother whispered as she moved to one of the toilets. Samantha said nothing and watched her close the door to the cubicle, slowly and with quiet grace. The sound of urine hitting the edge of the bowl and she pulled herself up from the floor.

  Samantha moved to Evelyn. ‘Are you done?’ she asked. The other woman squeezed the water out of her hair and nodded.

  Escaping had morphed from a dream to a possibility in the days immediately after Pandora had gone into labour. That Robert could be made to appear — summoned from the bowels of Hell — had inspired Samantha. Maybe all hope wasn’t lost. Maybe, just maybe, they could use this to their advantage and get out of this place. Of course, inspiration was a long way from an idea, and an idea a long way from an actual, executable plan, but it was inspiration nonetheless. A possibility. A way to escape and bring down all these fucks.

  Evelyn had been in two minds when she had told her. Ever since she had met Samantha, the younger woman had talked of getting out. It was only natural. She had just arrived. Fresh to this place, her spirit was not yet entirely broken, her body not yet entirely stolen, sacked and pillaged and looted of every usable asset. In her head, there was still hope. Evelyn had told her friend to abandon the idea. She would only upset herself more.

  Upset? Samantha wasn’t upset. Upset was how children felt when their mothers denied them the last biscuit in the tin. Upset is chipping a nail after giving that skank from the pub twenty quid for a manicure. Upset didn’t even touch the sides of how Samantha felt. She was fucking furious. The only way to sate her rage was to get out, and make sure Robert, his pretty little wife and that ginger bitch get what they deserve.

  ‘Let’s just think about it,’ Samantha said in a whisper to Evelyn as they sat, as they did for much of the day, on the sofa. ‘Maybe we can come up with something.’

  Evelyn shook her head. ‘I’ve been here for so long. This will be my third baby here. You think I wouldn’t have left already if I could have just jumped Robert at the door?’