Willow

Willow walked home from work that evening with her nerves pulled too tight, every step a small, brittle thing that threatened to snap. The city felt different after dark, less anonymous than it pretended to be. Shop windows reflected her back at herself in fragments: her coat, her hair, the faint yellowing bruise blooming along her jawline that she had tried and failed to hide with powder that morning.

She had received another photograph at work that afternoon.

It had been waiting for her on her desk, slipped beneath her keyboard as neatly as a memo. The image showed her stepping out of the chemist on the corner near the station, a white paper bag tucked under her arm. She remembered that moment clearly now, remembered counting out coins with stiff fingers, aware of the ache in her ribs, the tenderness along her arms. She had bought painkillers. For the bruises.

Written across the back, in careful, deliberate handwriting, were the words:

I would never bruise you as he has.

She still did not know who he was. Or rather, she knew who he was not. The man who sent the photographs remained faceless, voiceless, reduced to ink and glossy paper. And yet he knew things. He knew where she went, what she bought, the rhythm of her days. She had received dozens of photographs by now. Willow waiting for the bus. Willow standing in a queue. Willow unlocking the front door. Always ordinary moments. Always accompanied by commentary, as though her life were being annotated by someone unseen.

Her agitation that evening was sharpened further by the time. She was late. Mark hated her being late.

She checked her watch again, even though she already knew what it would tell her. She had tried to leave on time, truly she had, but her boss had insisted the marketing email be finalised before close of business. An extra hour had slipped away while she rewrote subject lines and adjusted formatting, nodding obediently while anxiety gnawed at her stomach.

Mark expected dinner ready when he came home. He had never framed it as a request. It was simply how things were. He worked in construction, and in his mind that settled the matter entirely. His job was physical, therefore he was tired. Therefore he should not have to cook, or clean, or lift a finger once he stepped through the door. The house, and everything within it, was her responsibility.

The last time she had been late, he had stood in the doorway with his coat still on and told her that if it happened again, he might consider throwing her out.

Like rubbish, she thought now, quickening her pace, her shoes striking the pavement too loudly in the quiet street. Like something that could be discarded when it became inconvenient.

Her job felt just as precarious. It was not her fault, but that had never mattered much in the end. Her boss was relocating to Dublin and had already hinted that a PA in London might no longer be necessary. She had not been given notice yet, but the threat hovered constantly, unspoken but understood. She had been searching quietly for another position, sending out applications late at night, but competition was fierce and responses were thin. She was running out of time in more ways than one.

As she turned the corner onto her road, her eyes lifted automatically to the house. The windows were dark.

Relief fluttered weakly in her chest. If the lights were off, it meant Mark was not home yet. She broke into a run for the last few yards, fingers fumbling with her keys as she reached the door, the metal clinking loudly in her haste. It took two attempts before the lock finally turned and she slipped inside, shutting the door behind her with exaggerated care.

It was going to be pasta. It always was when time was short. Quick, filling, and one of the few things Mark did not complain about. She set water to boil, chopped onions with trembling hands, the sharp scent stinging her eyes. The clock above the cooker ticked too loudly, each second a small accusation.

Half an hour later, the sauce was nearly finished. Steam fogged the kitchen windows, and the smell of tomatoes and garlic clung heavily to the air. The pasta needed only a few more minutes. Everything was almost ready.

Almost was dangerous.

She began to worry that Mark was late. Worry curdled quickly into fear. He hated food that had sat too long, hated anything he considered spoilt. She hovered over the hob, adjusting the heat, stirring unnecessarily, her pulse racing. She did not dare ring him. Phoning would only irritate him. Questions were interpreted as criticism. Concern as interference.

Then she heard it.

The soft scrape of something being pushed through the letterbox.

Her heart lurched. She moved towards the front door without thinking, opening it quickly, irrationally hoping to catch whoever it was. On the pavement outside, a man was moving methodically from door to door, pushing flyers through each letterbox in turn. He did not look at her. He did not hesitate. Just another anonymous figure doing a job.

She closed the door and turned slowly, dread already creeping coldly up her spine. She reached down and checked the inside of the letterbox.

On top of a glossy flyer for a new estate agent lay a photograph.

Her hands shook as she picked it up. Even before she saw it clearly, she knew. This one was different. It was not her.

It was Mark.

The image showed him outside a restaurant, his hand at the small of another woman’s back, his mouth pressed to hers. Not a casual peck. Not a mistake. The intimacy of it was unmistakable, captured mid-moment, private and deliberate.

On the back, in the same careful handwriting, were the words:

I’d never disrespect you.

A tear slid down Willow’s cheek before she realised she was crying. The irony cut too deep to process all at once. The man she lived with did not want her, did not respect her, did not even bother to hide his contempt. And the man who watched her, who catalogued her life in photographs and ink, existed only as a shadow she had half-constructed in her mind from fragments and promises he had never truly made.

She stood there in the narrow hallway, the pasta boiling unattended in the kitchen, the house too quiet around her.

Was she wanted by anyone at all?

Mark did not come home at all.

By the time Willow accepted that, the pasta had long since softened into something dull and swollen. She served herself a small portion, careful with the spoon, careful with the quantity. Mark did not like fat women. He had never said it gently, and he had never pretended it was concern. She ate standing at the counter, chewing without appetite, tasting very little beyond the acidic tang of tomatoes and the heaviness sitting just beneath her ribs.

She plated his portion properly, larger, more generous. She covered it with tinfoil and slid it into the fridge, positioning it neatly on the middle shelf. It was what she always did. Habit had a gravity of its own.

It was rare for Mark not to come home. When it happened, she had learnt not to ask questions. Asking implied entitlement. It implied she thought she had a right to explanations. But that evening, since receiving the photograph, she did not need to wonder anymore. The knowledge lay in her stomach like something indigestible, dense and unmoving. It made her feel slightly sick.

She knew, in an abstract, distant way, that she should leave him. The thought surfaced occasionally, thin and fragile, like a soap bubble drifting into view. But it always burst under the same weighty question. Where would she go?

They had been together for ten years. She had been seventeen. He had been twenty-three. At the time, she had believed that gap meant safety. Experience. Someone who knew how the world worked.

Her parents had thrown her out not long after. They had called her a disgrace. Accused her of sleeping around. The irony still twisted painfully inside her. She had never slept with anyone at all then. Not with Mark. Not with anyone. She had only done so after the door had closed behind her, after she had nowhere else to go.

Later, Willow took the photograph of Mark from the kitchen table and looked at it once more. She studied the angle, the way the woman’s hand rested easily against his chest, the familiarity of his posture. Then she folded it carefully and hid it with the others, sliding it into the shoebox at the back of the wardrobe. The box was heavier now than it used to be. Its weight felt accusatory.

She showered, letting the water beat against her skin until it reddened, until the steam blurred the edges of the small bathroom. She dressed for bed and slid beneath the sheets, grateful for the quiet, for the absence of footsteps, of criticism, of tension thickening the air.

Sleep came easily. Too easily.

She did not realise what was happening until it was already too late.

She woke to pressure over her face. Something pressed down firmly, sealing her mouth and nose. The smell reached her first, sharp and chemical, threaded with something metallic that made her throat instinctively constrict. Panic flared, sudden and animal. She tried to scream but there was nowhere for the sound to go.

She struggled, but her arms felt wrong. Heavy. Distant. As though they were wrapped in layers of thick cotton wool, soft and smothering. She willed them to move faster, harder, but they obeyed sluggishly, her body lagging behind her fear.

Then there was nothing.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up on the back seat of a vehicle. The world tilted unpleasantly as consciousness returned in fragments. Before she could orient herself, before she could take in shapes or sounds properly, someone noticed.

A shape moved into her blurred field of vision. At first she could not make sense of it, only that it was deliberate, approaching rather than passing. Then she saw the syringe. The clear barrel caught a smear of light, the needle impossibly fine, impossibly close. Panic surged, sharp enough to cut through the fog. She shook her head, tried to twist away, her body responding a fraction too late to every command. Her hand came up weakly, fingers grazing fabric, then slipping uselessly aside. Someone caught her wrist. Another hand steadied her arm, firm and unyielding. She felt the brief, precise sting as the needle broke the skin. She cried out, a thin sound that went nowhere, and then warmth spread beneath the surface of her arm, heavy and invasive. The syringe was gone almost immediately, withdrawn with clinical efficiency, but the damage had already been done.

Her head began to feel as though it were slipping sideways, the edges of the world softening and smearing. But some stubborn fragment of her mind stayed awake longer than it should have. Long enough to realise she was moving. Long enough to kick, her foot lashing out blindly.

Her heel connected with something solid. Someone swore sharply.

“Fuck!”

That sound gave her a jolt of desperate clarity. She kicked again, fumbled blindly for the door handle, fingers scraping uselessly along upholstery. The response was swift. Her movements were restrained, her limbs pinned, pressure applied until resistance became pointless.

The strength drained out of her all at once.

This time, when the darkness closed in, she could not fight it. It folded over her, thick and absolute, and she disappeared into it completely.