The meanest Flood

good, Marilyn. If you think about it, I’m only doing what’s best for you.’
    ‘This’s ridiculous, locking a person in her own house. There’s laws, personal rights laws. You can’t treat me like a criminal. Civil liberties are involved here, Mother. I could contact Amnesty International. I’m a prisoner of conscience.’
    ‘No, you’re not, Marilyn. You’re a prisoner of your own making. I want to hear the whole story and I’m not prepared to compromise until I do. Sit on the stool and talk.’
    ‘No. I don’t have to.’
    ‘OK, my girl, I’m going to ring the doctor.’ Ellen walked to the kitchen door and opened it.
    ‘Stop! What do you want to know?’
    Ellen closed the kitchen door and stood with her back to it. ‘Sit on the stool.’
    Marilyn climbed back on the stool and dabbed at her eyes with the saturated tissue. ‘This is unfair. It’s not right.’
    ‘Never mind that. Danny Mann, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You’ve been following him?’
    ‘Sometimes.’
    ‘I knew it. Stopping him in the street, going to his house?’
    ‘Not in the street. I had to talk to him. I had to go to his house, Mother. I don’t know where he is.’
    ‘Start at the beginning.’
    ‘We met in the theatre.’
    ‘In Nottingham. I know that, I was there. And it wasn’t a meeting, Marilyn. You helped with one of his tricks. There was another woman helped him the same night, and two gentlemen. You were already fixated on him before that night. You had his picture on your wall. We only went to Nottingham because you were obsessing about him, remember?’
    ‘I remember what I remember,’ Marilyn said. ‘And you remember what you remember. The trouble is that you think what you remember is what happened.’
    ‘No, Marilyn, the trouble is that as soon as you stop taking the tablets you make up an alternative reality inside your head. I take it that this man has not encouraged you in any way whatsoever, that he has probably asked you to stop bothering him. Therefore the tears. Am I right?’
    ‘No, you’re wrong. Danny loves me. He’s been testing me.’
    ‘What does that mean? Testing?’
    ‘He sent me into the dark in Leeds, to see how I coped.’
    ‘Goodness, Marilyn, was that where you stayed out all night? In Leeds?’
    Marilyn nodded. ‘It was magic. Danny was there all the time, on the edge of things. Invisible. He was watching over me.’
    ‘I can hardly believe you’re saying these things. You know what it’s like in Leeds at night. A couple were killed there last week, in their own home.’
    ‘Danny wouldn’t let anything like that happen to me.’
    ‘I’m going to see him, Marilyn, explain about your illness. We don’t want him calling the police.’
    ‘You can’t see him, he’s disappeared.’
    ‘He’ll be on tour or something like that. He’s a theatrical. They go away all the time.’
    ‘He’s not on tour. He only had one bag. He flew to Norway.’
    ‘How do you know that?’
    ‘I followed him.’
    ‘To Norway? You couldn’t have.’
    ‘Not to Norway, I followed him to the airport, Newcastle. Saw him checking in.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘Three days ago. He got a taxi to the station and I followed in the car. He got on the Newcastle train and I got on it too, at the last minute, and didn’t have a ticket. That was the problem.’
    ‘So when the guard came to inspect the tickets, you said?’
    ‘I told him that my boyfriend had our tickets.’
    ‘And he didn’t believe you?’
    ‘I took him to Danny, and Danny said he’d never seen me in his life before.’
    ‘He didn’t remember you from the theatre?’
    ‘It was a test. I have to be worthy of him.’
    ‘What happened about the ticket?’
    ‘I had to show them some ID, and the guard gave me an invoice with the amount on. I have to pay it in thirty days.’
    ‘Carry on. You’re on the Newcastle train.’
    ‘Danny got on the Metro and went to the airport. I went with him. I tried to explain about the ticket, said I was sorry to put him in the spotlight, asked him to forgive me. He said to wait until he got back from his trip, that he’d sort everything out then.’
    ‘Are you sure he said that, about waiting until he got back? Seems to me in a situation like that he’d be wondering why a strange woman was attaching herself to him.’
    ‘I’m not a strange woman, Mother.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Marilyn, I’m your mother after all but this is one of those times we are going to have to agree to