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  65. Acknowledgements

The shower curtain on my left blows in the breeze.

If I look at my feet, I can see a plastic patio table with an expensive-looking camera and a plastic demonstration model of a jaw, complete with teeth. Then to my right is a laptop on another table. The laptop is covered with clingfilm.

I swallow hard and shout, ‘I need water.’

Doesn’t feel good to be left in here alone. I need reassurances. To start negotiating my release somehow.

Next to the laptop is a lightbox, the cheap battery-powered kind you can display messages and emojis on. If I strain my eyes in their sockets I can see the edge of something white behind me. Another shower curtain, perhaps.

How long was I out for? A minute? An hour? Did they carry me in here and tie me up? What else did they do to me? I look down my body. I’m fully clothed. I’m not in any physical pain, apart from a burning sensation on my forehead from twisting against the heavy-duty duct tape.

Why is Julia doing this with Emil? Is this connected to his father’s accident? Did he fake his own abduction?

I try to twist my wrists, to make some space, to open up a gap between my skin and the tape.

The air moves.

The shower curtain dances in the breeze and Julia walks through in her uniform.

‘The doctor will be with you in a moment.’

She smiles and clips an X-ray image to the front of the supermarket lightbox.

‘What? You have to let me go, Julia. Loosen my wrists. I can’t feel my fingers.’

She smiles and says, ‘It’s normal to be anxious before a procedure like this. Try not to worry, we’ll take great care of you.’

She pats my shoulder and walks out.

53

What the hell is this? Some twisted game of doctors and nurses? I push with my legs, the strongest part of me, and try to buck against my restraints, but I’m stuck here. Trapped. The blue-and-white-striped chair-cushion is visible between my boots. I curl my fingers over the lounger armrests and pull and my chair collapses to horizontal.

Movement to my left.

Julia walks back in. No, wait, it’s Emil.

Only it’s not.

‘How have your teeth been, Tuva?’ says Tobias, the hygienist, dressed in a dental uniform with some kind of microscope attachment stuck to his forehead. ‘Any discomfort I should know about?’

‘Tobias, please. You have to let me go.’

‘Well,’ he says. ‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

He sits on his stool and then turns to check the X-ray images on the ICA Maxi lightbox. Then he starts typing something on his laptop, pressing the keys through the clingfilm.

‘Please,’ I say, on the verge of tears.

He ignores me and types some more.

‘Don’t worry, you’re in good hands.’

I scrunch my eyes tight.