What Lies Between Us Summary & ending explained

Nina

People think a prison needs bars. Ours has wallpaper, a lace tablecloth and a garden I keep very tidy. Two women live in this house, and both of us are serving a sentence. Neither of us gets out until one of us dies.

Maggie

I call the attic my crow's nest. Through the gap in the shutters I can watch the whole close: the bins going out, the children walking to school, the neighbours who never once look up.

Nobody looks up at this house.

Tonight is a dinner night. At seven I hear Nina on the stairs. She unlocks my door, kneels beside me and turns the little key in the padlock at my ankle, and the chain slides free of the ring in the floor. One hand on the banister, one on her arm, I'm allowed down.

She's made something I've never liked and she knows it. She's put my good lace cloth on the table. ABBA plays from the kitchen radio, the same songs over and over, and when "Does Your Mother Know" comes on she takes my hands, and for half a minute we sway between the cooker and the fridge like any mother and daughter.

Then she looks at the pocket of my cardigan.

"Give it to me."

I hand over the corkscrew. I'd slipped it in while she drained the pasta. She turns it in her fingers, and she doesn't shout. She never needs to.

Upstairs, she checks the cuff and tugs it twice. Tomorrow there'll be a punishment. There always is.

When her footsteps fade, I reach under the bed for my slippers, and my fingers find something else: a little wooden box, carved and varnished. Her father made it for her when she was small. She's left it where I'll find it, so I'll remember.

As if I could forget. She thinks she knows exactly what I did to her.

She has no idea.