What Lies Between Us

One night, 25 years earlier, Maggie wakes up feeling restless. Seeing that Alistair is not in bed, she checks his home office, but it is empty. Noticing a light coming from Nina’s room, Maggie approaches and is surprised to see Alistair exiting the room. Maggie asks why Alistair was in Nina’s room, and he answers evasively with a guilty expression. Suddenly, Nina appears behind him and repeatedly strikes him on the head with a club until he stops moving. She then returns to her room.

Stunned, Maggie examines Alistair, who is dead. She wonders whether to call the police, but feels obligated to help Nina, who simply sits still, unspeaking. Maggie helps her clean Alistair’s blood off her and puts her back to sleep. Pondering Nina’s actions, she concludes that Alistair must have raped her. Wanting to avoid any questioning that could further disturb Nina, Maggie decides to dispose of Alistair’s body. She is shocked when, a few hours later, Nina gets up and leaves for school as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. After Nina leaves, Maggie buries Alistair in the garden, puts his belongings in the basement, and parks his car several blocks away.

Over the next few weeks, Maggie remains stressed, fearful that Nina will suddenly remember what happened the night Alistair died. Her work performance suffers, and she tells her coworkers that Alistair left her. Privately, she wonders how long Alistair was abusing Nina; outwardly, the two were always very close. She soon feels nothing but hatred for Alistair’s memory.

Three months after Alistair’s death, Maggie stays late after a shift at the doctor’s office. She consults a medical reference, finding a passage about a mental state known as “psychogenic fugue” that she believes could explain Nina’s behavior. As a response to trauma, such a state involves dissociation from one’s identity and temporary memory loss. Maggie resolves to keep Nina away from any stressful situations that could trigger a recurrence.

The novel returns to the current timeline. Nina awaits nervously as Bobby comes to visit her home, the house where he was born, for the first time. When he arrives, she is disappointed that is not wearing the jacket that she recently gave him. As she shows him the house, she accidentally calls him Dylan. Fearing that he is growing bored of her, she asks what is on his mind. He explains that he visited Jon’s grave, but it didn’t give him any closure. Nina offers to let Bobby stay with her. He becomes uncomfortable when she minimizes his adoptive parents’ role in his life. After telling Nina that she is sometimes “overbearing,” he leaves.

Following Bobby’s visit to the home, Maggie plans her next escape attempt. She uses a screw from the bathtub to chip away at the materials soundproofing the ground floor from the floor above it, planning to call out to any future visitors.

Following their dinner at Nina’s home, Bobby becomes increasingly uncommunicative. While snooping on Bobby’s phone, Nina discovers that Bobby’s adoptive mother will soon celebrate her 60th birthday party. She also discovers that Bobby is in a relationship with a man named Noah. She messages Noah to tell him to stop monopolizing Bobby’s time. Afterward, Bobby tells Nina that he needs more space.

In the two years since meeting Nina, despite Nina’s pleas, Bobby never told his adoptive family about her, not wanting to offend them. Nina shows up at Bobby’s adoptive mother’s birthday party uninvited. She sneaks into Bobby’s room, where she examines his Internet history and wardrobe. Leaving the room, she encounters Bobby and his adoptive mother.

Bobby is shocked to see Nina, who introduces herself to his adoptive mother, Jane Hopkinson, in a falsely cheery manner. Attempting to shock Jane, Nina boasts about how Bobby came looking for her. When Bobby comforts Jane, Nina becomes jealous. She is on the point of attacking Jane when Bobby asks her to leave.

Following the party, Bobby cuts off communication with Nina. When a colleague at work catches her crying the following week, Nina blames it on her mother’s supposed dementia. Nina decides to take out her anger on Maggie, whom she blames for the situation.

When Nina arrives home, Maggie senses that she is in a bad mood. Over dinner, Maggie tells Nina that she found a second potentially cancerous lump. As their conversation escalates into an argument, Nina accuses Maggie of ruining her life, while Maggie counters that Nina’s actions prove she was not fit to raise a child. Overcome with rage, Nina is about to attack Maggie when Bobby appears suddenly and asks what she is doing.

Nina puts down the knife. Bobby explains that he came to check on Nina after she threatened to harm herself if he did not respond to her messages. Realizing who he is, Maggie appeals to Bobby for help. Nina tries to rationalize her actions, but Bobby insists on releasing Maggie from her chains.

Fearing that he will leave her, Nina strikes Bobby with the metal cuff previously used to restrain Maggie. After he falls to the ground, Nina strikes Maggie. Struggling forward, Bobby slides down the stairs. Nina locks Maggie, who believes that Bobby is dead, in her upstairs room.

Shortly after Bobby’s birth 23 years earlier, Maggie confides the truth about the baby and Alistair’s death in Elsie, who responds sympathetically. For three days, Maggie and Elsie care for the baby, keeping him in Maggie’s basement.

Returning home after purchasing diapers, Maggie finds Nina in an unresponsive state, much like she was after she killed Alistair. She also notices mud on her shoes and a bloody knife in her hand.

Leaving Elsie with the baby, Maggie checks in with Nina, who reveals that she visited Jon. Taking an address from Nina’s pocket, Maggie makes her way to Jon’s apartment. She finds John on the sofa, drugged, and Sally Ann in the bathroom, dying from stab wounds to her arms, face, and pregnant abdomen. Maggie is about to call for help but decides against it, since it is too late to save Sally Ann or her baby and she does not want to implicate Nina. After arranging the scene to make it look like Jon killed Sally Ann, Maggie injects the remainder of a drug into Jon’s veins, hoping he will die of an overdose, then leaves.

Maggie takes Elsie up on her offer to arrange for Bobby to be adopted by the Hopkinsons, a wealthy family for whom Elsie works as a cleaner. Maggie meets with Jane, tells her that Nina wants nothing to do with the baby, and convinces her to list Maggie as the baby’s mother. A few hours later, Jane returns with her husband, and they take Bobby home with them.

Sitting by the piece of wall she wore down with the screw, Maggie listens for any sign of what happened to Dylan, whom she believes to be dead. For the first time, Maggie wishes to harm and escape from Nina; in the past, she always intended to stay close to Nina in some capacity. Maggie reflects that Bobby’s attempt to help her shows that he was raised well. She also begins to believe that Nina was not blameless in attacking Alistair and Bobby but acted knowingly.

Ten months later, Maggie remains despondent as cancer spreads through her body. She has frequent nightmares involving Bobby dying. As Nina pretends nothing is wrong, Maggie begins to doubt her own perception and wonders if she is “the unreliable narrator in our story” (347).

On the three-year anniversary of Maggie’s captivity, Nina lights a candle and invites Maggie to blow it out in celebration.

In the garden, Nina thinks about Alistair and waves to Elsie. Later, looking at old photos in the basement, Nina vaguely remembers hearing Alistair calling someone his “only girl” during a phone call one night, a nickname he usually reserved for her. Seeing that she overheard him, Alistair followed Nina to her room and explained that he no longer loved Maggie and was going to leave her to be with someone else. Angry at his betrayal, Nina reached for something to hurt him with but does not remember actually attacking him.

Since the night Bobby attempted to help Maggie, Nina keeps Bobby locked up in the basement, but he hardly ever speaks to her. Once, the police visited to ask about Bobby, but Nina claimed not to know anything. Over dinner, as ABBA’s “The Day Before You Came” plays, Nina reflects on how lucky she was to meet Bobby.

One day at work, Nina receives a call from her neighbor Barbara, who informs her that her house is burning down.

The narrative switches to Maggie’s perspective. Using matches she stole during her anniversary party, Maggie lights a fire through the gap between floors she carved with the screw. She lies down on her bed and waits to die, reflecting that she was free mentally even as she kept Nina captive by never telling her the truth.

Nina arrives home, where officials confront her. The neighbors watch, including the girl from across the street, whose arm is bruised. When an officer questions Nina about two chained bodies found in the house, she realizes that Maggie must have stolen the matches. As the officers arrest her, she becomes despondent and sees nothing but blackness.