Particularly if you had a lot of time on your hands. Rose spent her days in solitary confinement, marking dots in her diary as the weeks went by (although Peter suggested she finally read Proust, counting hours had become one of her main occupations), and imagined herself like Edmond Dantès chained in the Château d’If in The Count of Monte Cristo, scratching lines on the limestone walls of his prison cell. She was awakened every morning by her own anxiety, something she could not fumble for in the dark and switch off, her only task for the next twelve hours to lie prostrate on her bed trying to contain the unborn being who was her jailer, frequently drinking glasses of ice water, eating chocolate, or watching violent films to agitate it if she could not feel it punching her from within. In this unusual and hypersensitive state, it was unsurprising that the dramas of the lives of others had become her obsession. Four weeks had passed since the unfortunate events at Cal’s birthday party, but although anyone else would be lying on the bathroom floor sobbing with the stress of it all, Liddy was not.
