What Lies Between Us

“I don’t think you can ever be normal again after losing something you were so looking forward to loving.”

Here, Maggie is referring to a neighbor whose pregnancy ended in miscarriage, but her words also provide context for Nina’s behavior, as Nina suffers significant losses that leave her feeling as though she has been cheated of opportunities in life. Nina’s neediness and possessiveness can be seen, at least partially, as a response to the losses she has sustained.

“When you get older you’ll understand that sometimes appearances can be deceptive […] You can never really know a person, no matter how much you love them.”

Maggie responds to Nina’s questioning about Alistair’s disappearance, hinting that she learned something about Alistair that drove them apart. Her point about not knowing others—while meant to apply to Alistair—aptly describes her relationship with Nina. Despite living together for years, they continue to surprise and annoy one another. Maggie is particularly shocked to wake up in captivity one day, something she would never have predicted.

“What is it with women who, once they have a child, automatically think they’re superior to the rest of us?”

Nina responds bitterly to the young woman in the library who chastises Nina for approaching her child. Nina’s thoughts are more revealing about her than they are of the young woman. In fact, Nina is projecting her own way of judging superiority and privilege based on parental status onto the young woman. Nina pretends that she considers herself the woman’s equal, but her touchiness about children and parenthood suggests that she feels otherwise.

“They are memories that have been subconsciously blocked because they are so stressful or traumatic. But by hiding us from them, they keep us shackled to the past.”

Over dinner one night, Nina offhandedly mentions the possibility of going to therapy to unlock repressed memories. Her comment above proves insightful, as it accurately describes the effect of her repressed memories. Unaware that she killed Alistair and Sally Ann, Nina is trapped in the past, unable to develop or mature.

“He was my boyfriend, my best friend and my father all rolled into one.”

In this passage, Nina describes her relationship with Jon. What to her appears to be an ideal relationship strikes Maggie with alarm. The relationship has imbalanced power dynamics, as Jon is an adult and Nina a minor, and the potential for abuse and manipulation. Nina’s mention of Jon as a father figure suggests that she turned to Jon in part to fill the gap left by Alistair’s death. Her vulnerability makes her an easy target for Jon’s manipulations.

“I need her to crave the world she sees from her window. Once she stops wanting everything she can’t have, she’s no longer being punished.”

In keeping Maggie captive, Nina is both physically imprisoning and psychologically torturing her. Nina allows Maggie to enjoy herself to a limited extent in order to remind her of how much she is missing. This highlights Nina’s vindictiveness and bitterness.

“I thought that having a baby meant that I would always be loved by someone until the day I died. I was wrong. Being a mother is no guarantee of anything.”

Maggie comes to feel that her relationship with Nina violates the basic premise of mother-daughter relationships, which she’d assumed were based on unconditional love. Through her experience, Maggie feels that motherhood is largely synonymous with hardship, loss, and alienation. Her disappointment with motherhoods contrasts with Nina’s idealistic vision of life as a mother.

“Sometimes my desire to be a mum becomes all-consuming and I crave the need for a child’s love above all else.”

Here, Nina identifies her overarching desire to be a mother, which is one of the strongest desires in her life. She admits that this longing eats away at her, suggesting that her desire borders on obsession. Her jealousy of the mothers around her negatively impacts her mental health and hinders her ability to form and maintain normal relationships with Maggie, Bobby, and others.

“I have seen what happens when you suffer extreme anxiety, when the stress of what the world throws at you becomes too much. You regress. You close the doors. You shut down. You cannot do that when you are a mother.”

Maggie explains her reasoning for opposing Nina’s desire to adopt. Though she doesn’t mention Nina’s violence, this is the fullest explanation she provides to Nina for her actions. Without mentioning Alistair’s murder, she conveys her true feelings about why she doesn’t feel that Nina would be a good mother. The text uses short, declarative sentences for emphasis. It also uses anaphora, where the initial words of sentences repeat, in this case, “You.”

“Having a family was the done thing back then […] You just got on with it without complaint.”

Maggie recalls things her mother told her on her deathbed. Maggie’s mother chose to raise children despite not having any particular interest in doing so. In contrast, Nina wants to raise a child but does not have the opportunity. Maggie falls somewhere in between her mother and her daughter. While she vows to do better than her mother did at loving her children, Maggie does not idolize the idea of motherhood the same way that Nina does.

“Not only did Mum kill my first baby, but she gave my second away, then made me infertile. I have no control over the tears streaming down my face.”

Nina sums up her grievances against Maggie, and her emotional response. She ascribes intentions to Maggie that Maggie never had, such as Nina’s infertility. Here, the novel shows the significance of context: Without knowing about Nina’s violence, her implication of Maggie is damning.

Nina’s sense that she cannot control her tears suggests other aspects of her character: She loses control in emotional moments, and is primarily driven by grief and pain.

“For now, I’ve stopped thinking of her only as the enemy, and instead as my vulnerable, elderly mother.”

After Maggie develops what seems to be cancer, Nina finds herself sympathizing with Maggie’s plight. This passage reveals another of Nina’s tendencies: Throughout the novel, she deliberately uses certain names to think of others in ways that suit her purposes. For instance, thinking of Maggie as Maggie instead of as her mother creates an emotional distance that facilitates her abuse. Here, in a moment of compassion, Maggie is again her mother.

“How can I ask for forgiveness when I truly believe that what I did was the right thing to do?”

Maggie maintains that she did what was best for Nina, and that her actions were also morally correct. Maggie is torn by the dual, and often conflicting goals, of protecting Nina from the consequences of her actions and protecting others, including children, from Nina.

“I don’t know who I’ve become but I am no longer myself. It’s as if the real Nina is standing in the corner of the room watching someone resembling me strangling my mother.”

Nina describes the sense of dissociation she feels during a moment of violence against her mother. Her sense that she is not in control of herself during such moments raises the question of whether she should be held accountable for her actions. Nina fails to reach the full logical conclusion of her realization, which is that she is a danger to others.

“I want all the things a couple in a relationship want from one another. Except we are not a couple. And sometimes, when I feel the lines starting to blur, I have to remind myself that we are mother and son.”

Just as Nina once obsessed over Jon and felt that her relationship with him was everything to her, she also becomes fixated on her relationship with Bobby. Nina struggles with boundaries and giving space to others. She misunderstands human relationships, be they between friends, family members, or lovers, and simply sees them as a chance to take what she wants.

“Nina needs me. I must protect her from the truth at all costs.”

Maggie is stunned to realize that Nina has no recollection of killing Alistair, and soon recognizes this as an opportunity. In Maggie’s view, Nina’s actions were the justifiable response to abuse. Unable to blame Nina, Maggie feels compelled to protect her. As she discovers too late, doing so only enables Nina to continue inflicting harm.

“But it’s like you’re trying to place a wedge between us so that you can have me for yourself.”

Bobby calls out Nina for trying to sow resentment between him and his adoptive family. This hints at Bobby’s larger role in the narrative. His appearance spurs Nina to discover the truth about her past. He also becomes a vessel of truth in moments like this, where he accurately assesses her motives and behavior. This makes him a foil to Maggie, or a character who illuminates another character through contrasting qualities. Unlike Bobby, Maggie typically skirts around difficult issues.

“I reserve the right to call him what I want because I am Dylan’s mum.”

Nina asserts that being Bobby’s biological mother gives her the right to call him Dylan. This indicates her feelings of possession and control, as naming something affects the way it functions and is perceived in society. Essentially, Nina wants to force Bobby to become Dylan, the idealized son she always wanted, instead of allowing him to lead his own life.

“While I’d like you to be a part of my life, you cannot be all of it. If you can’t respect my space and my relationships then you can’t be in it.”

Bobby gives Nina an ultimatum, stating that there are rules and limits to their relationship. As an adult, Bobby claims autonomy, including the right to decide how much time and attention to devote to the various people in his life. Bobby’s words trigger Nina’s fears of abandonment, leading her to take even more extreme actions.

“Slowly, Jane becomes surrounded by shades of red and black and I’m overcome by the need to punish her; I want to hurt her so badly. I want to make her understand what she has done; I want her to know that this beautiful young man belongs to me and not her.”

This passage captures Nina’s thought process at the beginning of a violent episode. Her perception changes, the shift in colors symbolizing her loss of touch with reality. Her language reveals that she is subject to powerful, even irresistible, emotional urges. The use of repetition emphasizes the intensity of her emotions: “I want.”

“She is the person I share the house with, nothing more, nothing less. She means no more to me than the curtains that hide what goes on in there, the floorboards I walk over or the doors we use to separate us.”

As Bobby begins to distance himself from her, Nina falls into a familiar pattern of blaming Maggie. This marks a new low for their relationship, as Nina compares Maggie’s significance to that of the accessories in their home. The irony is that her sense of alienation is a result of Maggie’s desire to protect her.

“How can I rest easy leaving them alone even for a moment? I’d be constantly at my wits’ end, waiting for something to provoke her next psychotic episode.”

Maggie makes the difficult decision to arrange for Nina’s baby to be adopted. She reasons that doing so is the only long-term solution, given Nina’s potential for explosive violence. In sending the baby away, Maggie sets events in motion that will lead to plenty of discord and suffering regardless.

This passage shows that even Maggie’s desire to mollify Nina has its limits, such as when the wellbeing of a child is at stake.

“Given my time again, I’d have disposed of his body elsewhere so that Nina and I could have moved away from this cursed house and started again. I was wrong not to.”

Maggie comes to feel that the house she occupies is cursed. She desires a new start, away from the house where reminders of the past are ever present. In the end, her decision to destroy the house represents burning away the past.