What Lies Between Us

In Northampton, England, during the late 2010s, 68-year-old Maggie surveys the surrounding neighborhood through an upper window in the house where her 38-year-old daughter Nina has kept her in captivity for two years. Maggie watches as a neighbor, Barbara, helps her elderly mother, Elsie, into a car. Before her captivity, Maggie was good friends with Elsie. Maggie also observes a house with a garden that is neglected by the students who moved in after the death of their grandfather, Mr. Steadman; his death went unnoticed for weeks by everyone but Maggie. She also watches as another neighbor, Louise, who is again pregnant after a miscarriage, returns home.

Returning home, Nina invites Maggie to join her for dinner, as is their custom on Tuesday nights. Maggie pretends to like Nina’s choice of dish.

Earlier, at the grocery store, Nina was jealous of mothers who brought their children to shop with them. Later, at home, Nina removes chicken chasseur from the oven, knowing full well that Maggie only pretends to like it. As she sets the table on the second floor, Nina also selects a tablecloth that Maggie received as a gift from her grandmother, knowing that it will annoy Maggie to use it for anything other than a special occasion.

Upstairs, Maggie thinks about how the neighborhood has changed during the 40 years she has lived in her house. She spots Elsie watching a soap opera they used to enjoy discussing together. Maggie questions her decision not to ask Nina to repair the broken TV in her room. She doesn’t want to give Nina the satisfaction of doing her a favor.

Nina helps Maggie down the stairs to the first floor, where they eat dinner together. They listen to a record of ABBA’s greatest hits, which belonged to Alistair, Maggie’s deceased husband. They discuss Nina’s work at the library as well as Maggie’s observations about the neighbors. When the subject of Louise’s pregnancy comes up, Nina reminds Maggie about her own teenage pregnancy years early. She still resents the way that Maggie handled the situation.

After briefly singing and dancing to ABBA’s “Does Your Mother Know?,” the two of them clear the table. Maggie sneaks a sip of wine while Nina is out of the room, then adds water to cover up her action. After showing disdain for the newly stained tablecloth, Nina forcefully takes a corkscrew that Maggie hid in her sleeve before leading her back upstairs.

Nina follows Maggie as she returns upstairs and takes a bath. Maggie’s movements are limited by chains connected to a clasp around her ankle—a longer chain that allows a wider range of movement and a shorter set that keeps Maggie in her room, where she relieves herself in a bucket. Though Nina resents Maggie, she occasionally feels sorry for her and longs for a normal mother-daughter relationship.

As Nina places a thriller novel in Maggie’s room for her to read, she spots Louise though the window and wistfully remembers her own pregnancy. Nina also spots a mattress spring that Maggie removed, potentially to use as a weapon. In retaliation, Nina removes a screw from Maggie’s reading glasses. After Maggie’s bath, Nina replaces the shorter chain and clasp around her ankle.

Nina takes a bus to the public library where she has worked for 18 years. She greets her coworkers but is not particularly close to them. As she processes a batch of newly arrived books, Nina sets one aside to take home herself. She doesn’t intend to return it, since she doesn’t like to let go of “meaningful things” once they enter her home.

At lunchtime, Nina gives her packed lunch to a destitute elderly woman, telling a colleague: “I hate watching people suffer” (31).

In the 1990s, 25 years earlier, 13-year-old Nina returns home from school, changes out of her school uniform, and sits down to watch TV. A few minutes later, she goes looking for her mother, whom she finds doing laundry in the backyard. Maggie’s eyes are red as she tells Nina that she and her husband, Alistair, are now separated, and that he left that morning. She explains that Nina won’t be able to visit him, but she can write him letters. Nina exclaims that she would prefer to live with Alistair and blames Maggie for his departure. She softens as Maggie tearfully tucks her into bed that night.

In the later timeline, following a restless night, Maggie dresses, wearing only clothes that she can wrap on or pull over her head due to the ankle restraint. During the time of her captivity, Nina has gradually taken accessories and privileges away from Maggie in response to Maggie’s attacks and escape attempts. High on the wall, out of Maggie’s reach, hangs a picture of Alistair that Nina knows Maggie dislikes. As she eats breakfast, Maggie starts to read Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, the latest of a series of books about people kept in captivity handpicked by Nina for Maggie. Suddenly, she spots a memory box Alistair made for Nina 30 years ago lying under her bed.

The novel returns to the past timeline. Late one night, Maggie waits anxiously for Nina, now 14, who snuck out after pretending to go to bed hours earlier. A few minutes later, a man Maggie doesn’t recognize drops off Nina, who is drunk. As Maggie scolds her, Nina jokes about her sexual escapades. Maggie traces Nina’s delinquent behavior to the time of Alistair’s disappearance. She resolves to keep Nina from discovering the truth, which is that Nina killed Alistair in a fit of rage, then somehow blocked out the memory, though none of this backstory is revealed at this point.

After tucking Nina into bed, Maggie spots a positive pregnancy test in Nina’s trash can. Over the next few days, Maggie wonders what to do.

The novel returns to the later timeline. Before work, Nina goes for a swim as part of a diet and exercise plan she has followed for three months. She notices a father coaching his son and misses Alistair. Recently, Nina has also started taking more care of her personal appearance, even asking Maggie for help with makeup. After the swim, Nina examines herself in the mirror. There is a tattoo inside her mouth that she got as a teenager, though her memory of those years is filled with gaps.

During work, Nina follows a young woman and her baby around the library. When Nina wipes the baby’s nose without permission, the mother tells her to go away. For revenge, Nina slips two books into the stroller, knowing they will set off the alarm when the young woman leaves.

Later that week, Maggie and Nina dine together, though neither mentions the memory box. When Nina first discovered it, she opened it, saw the old pregnancy test, and closed the box without exploring further. After dinner, Nina leaves and Maggie sits in her room, enjoying some candy Nina left for her.

When she was first placed in captivity, Maggie frequently lost her temper, even throwing a mug at a camera Nina used to keep an eye on her. Though she missed, and the camera turned out to be fake, Maggie resolved not to let Nina get the better of her again.

The novel returns to the past timeline. When Nina gets stomach cramps, Maggie stays home from work to comfort her. Nina’s pregnancy ends in miscarriage. Afterward, Maggie tells Nina that she, like her father before her, is a carrier of a rare genetic disorder that causes severe, typically fatal, birth defects.

After Nina falls asleep, Maggie hides some leftover medicine called Clozterpan in the basement. As a receptionist at a doctor’s office, Maggie faked a prescription and secretly administered the medicine to Nina, causing her miscarriage.

The novel returns to the later timeline. Riding the bus home from work, Nina listens to Madonna, which evokes memories of her relationship with Alistair. Nina only has one photo of her with Alistair; Maggie destroyed the rest. Suddenly, a notification on her phone alerts Nina to the cancer-induced death of Jon Hunter, a popstar convicted of murder that Nina knew as a teenager.

The novel returns to the past timeline. After sneaking out of her home one night, teenage Nina attends a concert featuring The Hunters, Jon’s band. Nina is smitten with Jon, as are many in the crowd. As the concert ends, Nina leaves her friend Saffron to follow Jon backstage. Nervous and excited, Nina joins Jon in his changing room, where they smoke and make small talk before turning to romance.

The novel returns to the later timeline. Maggie is surprised when Nina leaves her alone in the dining room one evening before dinner. Hearing a bird through the open window, Maggie wonders if her friends and neighbors miss her. Thanks to Nina, they believe that Maggie was sent to live with her sister Jennifer, a retired nurse, after developing dementia.

Nina returns, carrying lasagna, but remains preoccupied throughout the meal. As Maggie quizzes Nina about work, Nina turns on a record by The Hunters. Maggie pretends not to know much about Jon or the band but is secretly pleased to hear that Jon died. As the two argue about Nina’s past, Maggie insists she loves Nina, while Nina says that she hates Maggie and threatens to attend therapy to unlock potential repressed memories from her youth.