The Prisoner, page 15
In the room upstairs, I’m trembling. It’s over. They’re releasing Ned, he isn’t going to be killed. But I’ll be safe, because he truly believes that I’m dead. My shooting wasn’t about playing a trick on him, as I’d feared.
My abductor has done what I asked.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
PAST
Ned was in my bedroom. He had brought me a supper tray. I refused to be scared of him, so I kept my eyes fixed on him as he put it down on the table. His face was a mess; he still had the marks from when I’d attacked him three days before, and I was glad.
“Make sure you eat it this time,” he said. “I don’t want you looking emaciated when we announce our separation.”
I didn’t answer, just kept on staring at him. There was something else on his face, a sort of wariness. It told me he was living in fear of his life, and I was glad about that too. Whatever he had coming to him, he deserved it.
There was a call on the intercom and he jumped so badly I nearly laughed out loud. He hurried from the bedroom, leaving the door open in his haste, and I imagined him hovering at the top of the stairs, waiting for his new security guard to open the front door below. I had heard the new guard’s voice in the hall the day after Lukas’s lunch, and I’d felt a rush of anger at the way Hunter had been replaced so quickly.
“I’m Carl, sir,” I heard the security guard saying to the guest at the door. “I’m Mr. Hawthorpe’s new hire.”
“Then please tell my son I would like to see him.”
I heard Ned clattering down the stairs.
“Dad, what are you doing here?” I heard him asking.
I leapt from the bed and went to crouch at the top of the stairs.
“What’s happened to your face?” Jethro Hawthorpe barked. Again, he was immaculately dressed, in contrast to Ned, who looked disheveled in his jeans and half-unbuttoned shirt. “Have you been in a fight?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing to me. Where have you been? I came to the house on Tuesday and there was no one here. And why haven’t you been answering your phone?”
“I’ve been busy. Look, Dad, why are you here?”
“In your study,” Jethro Hawthorpe said, glancing at the security guard who was still in the hall. He was dressed all in black, his head was shaved, his arms held rigid at his sides. I just had time to get a glimpse of his face before he turned toward the door.
I wasn’t sure why I thought I might be able to appeal to Ned’s father for help. Maybe it was because each time I’d heard him speaking to Ned, he’d been angry. I waited until the security guard had moved outside, to his post on the front step, and ran down the stairs to the entrance hall. I faltered at the start of the hallway leading to Ned’s study; then, fighting down a rush of tears, I hurried to the library, my head up, my eyes away from the floor where Lina had lain. Closing the door behind me, I moved silently to the double doors that led to the study.
“Where’s Hunter?” Jethro Hawthorpe was asking. “Why have you got a new man on the door?”
“I had to get rid of him,” Ned said. “He wasn’t doing his job properly. Carl is his replacement.” There was a pause. “I’ll ask you again, why are you here?”
“Because of this ridiculous marriage of yours. Why did you do it? I want the truth.”
“You needn’t worry, we’re separating.”
There was a snort of disgust. “Already? After what—little more than two weeks?”
“Alright,” Ned said. “You want the truth, here it is. I’d been seeing her for a while, and I took her to Las Vegas because she said she’d never been on a plane before and I felt sorry for her. Then, while we were there, she told me she was pregnant, and yeah, it was a shock but I thought I should do the right thing by her and my future child. So, I married her.”
“What?” Jethro Hawthorpe sounded as if he was about to have a heart attack. “She’s pregnant?”
“No,” Ned said. “She tricked me, Dad, she tricked me into marrying her. She was after my money, so she made up a story about being pregnant.” His voice rose to a whine. “Do you see now, do you see what it’s like for me?”
“Are you serious?” Jethro Hawthorpe thundered. “You let yourself be taken in by some slip of a girl?”
Ned’s voice hardened. “You’re missing the point. When I tell the press why we’re separating, they’ll realize what it’s been like for me, they’ll see that women will try anything to get money out of me, whether it’s pretending I sexually assaulted them, or pretending that they’re pregnant. Don’t you see, that accusation against me—it will go away. The press won’t be gunning for me anymore, they’ll be sympathetic.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth to smother my gasp of shock. Even though I had guessed it, to hear Ned actually admit that he used me to protect himself against Justine’s accusation of sexual assault, to hear his vicious lie about my character, was brutal.
“You did sort out a postnup with Paul Carr, I hope?” Jethro Hawthorpe said.
“Yes, of course I did, I’m not stupid.”
“How much? How much did she want?”
“I offered her fifty thousand if we separate but she refused it,” Ned said. “She said she only wanted a pound for each day that we stayed married.”
“Hold on.” I imagined Jethro Hawthorpe holding up his hand, his palm facing Ned. “That doesn’t make sense. If she tricked you into marrying her to extort money from you, why would she only ask for a pound for each day of your marriage? Even if you separated in two years’ time, that adds up to little more than seven hundred. There must be more to it than that.”
“It’s not exactly a pound for each day,” Ned said. “There’s a doubling thing involved.”
“What do you mean, a doubling thing?”
“Well, it’s a pound for the first day, then doubled for every day after that,” Ned explained. “You know—she gets a pound for day one of our marriage, two pounds for day two, four pounds on day three, eight pounds on day four—”
Jethro Hawthorpe cut him off. “You didn’t agree to it, did you?”
“Of course,” Ned said.
“Are you completely crazy? Did you even bother to work it out?”
“No, but don’t worry, she only wants it for the first month of our marriage.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is how I raised such an imbecile! You could end up owing her millions!”
The door to the study opened, then slammed shut. I heard Jethro Hawthorpe stride past the library door, his footsteps loud and angry. I stayed where I was, in case Ned decided to go after him. But there was a crash, the sound of something smashing against the wall.
“BITCH! FUCKING BITCH!”
I recoiled, ran from the room. In my bedroom, I paced up and down, seething at the way Ned had used me. There was no last-minute trip to Vegas, he had planned our marriage before we left. He had found my Achilles’ heel and used it to protect himself from the fallout of his assault on Justine. In the eyes of the world, if Ned and I had been in a secret relationship for the last few months, if he’d been about to propose to me, would he really have assaulted one of his employees the day before we left?
I thought for a moment, then crept downstairs to the kitchen and took a knife with a long, pointed blade from the drawer. I ran back to my room, closing the door behind me. It was almost dark. I waited for Ned to remember that he hadn’t locked me in, but he didn’t come. Good. Soon, he would go to bed, and once he was asleep, I would find his bedroom, I would hold the knife to his throat, I would take his phone and call the police. And if he so much as moved, well, I would kill him. I would kill him for Justine and Lina, and for Hunter.
But before I could do any of those things, I was kidnapped.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
PRESENT
I walk to the bathroom, trailing the blanket behind me. When will they come for me? Since Ned was taken from the room downstairs, there have been strange noises, sounds of things being moved around, furniture perhaps. It’s put me on edge, this change from static to fluid.
I lock the door, activate the light. It jars my eyes, and I hold onto the wall a moment. I stoop to open the cupboard, take the nail from the toiletry bag, and gouge a final line on the wall. And below the line, I scrape 9/14, the date at which our kidnapping has come to end, exactly four weeks from the day we were taken.
I return to my mattress. I don’t have to wait long before I hear the door opening.
“It’s time,” a man’s voice says.
It isn’t the usual man, it’s the other.
I stand up. He puts the hood over my head, but maybe because I’m holding my blanket, he doesn’t tie my hands, but leads me from the room with his hands on my shoulders.
He takes me down the hallway, I know we’re going past the double doors, toward the front of the house, and I imagine a car waiting to take me somewhere safe. But he stops, guides me into a room on the right, it will be the kitchen with the long table and the French windows at the end. He makes me sit. I smell coffee and my mouth waters.
“I want you to listen carefully,” he says. His voice comes from behind me. “I’m going to take off the hood and put sunglasses on you so that your eyes get accustomed to the light. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Close your eyes.”
I do as he says and the hood comes off. The light pierces my closed lids and I drop my head in reflex. Sunglasses are put on me. I raise my head, open my eyes a little, close them again.
“I’ll be back soon,” he says. “Don’t move. Stay exactly where you are.”
The door closes. Muted sounds come to me, of hammering, of things being put down, picked up. While my eyes adjust to the light—I open them slightly behind my sunglasses for a couple of seconds, then close them again, gradually increasing the time of exposure—I wonder where my captor is. He must have left with Ned. Is Ned with his father now, does the world know that he’s been rescued, that I’m apparently dead?
The man comes back, moves behind me.
“Don’t turn around,” he says. “On the table in front of you, you’ll find a letter with instructions for you to follow. You’ll need to read it at least three times, maybe more, but however strange the instructions seem, you must comply with them. Your help is in exchange for your life.” He pauses, giving time for his words to sink in. “Do you understand?”
A tremor runs through me. “Yes.”
“If there had been some other way, we would have taken it. But there’s too much at stake. That’s what you need to remember. What we need from you is a leap of faith.” Another pause. “Are you willing to make that leap?”
“Yes,” I say again, because what choice do I have?
“Once you know the instructions by heart, put a match to them, burn the sheets of paper. Don’t write anything down, or take notes. I’m going to leave now. Don’t attempt to look at me. There’s a clock on the wall in front of you. It’s now six in the morning. Don’t move for fifteen minutes, except to pour yourself a coffee. Once the fifteen minutes are up, you can read the letter.”
He leaves, and tears seep out from under my sunglasses. I’m out of the room. I’m alive.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
PRESENT
I lift my sunglasses, scrub the tears from my eyes, then put them back on and search for the clock on the wall. I study its face, my sight gradually adjusting. The black hands show it’s five past six.
I lower my eyes to the table. Lying facedown are two sheets of paper. There’s also a carafe of coffee, a bottle of milk, and two mugs. I reach out, pour myself a coffee, and take a sip, my hands shaking as I raise the mug to my lips. The taste is so strong that I hold the hot liquid in my mouth before swallowing it down. I stare at the sheets of paper. I feel detached from reality, as if my body is still locked away in the darkness and I’m watching this scene from above. I take another sip of coffee and this time I close my eyes a moment, savoring the nutty, slightly burnt taste.
I look again at the two sheets of paper. Everything written on them will determine the rest of my life. Will I have a new name? Where will I go? Will a car come to collect me, take me to a safe house somewhere? What about money? My stomach clenches. I am here because of money, because I wanted to make life easier for myself.
The black clock’s hands now point to six-fifteen. I take a breath, exhale, take the blanket from my lap, place it on the table, and remove my sunglasses. The light streaming in through the windows is too bright and I’m about to put them on again when something catches my attention. I look at the glasses more closely, turning them this way and that, squinting at them. They’re mine, they’re the ones I bought in Vegas. One of the abductors must have gone back to Ned’s house after taking us. I put them down on the table, my mind too exhausted to think about it now.
Turning over the sheets of paper, I read the first line.
Today is Saturday, August 31.
I frown. It must be a mistake. Today is Saturday, September 14, day twenty-nine of our captivity. I know this.
I continue reading.
Today, you have been married to Ned Hawthorpe for exactly thirty-one days.
My skin prickles. What is this? A joke of some kind?
You may think it’s later, but your days here were not days of twenty-four hours. This is day fifteen of your capture.
Day fifteen? Stunned, I lift my head from the paper. I can’t have been locked in that room for only fourteen days.
I continue reading.
The story you will tell when you are asked is that Ned rented this house for two weeks to escape from the media glare surrounding the claim of sexual assault made by Justine Elland, and to spend some quality time with his new wife. His Instagram account will confirm this. You can check it on his phone in the bedroom upstairs, in accordance with our instructions.
I read the paragraph twice more and even then, I’m not sure I’ve understood correctly. Ned rented this house? I read it again. No, that’s the story I must tell, when I’m asked. But why? And who is going to ask me? I read the rest of the letter, then read it again, barely able to comprehend what I’m reading, what I’ve been asked to do. It’s only on the third reading that I finally understand.
Our kidnapping wasn’t a kidnapping at all.
PART TWO
THE RECKONING
CHAPTER ONE
It’s 7 a.m. I stand at the sink, holding the letter in one hand, a lighted match in the other. I push away the fear that I might not have memorized the instructions properly, that I might not be able to carry them out. I have to. I need to.
I put the match to the corner of the letter, feel the heat approaching my fingers as the yellow-blue flame gathers momentum, then watch, mesmerized, as the paper blackens and curls. At the last moment, I drop the sheets into the sink and quickly run water over them, washing the charred remains down the drain, along with the match. I replace the box of matches in the drawer where I found them and move around the kitchen, noting where everything is, the kettle, the fridge, opening cupboards and other drawers, taking in the contents.
I walk to the French windows that had presented such hope to me when I’d tried to escape, and look out. There’s a large paved terrace with a swimming pool, and suddenly, I experience a weird sense of déjà vu. I know this terrace, this pool.
My heart racing, I pull open the sliding doors and step out, barely registering the fresh air, the warmth of the early morning sun on my skin. I see the distinctive gray-and-yellow-striped sun loungers, the bar at the end of the pool, the stools tucked neatly under the counter, smell the tang of the sea in the air. Stunned, I sink onto one of the sun loungers. This is the house in Haven Cliffs where Ned and I had lunch with Lukas. If I’d needed more proof that Lukas was behind our kidnapping, this was it.
Aware of time marching on, I go back to the kitchen and into the hallway. Opposite the kitchen is a door; I open it and find a dining room. Farther down the hallway, on the left, are the double doors I passed when I tried to escape. Behind them is what I’d imagined, a huge sitting room. On a low rectangular table inlaid with onyx, there are magazines and books; books that belong to me, taken from my bedroom at Ned’s. One of my wraps is draped casually over the arm of the nearby sofa. There’s also a mug, a stain of coffee still visible in the bottom.
Following the instructions, I familiarize myself with the rest of the house. Opposite the sitting room is a wide staircase to the upper floor. I ignore it and move along the corridor and find a wood-paneled library with a study tucked behind it. And opposite the library, next to the sitting room, the room where I was held.
I open the door, stand in the doorway. The board has been removed from the window, the room is no longer in darkness. It’s nothing like I had imagined. In my mind, it was shabby, its walls yellowed with age. But the walls are smooth, painted in the palest of greens, an echo of the foliage I can see through the window.
In front of the window there’s a mahogany writing desk. An ornate lamp stands on it. In the corner where my mattress was, there’s a comfortable armchair, upholstered in dark green, and a low wooden table with another lamp. A small bookshelf, filled with neat rows of books, stands against the opposite wall. It seems impossible that this beautiful study was my home for four weeks—two weeks, I correct myself. My mind is tripping on how they did it, why they did it. But I don’t have time, not now.
I cross to the little bathroom. With the light streaming in from the window in the other room I don’t need to go all the way in and lock the door to be able to see that the cake of soap is gone. I bend to look in the cupboard; it’s bare. I check the wall behind the door; the scratches I made and my calculations on the door itself have been sanded away. There’s nothing, no trace of me at all.
