The prisoner, p.5
The Prisoner, page 5
It was a Thursday evening in late August, and we had moved from the café where we usually met to speak French, to a bench in Hyde Park.
“Because I can’t stay at Carolyn’s forever. I’ve been there for over a year and a half now. And at some point, she and Daniel might want to move in together.”
“It’s lovely that she’s met someone,” Justine said. “But it’s still early days. And if they do move in together, and you need to find another job, you can come and work at Exclusives with me and Lina.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to be a lawyer, don’t forget.”
She turned curious eyes on me. “Was it your father who influenced you to study law?”
“Not as such.” I rarely spoke about Papa, maybe because the memory of his death was still too painful. “When my mother died in childbirth, he sued the hospital in France for negligence. But he was passed from lawyer to lawyer and never managed to get very far. I don’t think that living in England helped.” I paused. “Nor did the whisky. His illness made him rely on it to relieve the pain. He was never a horrible drunk,” I added hastily. “It just made him retreat into himself.”
She reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, realizing that it was. “I just wish he’d managed to get justice for my mother and baby brother before he died. It was all he wanted, an acknowledgment from the hospital that they’d been negligent. It consumed him as much as the cancer did. It’s why I want to be a lawyer, to help people like him.”
Her phone beeped, a message coming in. She dug in her bag, took out her phone, glanced at the screen.
“Ned,” she said with a grimace. “You’d think he’d take no for an answer.”
“What do you mean?”
She put her phone away without answering it. “He is always asking me to have dinner with him and I tell him no, that I don’t date men I work with. And you know what he says?”
“What?”
“That I don’t work with him, I work for him. He thinks it’s funny.”
I frowned. “He shouldn’t be putting you in that position.”
She sat up. “You’re right, he shouldn’t,” she said indignantly. “Do you know what he said when he heard I was looking for somewhere to live, because I was moving out of Lina’s? He said I should go and live with him. He was joking, but it made me uncomfortable.”
“It must have been fun living with Lina.”
“Yes, it was, we had some great times. It was only meant to be temporary, while I looked for an apartment, because I’d just arrived from France. But we got along so well that she said I could stay as long as I liked.”
“So why did you move out?”
“Because, after about a year, she began going out a lot, and once or twice she didn’t come back until the next morning. That’s when I first suspected she had a boyfriend. I teased her and asked her if she was going to introduce me to him, but she told me that she’d been out with one of her girlfriends. I didn’t really believe her, and I was worried that maybe I was cramping her style, so I began looking for my own apartment.”
“Do you still think she has a boyfriend?”
Justine nodded. “You must have noticed the way she blushes when I tease her about it.”
“I wonder why she doesn’t want to introduce him to you or Carolyn?”
“I think she will, in time. It’s a big thing, introducing a new man to your friends.”
“I suppose,” I said distractedly. “When I move out of Carolyn’s, I want to stay in the area. You, Carolyn, and Lina are like my family now. I feel so lucky to have met you.”
Justine laughed. “We are the privileged ones. You keep us young—and yet you are very wise for someone who is just nineteen. When I was your age, I knew nothing. When I think of you coming to London without knowing anyone, of being alone in the world at sixteen, well, you’re quite amazing, Amelie Lamont.”
“Lina was even younger than me when she was orphaned,” I said, remembering what Lina had told me. “She has no family either.” I paused. “I am an orphan like Lina and half-French like you, and Carolyn is like my big sister. It makes me feel as if I belong, as if I have a family.” I gave a contented smile. “What more could I want?”
“I don’t know—a man, maybe?”
I shook my head. “It would be too much of a distraction. Maybe once I’m a lawyer, but not before.”
We were interrupted by her phone ringing. She peered into her bag. “Ned. Oh God, I hope he’s not going to start phoning me now.”
“Maybe it’s to do with the party? It’s only a few weeks away, isn’t it?”
“Even if it is, it can wait until tomorrow. He might be the boss, but I don’t want him to think that he can contact me out of hours. It’s one of those slippery-slope things.” She stood up, stretched her arms above her head. “How about we go and get pizza?”
“Good idea. As long as we don’t bump into Ned,” I teased, because their offices were just around the corner.
“I can’t imagine him eating pizza, so I think I’m safe on that score. Shall we invite Carolyn and Lina? Have an impromptu ‘family’ dinner?”
“Carolyn is out with Daniel tonight.”
“Then I shall phone Lina.”
But Lina was also going out.
“Although she didn’t say who with,” Justine said, raising her eyebrows comically. She linked her arm through mine. “So, it looks as if it’s just you and me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PRESENT
I’ve been dreaming of Papa. I don’t know where I was, in this room, or somewhere else, but he was standing next to me.
Well, Amelie, he asked. Which would you choose?
And I’d shaken my head and told him that I hadn’t decided yet.
I haven’t dreamt of Papa for a while, so I want to believe that the dream means something. And a memory comes flooding back, of me standing by his chair, and him asking me the same question.
“Well, Amelie, which would you choose?”
“Could you repeat it, please?” I asked.
“If I offered you a million pounds today, or I promised to give you a pound now, and double it to two pounds tomorrow and four pounds the next day, and eight pounds the day after, and carry on doubling each day’s total for a month, which would you choose?”
My heart leapt. “Has the money from the hospital come through?”
My father shook his head and my shoulders sagged.
“It’s just a hypothetical question,” he said.
I thought for a minute. “Would it be a month of thirty days or thirty-one days?”
“Would that make a difference to your answer?”
“It might, because if the doubling thing got to over five hundred thousand on day thirty, then it would come to more than a million the next day.”
He smiled. “In that case, let’s make it a month of thirty-one days.”
“Then I choose the doubling thing—as long as you promise not to die before the thirty-one days are up,” I added.
He laughed. “You’re a very clever girl, Amelie,” he said, patting my hand. “You’re going to be fine.”
Maybe the dream was an omen, maybe Papa was telling me that I’m going to get out of here.
I go to the bathroom, scratch an eighth mark into the wall. Today is Saturday, the twenty-fourth of August. My heart sinks; we’ve been here for a week. No one is coming for us.
I rinse the spoon I used for my porridge, walk six steps toward the main door, stop, crouch down to place the spoon alongside the other three. But I can’t find them. I shift on my haunches; maybe I’m not as close to the door as I thought. I stretch out my hand, find the doorframe, move my fingers downward to the floor. Nothing. But they have to be there, they always are. I sweep my fingers farther to the right. Nothing. I put my hand flat on the floor and move it around, searching frantically for my spoons. They aren’t there.
Shock rocks me backward onto the floor. The spoons were there yesterday, now they have gone—but when did they go? The man didn’t remove them when he brought my porridge; I’m certain of it. I heard him pick up the tray from last night and go straight out of the room. I would have known if he’d stopped, I would have heard the rattle of plastic as he put the spoons on the tray. But I hadn’t heard anything, which can only mean one thing. He removed them at some other time.
Frightened of what it means, I move unsteadily to my mattress, clutching the spoon to my chest, and sit down. I thought that this room was my room, my universe. But it isn’t. The abductors can come in whenever they want, they can come in while I’m in the bathroom, or during the night, they can remove spoons, watch me while I sleep, listen on the other side of the bathroom door. The knowledge is devastating.
The need to escape presses down on me. I push up from the floor, steady myself against the wall, walk to the window. My fingers find the board, I move my hands across it until I reach the left-hand edge, searching for the gap from the missing nail. I find it, feel for the next nailhead up. I try to grip it between my index finger and thumb, but it’s too firmly nailed in to be pulled out, even with my pajama top padding my fingers. Sliding a fingernail under the nailhead itself, I try to wiggle it. But I can’t pull it out. I try the other nails and by the time I’ve made my way around the whole of the board, I’m panting, and my fingernails are sore and broken. I blow air up my face. I’ll never be able to pry the board off, not without a tool of some kind. Which means that when I escape, it will have to be through the door.
But then what? The hall outside is kept in darkness, I know that because there is never the slightest glimmer of light when the man comes into the room. How will I be able to negotiate an unknown space in the dark? How would I get out of the house? If I turn left in the hallway, I’d be able to find my way to the door that leads to the basement. But what if it’s kept locked? If I were to find it open, and I went down the twelve stone steps and along the corridor to the door we came through eight days ago, it would probably be locked too.
There must be a main door to the house, somewhere on the ground level where I’m being kept, possibly to the right. It will probably be locked but there might be a key nearby, or a window I can break. I would just need to find my way in the dark.
But the whole house can’t be in darkness, just as the door to my room can’t be the only door in the hallway. There must be other doors that lead to rooms with windows that aren’t boarded up, windows that I could open, or break. And once outside, I would run, find help.
I think it through. If I could immobilize the man when he comes with my tray, I could take his night-vision goggles and use them to navigate my way along the hallway. But I have nothing to use as a weapon, only my strength and I know I’m not strong enough to overpower him.
How does it happen when he brings me food? I close my eyes, replay his movements in my head—he unlocks the door, comes in, walks over to where I’m sitting, puts the tray on the floor, picks up the previous tray, goes back to the door, leaves, locks it behind him.
My eyes snap open. I’ve never sensed him pause on his way out, I’ve never sensed him adjusting his grip on the tray so that he can hold it with one hand and open the door with the other. Which means that when he comes into the room, he doesn’t close the door behind him, he leaves it open.
My heart thumps with excitement. If what I think is true, I can get out of the room.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PAST
“So, Amelie, what do you think?” Justine asked.
We’d arrived at the party and were standing in the vast entrance hall of the Exclusives offices. I stared up at the atrium ceiling, hung with thousands of tiny lights.
“It’s stunning,” I said. “Does all this really belong to Exclusives? The whole building?”
“Yes—well, to Ned. Impressive, isn’t it?”
She took my arm and led me toward the main hall, where people wearing beautiful dresses and designer suits were standing in small groups, while live music played in the background. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place to work. But having a few men around might dilute the cutthroat atmosphere a bit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that it’s hard to stand up to Ned. He can fire you for no discernible reason. It happened to Sam the other day, he made her leave, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “She didn’t say a word, just packed her things and left.”
“Can he do that?”
She shrugged. “Ned Hawthorpe can do anything he likes.”
It was hard to know where to look. To the right, emerging periodically from a side door, elegant waitstaff circled with trays of champagne and canapés. Along the back wall, cooking stations had been set up.
“This is amazing,” I said. “Did you really organize it all?”
“With a lot of help.”
We passed a stand with dishes piled high with caviar.
“So much food!” I said.
“There’s every cuisine you can possibly think of,” Justine explained. “Italian, French, Thai, Malaysian, American; you name it, it’s probably here.”
“Where’s Lina? And Carolyn? Didn’t they say they were going to get something to eat?”
“Over there, I think.” She leaned closer to me, and I smelled her distinct rose-based perfume. “Look, there’s the boss.”
I looked to where she was pointing and saw a dark-haired man weaving his way through the crowd, accompanied by two other men, one of whom was dressed in a black suit. A head shorter than his friends, Ned Hawthorpe moved with the ease of someone comfortable in his skin. I watched as they headed toward a table at the side of the room. Ned and one of the men sat down, while the other stood to one side.
“Who’s the man with Ned?” I asked.
“His best friend, Matt Algerson, heir—along with his sister—to the Algerson fortune,” Justine said. “I love his shirt; it matches my dress.”
“No, I meant the other man, the one dressed in black.”
“Oh, that’s Hunter, Ned’s bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard? He has a bodyguard?”
Justine laughed. “That’s what we call him. He’s Ned’s security guard and driver.”
I studied him a moment. He wasn’t good-looking in the way that Matt Algerson was, or even Ned Hawthorpe, but there was something about him that I found incredibly attractive.
“He looks nice,” I said.
“He is.” She grabbed my hand. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Ned.”
“No,” I said, horrified. “We can’t disturb him.”
“Yes, we can.”
She pulled me across the room to Ned’s table, and Lina and Carolyn came to join us. Justine introduced Carolyn and me to Ned and Matt Algerson and after ordering champagne for everyone, Ned started a conversation with Lina and Justine about something work-related, so Carolyn and I sat down a little farther away. The champagne arrived and as I politely waved away a glass, my eyes met those of Ned’s security guard.
Justine stood up. “Let’s go and find some food!”
She looked so happy in that moment, in her silver-sequined dress, strands of dark hair already escaping from her updo, her head thrown back as she laughed.
“Come on, Amelie!” she called when I remained sitting. But I smiled and shook my head, content to sit and watch everyone enjoying themselves. What must it be like to be able to afford to pay hundreds of pounds, more even, for the privilege of coming to such a glamorous event?
Aware of Ned’s security guard standing somewhere behind me, I turned to him.
“Don’t you want something to eat?” I asked.
He gave me an amused smile. “Not when I’m working, no.”
I flushed. “Oh, of course. Sorry.”
His eyes met mine and for a moment, the world stopped. There were bottles of sparkling water in the middle of the table, so I reached for one to hide my confusion. As I poured myself a glass, I stole a quick glance and found he was still looking at me. Even more flustered, I turned my eyes to where Justine was standing with Matt Algerson, small plates of food in their hands. As I watched, Ned joined them, interrupting their conversation, and positioned himself directly in front of Justine. A flash of annoyance cast a shadow over her pretty face, and I smiled as she pointedly angled her body away from him and toward Matt. I couldn’t work out if she was doing it because she liked Matt Algerson, or if she was trying to annoy Ned.
Whichever it was, Ned soon gave up and came back to the table.
“You don’t work for me, do you?” he asked, sitting down next to me.
I smiled and shook my head. “No, I work for Carolyn, Justine and Lina’s friend.”
“And what line of work is that?”
“Oh, just a kind of a live-in housekeeper. But I’m studying too.”
“What do you want to do in the future?”
“Law.”
He nodded. “Everyone needs a lawyer,” he said approvingly, then looked curiously at me. “Do you enjoy being a housekeeper?”
“I love it. It’s a dream working for Carolyn, she’s so kind to me. But her partner is moving in after Christmas, so I’ll be looking for a new job.”
He smiled. “Why, don’t you like him?”
I laughed. “It’s not that, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve met. They’ve said I can stay, but they don’t need me in their way.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “We’re going to be looking for another assistant at the magazine in the New Year. The job is basically answering calls and emails, and arranging my diary. If you think it’s something you might like to do, give me a call and I’ll arrange an interview with HR. I’ll also arrange for you to meet Vicky, my PA, as you would be working for her.” He paused. “What do you think? Would you like to come and work at Exclusives?”
I thought of Lina and Justine, and his security guard, who I was sure could hear every word.
“Yes, I think I’d like it very much.”
