Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

EIGHT

PASSENGER 2D

My name is Michael Prendergast, and when I got on Flight 79, I turned left.

Whenever I flew long haul as a child, my parents would be seated in business class, me behind, in economy. Mum and Dad would take it in turns to pop back and check on me, giving me the boxed chocolates from their coffee as a peace offering.

“You don’t need the extra space,” my mother said. “And besides, once you turn left on a plane, you’ll be ruined forever: you’ll never want to turn right again.”

I couldn’t see her point. We had enough money to turn left every time we flew, whether it was a weekend break to Lisbon or the fortnight we spent in Mustique every year, at the villa belonging to one of Dad’s clients. Why slum it when you could travel in style?

Five hours into a trip to Antigua, I snuck in to see them. It was late, and most people were sleeping, and I held my breath as I tiptoed down the aisle to where Mum was stretched out. I was a twelve-year-old beanpole, too big to share seats, but I squeezed in anyway.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Just for a bit.”

She gave me her unopened crisps and a bottle of fizzy water and plugged the headset in so I could watch TV. I flicked through the channels—four times the number I had back in economy—but I hadn’t even had a chance to choose when a shadow loomed large beside us.

“Sorry,” Mum said. She gave anoops—you got me! smile to the air stewardess and pulled the headset off me.

“Come on, you.” The stewardess smiled back at Mum, but her fingernails dug into my shoulders as she walked me back, and my cheeks burned with shame. I hadn’t been hurting anyone. What harm would it have done to leave me there? As for my parents, how dared they treat me like a second-class citizen?

When we landed, I watched the passengers up front disembark first, scrutinizing their clothes and luggage, mentally compiling a list of labels around which I wanted to build my life. My parents had Louis Vuitton; I had a carry-on case that came free with a briefcase Dad bought.

“When you earn your own money,” Dad said, “you can have whatever suitcase you want.” He would bang on and on about understanding the value of money, when a grand is a grand, whichever way you look at it. Pocket money was a fiver here, a tenner there, when some of my mates got twenty quid a week.

“It’s not about the money,” Dad said when I was almost eighteen. I was trying to talk to him about it calmly. Man-to-man. “It’s the principle.”

It so was the money. Once, on a flight to Mustique, there were seats free in business class.

“I see you’re seated separately,” the woman at the desk said. “I could offer you an upgrade today for just three hundred.”

Three hundred pounds! I’d seen Mum spend more than that on a pair of shoes without breaking a sweat. My heart skipped with excitement. It was finally going to happen! I imagined myself stretched out beneath a soft blanket, flicking between films and mainlining Coke.

“He’ll be fine in economy, thank you.”

My mouth fell open. “But—”

Dad glared at me, cutting off my protests before turning back to the check-in woman with a smile. “Kids today, huh? Don’t know they’re born.”

She glanced at me as I sniffed back the tears I knew would only provoke another rant from Dad, then gave him a tight smile.He’s like this all the time, I wanted to tell her. It isn’t the money or the principle. It’s just how he is.

I twisted in my seat the whole of that flight, resenting every galling glimpse through the curtain that closed me off from my own parents. As I picked at a cardboard sandwich and drank my carton of juice, I wondered what was being served in business class. I imagined soft, warm bread rolls, beads of condensation on glasses filled with freshly squeezed orange.

Fortunately, I had Grandma. I spent hours ’round at hers while my parents were working. We watched reality TV and laughed at Nigella making sex faces over chocolate mousse and discussed the merits of Burberry over Hugo Boss. She bought me presents, slipping designer shirts into Primark carrier bags for me to smuggle home. Grandma lived in a massive rectory with its own swimming pool and stables and enjoyed what she calledthe finer things in life.

“I’m to blame for your mother’s expensive tastes,” she told me over a cream tea one day. “We used to hit Oxford Street on a Saturday morning and shop till we literally dropped.”

“Last weekend, she gave me twenty quid to buy a pair of jeans,” I said miserably. “Twenty quid!”

Grandma’s lips pursed into a cat’s bum. “Well, that’s your father’s influence. Your mother was never mean till she marriedhim.” She snorted. “It’s not as if it’s his own money to begin with. Gold-digging parasite, that’s what he is. He met me and your granddad—God rest his soul—took one look at this place, and had a ring on your mother’s finger quicker than you could say inheritance.” Grandma didn’t mince her words. “Well,” she said darkly. “He’ll see.”

“See what?”

But she wouldn’t tell me, and it wasn’t till she died that I realized what she’d meant. She’d cut them off. Both of them. Her will made it quite clear that not a penny of her vast estate—or indeed her actual estate, swimming pool and all—would go to my parents.

She left it all to me.

Dad went ballistic. “It’s far too much. She can’t have meant it.”

They were in the kitchen, their voices carrying up the stairs to where I sat on the landing, my back against the wall.

“It’s what she wanted,” Mum said. “She really loved him.”

There was a pain in my chest like I’d swallowed too fast. I couldn’t imagine life without Grandma, and the sudden transition to millionaire—insane though it was—wouldn’t make up for losing her.

“She must have lost her marbles. We’ll have to contest the will.”

“She was sharp as someone half her age. You know that.”

“You’re not just going to accept it, are you? That money should have come to us!”

“To me, technically,” I heard Mum say, but Dad didn’t acknowledge her.

“The boy’s eighteen, for God’s sake. He’s completely irresponsible.”

I waited for Mum’s counterargument, but it didn’t come. I swallowed. Fuck them. Fuck them both. I didn’t care about the money—not like I cared about Grandma—but I wasn’t giving it to my parents. I didn’t have to put up with them anymore. I had my own house, enough money to do what I wanted.

Life was good, and not just for me: I wasn’t tight like my parents. For every pound I spent on myself, I spent two on other people. I’d buy spontaneous rounds for strangers in bars, ending the night surrounded by new friends. I showered girlfriends with flowers, chocolate, jewelry, and the more I spent, the more they loved me. I made large, public donations to charity and brushed away the applause that made my insides fizz.

And—of course—I turned left. Always. As Dad said, it wasn’t the money, it was the principle.

There are people on Flight 79 who have never traveled business class before; you can tell from the way they open every drawer and work their way through every button on the control panel, calling the flight attendant to ask how the bed works, whether the movie channels are all included, what time they’ll be serving food… I sit back and let it fall into place around me like a Savile Row suit.

The flight attendants buzz between one passenger and the next, and idly I compare the two female crew members. They’re both attractive, despite the years that separate them. The older one’s clearly the boss, her eyes flitting over every seat, searching out any detail that might detract from our comfort. Her gaze falls on me, and I freeze, suddenly twelve again.

Come on, you…

Fingernails, gripping my shoulder…

She smiles. “Can I get you anything else, sir? Some wine?”

“Thank you, but I don’t drink.” I haven’t for years. I prefer the buzz of caffeine to the thick head of alcohol.

“Well, I’m here if you need anything.”

I breathe out. Funny to still feel like an impostor, so many years afterward. “Thank you.”

Everything is under control. I have a business-class ticket. I have money in my pocket. Life is finally going the way I wanted it to go.