Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

FIFTEEN

8:30 P.M. | ADAM

Becca’s shouting from upstairs, the ringing in my ears distorting her words. I try to shout back, but my mouth’s full of blood, and I retch as it hits the back of my throat. It hurts to breathe, and there’s a dull ache at the base of my spine and across my stomach.

“Adam? Are you okay? Who was that?”

I manage to get on to my hands and knees, crawling toward the front door. No one drives along this track unless they’re coming to the farm cottages, but I can’t risk anyone asking questions.

You’ve got till midnight.

I let out a groan. What am I going to do?

“Are you okay? I could hear fighting, but Sophia was in the bath and—oh my God, are you badly hurt?” Becca’s halfway down the stairs, where they turn a corner. Her mouth drops open. “What the fuck?”

“Where’s. Sophia?” Each word makes the pain intensify, nausea swelling inside me.

“Still in the bath.”

“Don’t. Leave. Her.”

“But—”

“Go!”

As Becca runs back upstairs, I retch again, prompting a sharp pain around my ribs. I drag myself to the front door and vomit onto the path, then I pull the door closed. I breathe as shallowly as I can—anything too deep or too fast is painful enough to make my head spin—and slowly I move to my knees and then stand up, locking the door. A piece of broken glass slices through my sock, but the pain barely registers. I hear the bathwater draining away upstairs, and I go into the downstairs loo to clean myself up before Sophia sees me.

One eye has closed up completely, the bruised skin around it swollen and cut. The blood that covers most of my face and a lot of my shirt is thankfully just from my nose, which is twice its normal size. I fill the basin and wash my face, wincing as the water turns pink.

“Adam? You okay?”

I give a noncommittal uh-huh and take a look at my reflection. It’s marginally less terrifying without the blood. I take off my shirt and leave it in the sink, emerging in an undershirt that’s dark enough to hide most of the stains.

“Jesus.”

“No, still Adam,” I say drily. “Although crucifixion feels like the better option right now.”

Becca doesn’t laugh. She’s at the bottom of the stairs, Sophia a few steps above her, looking at me in horror through the banisters.

“I’m okay, sweetheart.”

“You don’t look okay,” Becca says.

“You should see the other guy.” I try for a smile, and pain shoots through my jaw. I stop trying. “Not a mark on him.”

“Who was he?”

I don’t answer, and she follows me into the kitchen. Sophia hangs back, Elephant dangling from one hand. She’s wearing Action Man pajamas and a fleece dressing gown covered in unicorns. Becca has plaited her hair, but it’s still wet, dripping down her robe. I grab a tea towel and use it to squeeze the excess water away, glad of an action that means my daughter can’t see my face.

“Does it hurt, Daddy?”

“It’s a bit sore.”

“Shall I call an am’blance?”

“No, I don’t think—”

“I know how. Mummy showed me.”

“I don’t want—”

“Nine, nine, nine.”

“Um, maybe someone should just check you over?” Becca says. “You don’t look great.”

I finish drying Sophia’s hair and open the cupboard where we keep the first aid kit. I reach up, biting back a cry as a sharp pain makes black dots swim in front of my eyes. The room rushes up at me.

“Here, let me do that. Sit down before you fall down.” Becca steers me to a chair. Sophia is watching me, eyes wide with trepidation and curiosity.

“No ambulance,” I say firmly. “If I go to a hospital, someone will notify the police that a crime’s taken place.”

“So?”

“So maybe I don’t want the police involved.” I speak quietly, my voice casual, but my face making quite clear to Becca how I feel.

She holds my gaze, her eyes curious—suspicious, even. “How come? I mean, they’re not my favorite people, but they’re your mates, aren’t they?”

She passes me a glass of water and a handful of pills, and I knock them back in one. I’m suddenly exhausted, not just from the beating but from the sheer magnitude of keeping everything together over the last few months, from the stress of lying to Mina, to Sophia, to everyone at work. This morning’s meeting with DI Butler feels like months ago.

“I’ve messed up,” I say suddenly.

Out of everyone I could confide in, a seventeen-year-old girl isn’t top of my list, but sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone with no skin in the game. I give a loaded glance toward

Sophia. Becca’s swift to react. “Do you want to watch Paw Patrol?” She holds out a hand and leads Sophia into the sitting room. A moment later, I hear the familiar theme tune, and Becca comes back into the kitchen. She folds her arms. “That bloke who beat you up was Katya’s boyfriend, wasn’t he?”

I’m so taken aback, I can’t answer.

Becca smirks. “Did you think I didn’t know you were shagging the au pair? One of the mums told me when I picked Sophia up from school, wanted me to know in case you tried something on with me.” There’s a harsh tone in her voice now, as though any respect she was showing me before was just a pretense.

“Tried it on? I wouldn’t—”

She laughs. “You wouldn’t get a chance!”

“Christ.” I rub my face, forgetting the state I’m in. The resultant pain is a welcome distraction from the knowledge that Sophia’s friends’ parents consider me a sexual predator.

“Bit of a cliché, isn’t it?” Becca seems older than seventeen now, and I wonder how she acquired such a jaded attitude toward men. We’re not all that bad, surely? “Old man sleeps with—”

“Old?”

“—Ukrainian au pair.”

“For God’s sake, Becca, I was not having an affair with Katya!”

There’s a sudden silence, broken only by the strains of Ryder and his canine chums. It’s clear from Becca’s expression that she doesn’t believe me.

“How come she took off, then? The way Mina talked about it, she obviously thought it was your fault.” She gets up and pours herself a glass of wine as though it’s her house, as though she’s an adult, not a kid.

“You’re not even old enough—”

“Want one?” She pours a second glass without waiting for my answer. There’s something self-conscious about her swagger, her confidence, as though she’s playing a part. I’m gripped by the thought that all her talk about my trying something on might have been an act too, that she’s been leading up to something. Has Mina put her up to this? Is this some kind of—the idea feels preposterous even as I think it—honey trap?

My skin feels clammy. I take the wine from Becca and sip it, trying to get rid of the chalky aftertaste of painkillers, the blood at the back of my throat. My nose is too swollen to breathe through it.

“I never had an affair with Katya,” I say firmly, or as firmly as I can with my head still swimming. “I never had an affair with anyone. But it was my fault she left.” Becca leans on the counter, her head tilted to one side. “That man—or one like him—threatened Katya. Sophia was there too.” I have a sudden flashback to that awful day, when Katya and Sophia burst into the house, both of them crying so much they could hardly speak.

Daddy! Daddy!

He say he hurt me. He say he hurt Sophia!

“Sophia didn’t pick up on exactly what the man was saying to Katya,” I tell Becca now. “But she saw Katya’s reaction and was scared enough for it to give her nightmares.”

I stare out the window. It’s dark outside, and the shadowy outline of the garden is overlaid with my reflection. It’s snowing harder now, soft dots of white floating past the window.

“I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you tell the police? Why would you let Mina think you were having an affair when you hadn’t done anything wrong?”

“But I had done something wrong.” I stare past my reflection and into the garden. “I owe money. A lot of money.”

The amount goes up every day. The overdraft, the credit cards—the one Mina knows about and the five she doesn’t. The store cards, the car payments, the cash I borrow from people at work because things are a bit tricky since Mina kicked me out.

And the big one. The ten grand from a moneylender whose path I’d crossed at work—for all the wrong reasons. I borrowed it to pay off the worst of the debts, at an interest rate I didn’t care about because it was only short-term, I had a plan, it was all going to be okay…

Only I couldn’t stop.

“I’ve got a gambling problem.”

Three years, and that’s the first time I’ve said it, even in my head. I’ve told myself I need to cut down, that I’ll only do the lottery once a week, only buy one scratch card at a time, not twenty quid’s worth. I’ve stood outside the dog track on the third day running and had second thoughts about going in. In all that time, I’ve never called it what it is—an addiction—but that’s what it is. And it has me at its mercy.

“The ten grand I borrowed is closer to twenty now,” I tell Becca, although if she walked out of the room, I think I’d still keep talking. It’s all spilling out, all the lies, all the shame. “They sent that bloke to frighten me by threatening Katya and Sophia. I begged Katya not to tell Mina. A few weeks later, someone came to the house when she was here alone and threatened her. She left the next day, and that’s when Mina accused me of sleeping with her.”

“You should have come clean.”

“I know that now! Back then, I thought I could handle it. I just needed one big win to clear my debts, then I’d…” I trail off, hearing how pathetic I sound. Whenever you’re in trouble, I hear from the sitting room, just yelp for help!

“And you can’t tell the cops because you took money from a loan shark?”

“I can’t tell them because I’ve been hiding a gambling problem for three years.” I reach for the wine and top up our glasses. “I can’t tell them because I’m drowning in undisclosed debt, which is a disciplinary offense.” Becca puts her glass down, untouched, but I swallow half of mine in one go. Not the best thing to do after a cocktail of painkillers, but I’m past caring. “I can’t tell them, because I could lose my job if they find out.”

Becca folds her arms across her chest. She’s trying—but failing—to conceal her glee, and I wonder if it’s my downfall itself she’s enjoying or simply the fact that she’s the only one who knows about it. “You really are in the shit, aren’t you?”

“Thanks.”

“So what’s your plan?”

I knock back the rest of my drink. I turn around, press my palms into the draining board, and lean forward as if I’m about to do a press up, feeling the blood throb in my bruised face.

“I have absolutely no fucking idea.”