Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

SIXTEEN

PASSENGER 40C

My name is Elle Sykes, and getting on Flight 79 was a final fuck-you to my parents.

I sat fourteen GCSEs. All the usual ones, plus further math, additional science, Latin, Mandarin, and general studies.My little genius, Mum used to call me, even though I’d shot up that year and could see the top of her head when I hugged her.

“She’s predicted A-stars all round,” Dad would tell people, and I’d roll my eyes and slink out of the room, away from the politely impressed murmurs. Tightness would travel from my stomach like an elevator, and I’d take big gulps of orange juice to push it back down. Sometimes I’d still be able to hear him—math, further math, and physics at A-level, I’d imagine—and the lift would ignore my jabbing of the buttons and continue to rise. It would be a shame to give up on Mandarin—she’s the only one doing it in her year, you know—and of course, Latin’s always useful. The elevator would reach my throat, and I’d lean over the sink, mouth working like a fish on a hook.

There were six of us in what the school called the Gifted and Talented group: four boys and two girls. The boys kept to themselves, of course, making it awkward for me to ignore Sally, who wore knee-length socks and had a casual relationship with antiperspirant. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her; it’s just that we had nothing in common beyond our ability to come out on top in every exam. Sally preferred to spend lunchtimes doing calculus, while I wanted a fag ’round the back with mates who forgave me for being clever because I blew smoke rings and knew where to score weed.

And actually, I wasn’t clever. Not Sally clever. Not high-IQ, natural genius, go-to-university-at-thirteen clever. I had a good memory and a quick brain, and I worked hard. The harder I worked, the better results I got, and the better results I got, the harder I was expected to work, and the better results I got. ’Round and ’round I went, until the fourteen A-stars that results day brought was accompanied, not by euphoria or even relief, but by a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Cambridge is in the bag.” Dad grinned as he drove me home. I leaned back, turned my head, and closed my eyes so the countryside passed in flickers of filtered light. Cambridge had turned Dad down, and the chip he had carried around ever since was the size of a sack of spuds. I had been planning to do medicine at Cambridge for as long as I could remember. I say “I”: I think you can probably guess whose idea it was. Not that I minded—I had to do something, I supposed, and I had no real objections to being a doctor—but sometimes I wondered what would happen if I turned around and said,You know what, I want to go to drama school, or, I’ve decided to focus on PE next year. Actually, that rather appealed. Sports science, at Loughborough.

I wasn’t given the summer off, by the way, before results day. I had private tutoring every morning, with homework each afternoon.It’ll really give you a head start come September. My parents weren’t loaded, and I knew the lessons meant huge sacrifices on their part, but a kernel of resentment was already starting to build. They never asked me, Do you want tutoring? Do you want to learn Mandarin? How do you feel about taking six A-levels instead of three? It was presented as a fait accompli, my parents bursting with pride and excitement at this new opportunity they’d negotiated for me.

“Mr. Franklin says you can go into school on Saturday mornings,” Dad said, in the autumn year of my final term. “Sally too. Interview prep.” Mr. Franklin was the head teacher of our school, a comprehensive that—despite excellent results—had never yet managed to get a student to Oxbridge.

“Great.” I wondered if it was actually possible to die from mental exhaustion and whether the pressure that formed in my head like an electrical storm was real or psychosomatic. I thought about the next two years of study, of the summer before university, when I would no doubt find myself enrolled in extra study classes to prepare me for my degree. I imagined the top of my skull shattering into pieces, a single piece of knowledge clinging on to each fragment.

 

z2 = x2 + y2.

Fuck. This. Shit.

I couldn’t do it anymore.

“I’m going to take a gap year.”

My parents looked at each other before they looked at me. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Mum said. “Cambridge is incredibly competitive. Surely, they won’t take you if it looks like you’re not committed?”

“I guess if it’s relevant experience…” Dad was thinking out loud. “Voluntary work in a field hospital, maybe? I’ll speak to—”

“No!” It came out sharper than I’d intended. I took a breath. “I want to organize it. I want a normal gap year. Hostels. Traveling. Meeting people. Reading stuff that isn’t on a course list. I want—” To my horror, my voice broke. “I want to be normal.”

They said they’d give it some thought, but my mind was made up. I wanted some time out. I wanted to get drunk, get off with people, take drugs, go clubbing… I wanted to do everything my mates would be spending the next two years doing, while my mother sprinkled essential oils around my bedroomto help consolidate your learning while you sleep.

I’d get through my A-levels, then I wanted to get on a plane and get as far away from my parents as I could. I wanted to have the experience of a lifetime.

I wanted tolive.