Hostage by Clare Mackintosh
TWENTY
9:30 P.M. | ADAM
My head is thick, the combination of wine and painkillers making me nauseous. I swill out my wineglass and fill it with water, blinking hard as the glass goes fuzzy around the edges. My ribs hurt, and the pain around my kidneys is a constant reminder of the kicking I had.
I’ve got to find a way out. I’ve got to pay what I owe to the loan shark and get his gorillas off my back, then I’ll deal with the banks. Once the debt stops getting bigger, I know I can start making it smaller again.
All you need is one big win, says the devil on my shoulder.
I press my hands harder into the draining board.
I’ve always liked a flutter. Nothing regular, just a bet on the Grand National and the occasional trip to the dogs with the lads from work. A tenner here, twenty there. When Mina and I got married, we gave lottery tickets as wedding favors. We won the jackpot when we met, read the cheesy writing on each envelope. Here’s hoping you’re as lucky as us! Mina’s aunt scooped a hundred quid; a couple of people won a tenner. It was fun, as it was supposed to be.
For ages, that was all it was. Mina and I would play the lottery whenever there was a big rollover. They’d email you if you won, but we still sat and watched the live show: it was the anticipation we loved as much as anything.
“Who would you tell first?” Mina would say.
“Nobody. I’d help people out secretly. Like a fairy godmother but hairier. And no one would know until I died, and then they’d make me a saint.”
Mina threw a cushion at me. “Bollocks. You’d be at the Lamborghini showroom the very next day.”
“Fair point. Red or yellow?”
“Yellow. We might as well be vulgar as well as flashy.”
We never won. Never even matched three numbers. And in the beginning, it didn’t bother me. The chances were so tiny—it was just a bit of fun. But as time went by and life got more stressful, I found myself buying a ticket on Monday instead of waiting till Saturday afternoon. All week, I’d carry that slip of paper around, and every time I opened my wallet, I’d think, Maybe this week…
I’d think how incredible it would be to leave work and for Mina to quit her job too. I’d think how Sophia wouldn’t have to be afraid of being abandoned, because we’d never have to leave her. Not for work, not for anything.
When Saturday rolled around and we didn’t win, instead of crumpling the ticket and chucking it in the bin, I’d stare at it, rechecking the numbers. I’d feel jealous of the winners, bitterly resentful that it wasn’t us. I’d feel Sophia tense in my arms and think, This would change if we won the lottery.
I started playing every week.
“We’d do better to stick two quid in a jar each week,” Mina said. “At least that way we’d have a hundred and four quid to show for it at the end of the year.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I said, although it didn’t feel like fun by then. I set up a direct debit—it seemed easier than finding cash each time—and then I thought I might as well increase our chances. When I got to five rows, Mina stopped me.
“It’s only a tenner a week.”
“It’s five hundred quid a year, Adam. We could go on holiday for that.” She canceled the direct debit, and on Saturday night, she’d turn the TV over after eight o’clock and watch something on the BBC instead…
“You should probably sit down,” Becca says now.
“I’m alright.” The words come out slurred, and she looks at me strangely. My tongue feels too big for my mouth, the insides of my cheeks dry and chalky. I grip the side of the counter. I protected my head as best I could while I was getting a kicking, and I’m fairly certain my kidneys came off worst, but now I’m starting to think I might have a concussion. I’ve had it once before—during a rugby match—and I try to remember how it felt, but the details slip away from me.
It was scratch cards that fucked me. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, like an alcoholic abusing Babycham or a drug addict who can’t lay off the cough syrup. I won two hundred and fifty quid on the first card I bought. Two hundred and fifty! I could have kissed the bloke in the corner shop. I took Mina out for dinner and bought Sophia the color-change unicorn she’d been wanting, and I kept twenty quid back as my scratch-card fund. That was the key, I decided. Never gamble what you can’t afford. I’d use a portion of everything I won to buy more scratch cards, and that way, I’d never get in trouble.
Except I only won a pound that time, and then nothing at all the next time, or the time after that…
Everything’s fuzzy. I’m vaguely aware of Sophia coming into the kitchen, asking Becca, “What’s wrong with Daddy?” I hear Becca’s response as though it’s underwater, and I shake my head to clear it.
“I’m fine, sweetheart. Just a bit tired.” The first aid box is still on the side, and I rifle through it, wondering how strong the painkillers were, because although my head’s swimming, I still hurt all over. “Did you give me ibuprofen or paracetamol?” I ask Becca. If it was just one, I can take the other.
“Daddy?” Sophia’s rubbing her eyes. This first term at school has exhausted her.
There’s all sorts of rubbish in the first aid box—sticky bottles of cough mixture and an assortment of bandages—but no painkillers. I blink, shake my head again like a dog running from the sea.
“Where are they?” I turn and look at Becca, who stares back, her face unmoving. She doesn’t look like a teenager anymore; she looks older, more streetwise, more knowing.
In among the pain and the fuzziness comes a sudden clarity. “Becca, what did you give me?”
My mouth is so dry, it’s hard to get out the words, and through the fuzziness in my head, I hear them run into each other. Whatdidyougiveme? The pain in my ribs and my kidneys feel so distant now, they could belong to someone else.
“Something to help you sleep.” Becca smiles, as if she’s done something helpful, and I grapple to make sense of the situation. Did we even have sleeping tablets? Maybe Mina got a prescription—was she struggling with insomnia?—and left the pills in the first aid box, but why would she do that, and even if she did—
“Didn’t it say on the packet what they were?” I think that’s what I say, but the blank look on Becca’s face suggests what comes out is something else entirely. Suddenly, her expression clears.
“Oh, I see! You think I gave you sleeping tablets by accident, when I meant to hand you painkillers?” She laughs loudly. “No, I’m not that stupid. It was intentional. I brought them with me.”
I grip on to the counter to stop the swaying that could either be me or the room. Sophia’s still in the doorway, looking first at me and then at Becca, and I smile at her, but she shrinks back.
“Is Daddy poorly?”
I don’t blame Sophia for her wariness—the way I’ve behaved over the last few months has done nothing to help her trust me—but I need her to understand that right now, she’s safest with me. I reach out an arm toward her, my hand trembling, trying for words I want to be reassuring, but which slide out in an anxious heap. Sokaypumpkincometodaddy.
Sophia pulls on her plait, twisting it hard around her fingers as her gaze flickers between Becca and me, me and Becca.
“Come over here, sweetheart.” Becca holds out her arms.
“Sophia, no!”
It’s too loud, too violent. She claps her hands over her ears and lets out a cry, running to Becca, who picks her up and rocks from side to side. Sophia wraps her legs around her like a monkey, her face buried in Becca’s jumper.
Above Sophia’s head, Becca smiles. It’s triumphant. As though she’s won a game I didn’t even know I was playing.
I force a pause between my words. “You. Need. To. Leave. Right. Now.”
“I’ve only just started.”
I start walking toward them, one hand gripping the counter because the room won’t stop moving. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you’ve already committed a very serious offense.” I speak slowly, my bone-dry lips fighting every syllable. “Administering noxious substances carries a prison sentence, and don’t think they’ll let you off just because you’re still at school.” The effort of making myself understood leaves me breathless, like I’m fighting through quicksand.
“I’m twenty-three actually. Surprise!” She keeps her voice light, almost musical, as if she’s talking to Sophia, who’s still hugging Becca tightly. Becca sways from side to side, reassuring her. “Stop right there, Adam.”
I’ve been in countless situations like this. Drunk people, angry people, crazy people. I’ve driven through town centers with sirens blaring, adrenaline surging at the prospect of a punch-up, and I’ve held my own when outnumbered three to one.
I’ve been caught out too: the calm house call that suddenly turns nasty or the fight out of the blue when I’ve taken a prisoner back to a cell. It can come out of nowhere, but on some level, when you’re at work, you’re always ready for it.
I’m not ready now. Not physically, not mentally. Not when my body won’t work, and not in my own house, with my daughter. Not when someone I believed to be a seventeen-year-old girl has turned out to be an adult psychopath.
“Let her go.”
“I said stay where you are.”
“And I said let her go.”
Becca moves her free arm and smiles. I stay where I am.
Because there, in her hand, just millimeters from Sophia’s neck, is a loaded syringe.