Hostage by Clare Mackintosh
THIRTY-ONE
1 A.M. | ADAM
The first time I took a flight with Mina, we’d just moved in together. We drove to the airport and said goodbye at check-in, not knowing if we’d see each other in two hours or three days.
“Fingers crossed.” Mina kissed me, then turned to the guy on the desk, clasping her hands together in front of her in mock prayer. “Whatever you can do, yeah? I quite like this one.” I caught a cheeky wink before her emerald-green overcoat swished around and she walked toward security, her wheeled case following demurely. Her hair, which only a few hours previously had been spread across my pillow, was tamed into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, half a can of hairspray choking up the bathroom.
At the gate, I fiddled with my passport as everyone lined up, then disappeared through the tunnel. I stared through the window at the World Airlines plane waiting on the tarmac, picturing Mina welcoming passengers and checking boarding passes.
“Final call for passenger Williams.”
As the announcement faded, I listened for running feet. I looked around at those still seated, for the shocked face of someone lost in another world. So sorry, I was miles away… No problem, sir. Let’s get you boarded. I tried to catch the eye of the staff member on the desk, to remind her I was there, but she was deep in conversation. The flight was due to leave in ten minutes.
I’d call up the lads, I decided, if I didn’t get on. See who was around for a beer, rather than moping around in the flat. It’d be a laugh. Might even be more fun than a weekend in Rome.
“Final call for passenger Williams. The flight is now boarded and ready to depart. Final call, passenger Williams.”
More fun? Who was I kidding? A year ago, a few beers and a kebab with the boys from work would have been my idea of a perfect night out, but now I was head over heels. Never mind Rome—I’d spend a week on standby for one night in Skegness with Mina.
“Adam Holbrook?” Not the PA system this time but a shout from the desk. I stood up so fast, I tripped over my hand luggage, dropping my phone and the magazine I’d bought for the journey. The flight operative laughed. “I was going to say it’s your lucky day, but I’m not so sure now.”
“I’m going?”
“You’re going.”
I boarded to two hundred filthy looks from passengers who took me for the tardy Williams, grinning at Mina as she ran through the safety briefing she once did naked for me, standing over me in bed with a glass of champagne in one hand. The emergency sexits are situated here, here, and here…
It was the best weekend. The sort of weekend that goes too fast yet seems to last forever, where you never stop laughing, never stop talking. Our whole relationship felt like that.
Where did it go?
You broke it. And now you might never see her again.
I wish I knew what was happening with Mina right now. I curse the radio for the lack of updates. Why isn’t this all anyone’s talking about? How can Rise FM still be playing Christmas tunes and Marks & Spencer adverts when hundreds of people could be—
No! They’re not dead. Mina’s not dead.
I try to picture her, try to replace the horror in my mind with something hopeful, but all I’ve got is scenes from disaster movies. Guns. Bombs. Planes exploding, diving, slicing through buildings…
I screw my eyes tighter, but the scenes keep coming, and with them, the knowledge that this is all my fault. If I hadn’t got into debt and lied to Mina, she’d still love me. If she loved me, she wouldn’t be on that plane.
I hadn’t been snooping. Mina had met us at the park, to take Sophia home, and I’d persuaded her to come with us for an ice cream. She’d perched on the edge of her chair the whole time, checking her watch and asking Sophia if she’d nearly finished. The pattern was always the same: me stalling for more time, Mina itching to get away. If we could just spend the day together… But Mina wouldn’t even consider it.
“I need space,” she kept saying.
“How about we do something next month?” I’d said last time I’d seen her. “When Sophia’s in school all day. The arboretum, maybe, once the leaves are turning. You love it there.” I thought I saw regret in her eyes as she said no, but perhaps it was wishful thinking on my part.
I’d kept pushing. “Or Christmas. I know it’s months away, but they’ll be doing the rosters soon. I’ll book time off the week before, and we can do the markets. Get something nice for Sophia.” I thought that might swing it, but she had just said, I’ll think about it, and shut me down.
Then she was snatching up the bill the second Sophia put down her spoon, taking it to the counter to pay. Her phone buzzed against the table, and instinct made me reach for it—the same auto-response that sees my fingers self-swiping to betting sites on my own phone. I glanced at the screen. It was from someone called Ryan.
Swap sorted with Crew Ops. You’re on the Sydney run. Still think I ended up with the better end of the deal!
It wasn’t so much that I didn’t understand it (although I didn’t)—more that it didn’t register as being significant. Only as we were leaving, Mina said, “Oh, about the Christmas markets. Don’t bother booking time off. I’ve been shafted with the Sydney flight. I’ll be away all that week.”
Suddenly, Ryan’s message made sense.
As they walked away, I felt crushed. To be hated so much, she’d rather be ten thousand miles from me… My fault, I knew. Even so.
I think of Mina now, at the mercy of hijackers, and I trace the blame backward. I shift on the cold stone, trying to get some feeling back in my legs without disturbing Sophia, who has dozed off on my lap. She was leaning into my chest, but as she grew sleepy, her head slipped to one side, and with no hands to stop her, I had to twist my shoulder forward to stop her from falling. It was awkward at first, then uncomfortable, and now it’s almost unbearable, but sleep is the best place for Sophia right now, while I figure out what to do and how much of this is my fault. I’m certain that if I hadn’t been so distracted—hadn’t been in so much pain from the kicking I got—I’d never have lost to someone like Becca.
I should have told Mina the truth from the start, except that it was never meant to be a lie. Buying a scratch card might technically be gambling, but no one calls it that until it’s a problem, and it wasn’t a problem until it was. By then I was too worried, too ashamed, too desperate to pay off the debt before Mina noticed.
Water drips from the wall down the back of my shirt, and I shiver involuntarily. Sophia stirs, and I freeze, but it’s too late.
She’s awake.
“Mummy!” And again, louder. “Mummy!”
“Shh, Daddy’s here.”
“Mummy!”
I rock her gently from side to side, my shoulder screaming with the movement. Sophia starts crying. “I don’t like it here. I want Mummy. Mummy!”
“How about a story?”
“No, I want Mummy!” Her body is tense, and her feet kick against my shins.
“In the great green room, there was a telephone.”
“Mummy.” Quieter now.
“And a red balloon. And a picture of…” I end the line in a question.
“The cow jumping over the moon,” Sophia whispers. She stops kicking.
“And there were…”
“Three little bears sitting on chairs.”
How I hated Goodnight Moon. I’d taken it away once, slipped it under the rug in Sophia’s room. I told myself it would be good for Sophia to have a different bedtime story, to break this ridiculous reliance on routine and repetition. I told myself it wasn’t that good a story anyway—there were far better out there. I bought a stack of stories from Waterstones, assuaging my guilt with The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom. I ordered a copy of Le Petit Prince, suggested to Mina that Sophia might like to hear stories in French. “Did your mum speak Arabic to you when you were growing up?”
Mina grinned. “Only when she was cross.”
“We could find some traditional Algerian stories for Sophia.”
“She likes Goodnight Moon.”
“Every night, though!”
It wasn’t only the repetition that needled me. It was the fact that Sophia only ever wanted Mina to read it. When Mina read Goodnight Moon, Sophia would join in. She’d point to the pictures and hold her finger to her lips when the old lady whispered hush. I was always a poor second, the reserve player on the losing team. “Goodnight stars; goodnight air; goodnight noises everywhere,” I’d finish, and Sophia would sit up in bed. “When is Mummy back?”
“She doesn’t say it to hurt you,” Mina would say, but it never took away the sting.
“Goodnight noises everywhere,” I say now.
Sophia nestles her head under my chin. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome, pumpkin.”
“I’m so cold.”
Her body feels warm against my chest, but when I drop my lips to her forehead, it’s icy. I jiggle my upper body so she wobbles from side to side. “Come on. Up you get. Exercise time.”
She stands up, and I almost cry out at the mix of pain and relief that comes from relaxing my shoulders and pulling my feet up toward my body. “Do you remember how to do star jumps?” She nods. “Give me twenty, then. Go, go, go!” As she pumps her limbs in then out, in then out, I move as much of my body as my restraints allow, pins and needles crippling my extremities as the blood starts to flow. Sophia finishes, out of breath and laughing. “Now run on the spot. Go!”
I make her work out, knowing it won’t be long before the exertion makes her hungry but balancing that against her getting hypothermia. She protests when I tell her we’ve done enough, but if she breaks into a sweat, it’ll cool on her skin and make her feel worse.
“Can we play I Spy?”
I look around the cellar, my eyes now fully adjusted to the gloom. Stone. Steps. Locked door.
I spy, with my little eye, absolutely no way out…
“I’ve got a better idea. How about you be my eyes and we go exploring?”
“Outside?” Sophia says hopefully.
“In here for now.”
She sighs. Draws out a reluctant agreement. “Okaaay.”
“Start in the corner. Over there.” Dutifully, Sophia skips over to the far corner of the cellar. “Now, run your hands over the walls. Tell me everything you find.”
“I’m scared of the mouses.”
“Mice. There aren’t any mice, sweetheart. That was a silly story Daddy made up. What can you feel?”
“Bricks.”
“Feel on the floor as well. Is there anything there?” A loose brick, a forgotten tool, anything.
At police training college, we were taught how to search a house for drugs or weapons. Pairs of officers, starting in opposite corners of a room, then crossing over and going over each other’s patch. Dividing the area into quarters, making sure each one’s clear before moving to the next.
“Pretend you’re a police officer,” I say now, “searching for clues.”
“I’m going to be a pilot.”
“Just pretend.”
She finds a nail and a can of Diet Coke from before we realized the damp put fur on whatever we’d tried to store down here. “We can drink it.” I’m suddenly desperate for it, my throat scratchy and my lips sore. “Do you think you can open it?”
It takes an age, her little fingers struggling to lift the catch. Eventually, she manages, the can pinned between my feet and Coke fizzing over my socks. Sophia drinks first—excited to be allowed a drink normally forbidden—then she tips it to my mouth too fast, so sticky liquid dribbles down my neck. When we’ve finished, Sophia lets out a huge burp. She tries to say excuse me, but another burp comes, and she claps her hand over her mouth. Her eyes are wide, expecting an admonishment, and she’s shocked when instead I make myself burp too.
“Daddy!”
I tell her off all the time, I realize. I tell her to be quiet or be good, to eat nicely and don’t talk back. I tell her off far, far more than I praise her. Is it any wonder it’s Mina she wants?
I burp again. “Sophia!”
“That was you!” She jumps on me, heavy on my legs, and clasps her hands around my face, squashing my cheeks and laughing at the face it makes when I smile.
“I wish I could give you a cuddle.”
Sophia tugs at my arms.
“They’re very stuck, I’m afraid. So unless you can magic up a key…” I rattle the cuffs against the metal bar.
Sophia lets out the oh! of an idea. She scrambles off my lap and picks up the nail.
“Nice idea, pumpkin, but that only works in films.” Sophia’s face falls, so I twist around, showing her the hole in the cuffs where a key should fit. “Go on, then: do your worst.” I lean forward, giving Sophia free rein and wondering if my strange and beautiful daughter is going to surprise me with a hidden talent for lock picking.
We must have been down here for hours. How much longer will we be here?
I call out for Becca again, but there’s no reply, and not knowing what she has planned for us fills me with terror matched only by my fear for Mina. Flight 79 was due to touch down at Sydney in a few hours, and all we know from the radio is that it hasn’t diverted, and it hasn’t crashed.
Yet.