Hostage by Clare Mackintosh
THIRTY-FOUR
2 A.M. | ADAM
Sophia’s “worst” turns out to be a sharp jab with the nail in the fleshy part of my hand, prompting a yell of pain and the metallic tang of fresh blood. I tell her it’s no big deal, pressing the wound hard to the back of my shirt and wondering when I last had a tetanus shot. But she’s already screaming, as if she’s been holding it all in and now it’s flooding out in tears and homesickness and misplaced rage.
I’m the first to admit I’ve never handled Sophia’s meltdowns well. Even after I knew the psychology behind them—knew that she wasn’t being deliberately badly behaved—I still struggled to cope.
“It’s like shaking up a fizzy drink bottle,” the counselor said. “Every new encounter, every challenge shakes it up a little more. The lid can only stay on for so long; sooner or later, it’s going to blow.”
The solution, she said, was to open the lid very slowly—to give Sophia a chance to let off steam in a controlled way. Take her to the park after nursery, or stick her on the trampoline for ten minutes, was the advice, which was sound in principle but useless in the face of a child who would sometimes throw herself to the floor the second we left the school grounds, screaming till she was physically sick.
“Sophia, that’s enough!” I’d tell her, knowing even as I did it that I was making it worse but somehow unable to stop it.
“Come on, baby. Let me carry you,” Mina would wheedle, as though Sophia were ill instead of angry, and out of my frustration and helplessness would grow an argument.
“Mummy!” Sophia cries now. “I want Mummy!”
“I want her too!” The ferocity of my response shocks her into silence, and for a second, we stare at each other, until I realize I’m crying. I drop my head, wiping my cheeks with my shoulders. Mina, Mina, Mina…
Soon after Mina started flying, there was a hijack attempt on another airline. Everyone was scared. Every time she flew, I’d feel as though I was holding my breath till she landed, and I begged her to look at roles in other parts of the industry.
“I love my job, though.”
“But I love you. And I’d quite like to know you’ll come home in one piece.”
Still in one piece, she’d text after that, the second they landed. Slowly, we relaxed, the years bringing false confidence, until by the time Sophia arrived, I hardly thought about the risks at all. There hadn’t been another significant attempt since, and so the whole world believed there wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.
Now there has been.
Sophia pulls her dressing gown sleeves over her hands and wipes away my tears. She whispers as if she’s afraid to hear her own words. “Has Mummy’s plane crashed?”
I take a sharp intake of breath. “No, sweetheart, it hasn’t crashed.” The news has run every twenty minutes, and every time, I’ve braced myself, only to hear the same script. No communications… No deviation from the scheduled route… No new information. A spokesperson from Climate Action Group has denied all knowledge of the hijack. Our ethos is passive resistance and civil disobedience, he said. We do not condone or encourage acts of criminal violence. There’s been no sound from Becca, and I picture her hunched over the tracking app, waiting for the plane to divert. The fear I heard in her voice hasn’t reassured me; it’s done the opposite. A frightened felon is a dangerous one. An unpredictable one.
“Is Mummy okay?” Sophia crouches by my side, her face so close to mine, I can feel her breath on my skin. A lump forms in my throat, and I feel my nose prickle with tears again. I don’t know what to do, whether to tell her.
Mina would know.
A fierce wave of love surges through me, erupting in a howl that hurts my heart and bends me double, as I remember the arguments, the harsh words, the bitterness of a relationship I ruined with my lies.
“Daddy?” Sophia touches my head, and I can hear how frightened she is, but I can’t speak because I’m fighting to find my breath, to find myself beneath this mess of a man who cries like a baby. How could I have let this happen? If I hadn’t gotten into debt, I’d never have gone to loan sharks. Katya would never have been threatened; there would have been no secrets to tear Mina and me apart, no thug at my door with fists that didn’t care what they broke. Becca wouldn’t have been able to drug me; she’d have failed before she’d even started, and Sophia and I wouldn’t be here in this cellar, with no way out. This is all my fault. Becca may have turned the key, but for months, I’ve been locking myself away.
“Daddy, I’m scared.”
I need to pull myself together.
Slowly, I get my breathing under control. I flex every muscle, stiff with cold and lack of movement. I can hardly feel my fingers now.
“And I’m hungry.”
“Me too.” There’s a break in my voice, and I cough and say it again, trying to convince myself—as much as Sophia—that I’m holding it together. I look around the cellar, as though food might miraculously appear in the dim light my eyes have now grown used to. “We’re going to try shouting for Becca again, okay?”
Sophia’s bottom lip wobbles.
“She’s the only one who can bring us something to eat. I won’t let her hurt you, okay?”
I take her silence as acceptance and shout as loudly as I can. “Becca! Becca! Becca!” I pause—I think I can hear movement, but I can’t be certain. “Becca? We need food! Water!”
We listen. There are footsteps above, and a shadow falls across the narrow strip of light at the base of the door. The radio stops abruptly.
“Sophia needs food and water.”
Nothing. But at least the shadow is still there.
I try again. “Just some water. Please, Becca.”
“I’m not opening this door. You’ll try and escape.” There’s a tightness to her voice that sounds like stress. Because she doesn’t know what to do? Or because she knows she’s already gone too far? I need her to be calm. If she’s calm, maybe I can talk her around.
“I can’t move. How can I escape?” I pull at the pipe behind me, the metal making a dull clank against the handcuffs.
“You’ll try something.”
“Please, Becca. Just something for Sophia.” I look at my daughter. “Go on,” I whisper, “you try.”
“Please, Becca, I’m so hungry.”
The shadow moves away from the door. I think for a moment that she’s gone, but then I hear movement from the kitchen—the sound of cupboard doors, the cutlery tray, the fridge. The radio goes back on: a truncated chorus of “Last Christmas” before a segue into what it’s like to be lonely at this special time of year.
Time to think fast. This could be our only chance.
“Sophia, we’re going to get out of here.” She searches my face for the promise, and I wonder how much I can ask her to do. “How fast can you run?”
“Really really fast. I’m the fastest in the school.”
“And can you be super still?”
In response, Sophia sits cross-legged, her arms folded and her lips pressed tightly together, the way they do when the register is called.
I smile. “Very impressive. We’re going to play a sort of game, okay? First, you’re going to be super still, then you’re going to run as fast as you can.”
The cellar door opens inward into the stairwell. If Sophia flattens herself to the wall behind it, Becca won’t see her.
“Take off your dressing gown and put it over there.” I nod toward the darkest corner of the cellar. “We’re going to pretend you’re lying on the ground.”
Sophia obliges, her teeth already chattering as she arranges the dressing gown. It’s not perfect, but Becca’s eyes will be adjusting to the darkness, and all I need from her is a few steps into the cellar…
“I’ll tell her you’re sick,” I tell Sophia. “That she needs to help you. As soon as she comes down the stairs, you run into the kitchen and straight out of the house, okay? Don’t stop for anything, you understand?”
“And you too?”
“You’re going to have to do this one on your own, sweetheart.” I lock my eyes on hers. “You can do it, I know you can.”
The light beneath the door flickers, Becca moving about the kitchen. We haven’t got much time.
“Behind the door, now, sweetheart. Quiet and still as a mouse.”
Sophia scurries to take up position at the top of the stairs, pressing herself into the wall. The light is too poor for me to see her face, but I know she’s looking at me, and I wish I could give her a thumbs-up instead of the encouraging smile she won’t be able to make out. A door bangs upstairs. “Ready?” I whisper.
“I’m ready.”
Too late, I realize I only told Sophia to run, not where to run. Mo won’t open her door at this time of night, and the third cottage in our terrace is a holiday house, rarely visited. The next nearest house, as the crow flies, is across the park to the housing estate. Even if Sophia makes it across the park, whose bell will she ring? Her friend Holly lives somewhere in the estate, but even I struggle to find it amid the maze of streets. What if she gets lost?
What if Becca catches up with her?
I’m about to risk another urgent whisper across to Sophia when there’s a scraping noise and a loud thud. I look to the top of the cellar steps, but there’s no shadow, no movement across the strip of light beneath the door, and suddenly I feel a gust of cold air from above my head. Becca’s outside the front door, by the old coal chute. The entrance—an opening around two feet square—is hidden in the grass by the front wall of the house. It emerges around halfway up the cellar wall, the sloping angle of the chute itself making it impossible to see the outside world. The cold air is close enough to feel, yet I can’t see it, and I think how the opposite will be true for Mina.
Something drops from the ceiling, hitting my shoulder, then bouncing onto the floor. I hear the concrete slab being dragged back across the opening, and the air changes, as though a window’s been closed.
I stay still for a moment, listening to Becca’s footsteps running back toward the house. The front door bangs, and despair floods through me. Our only chance to escape, and Becca made damn sure we couldn’t take it. I call Sophia back.
“But when she opens the door, I have to be ready.”
“She’s not going to open the door, sweetheart.”
The package that hit my shoulder is a supermarket carrier bag, its handles tied tight in a knot Sophia can’t unpick. She rips at the plastic instead, taking out a bottle of water and two foil-wrapped sandwiches, one of which she hands to me.
“You’re going to have to feed it to me.”
“Like a baby?”
“’Fraid so.”
Sophia takes a sandwich in each hand, already eating hers as she holds out the other to my open mouth. It’s cheese, roughly cut and with no spread to moisten the bread, and my first bite sticks in my throat. I have a fleeting panic that I’m choking before the lump moves down my gullet and I can breathe again. Sophia copies me, an exaggerated gulp that uses her whole body, before she tears off another mouthful of sandwich.
“Better?”
She nods, her mouth too full to answer. The soothing tones of the graveyard shift radio presenter tell us they have more on tonight’s breaking news story, and I shush Sophia, jerking my head toward the radio.
The prime minister tonight called an emergency meeting following the confirmed hijacking of a Boeing 777 by climate change activists. More than three hundred and fifty people are believed to be held hostage on board Flight 79, the first-ever scheduled direct flight from London to Sydney. The hijackers have stated that they intend to remain airborne until the fuel runs out unless the government concedes to their demands to bring forward their target for zero carbon emissions to 2030 and to issue fines to airlines that cannot demonstrate a commitment toward renewable energy. A few moments ago, the prime minister gave this statement…
“Daddy, that’s Mummy’s plane.”
As the feed switches to an on-the-ground reporter, we hear the muted sounds of a crowd—cameras clicking, journalists talking—and the indefinable crispness of night air. I picture the prime minister standing in a floodlit Downing Street, the severity of the situation bringing the country’s media out of bed.
Just say yes, I urge him silently. Whatever they want, just agree to it. He doesn’t have to keep his word, does he? These people are criminals. Terrorists. Just say yes. I tug at the metal around my wrists, frustrated to be made a bystander in my own crisis. Each radio update makes me feel more helpless.
“I would like to extend my sympathies to the families of all the passengers and staff on board Flight 79. World Airlines are making personal contact with all next of kin, to ensure that updates are passed as swiftly as possible.”
My mobile is upstairs, and the charge was already low when I picked up Sophia. Have they tried to call me? Then again, maybe I’m not listed as Mina’s next of kin any more. I imagine her emailing Human Resources, giving the number of a friend, her father… Following my recent separation, please update my personnel file. I feel a flash of anger, not toward Mina but toward myself. My marriage crashed around me, and I could have saved it. I wasn’t thousands of miles away, I wasn’t listening to radio reports, I wasn’t shackled to a pipe six feet underground. I was right next to Mina—a copilot, not a passenger—and I did nothing.
The prime minister continues.
“Indonesian air traffic control operators have identified the hijacked aircraft and obtained authorization for a military intercept, and we are in the process of establishing what action has been taken since Flight 79 failed to maintain radio contact.”
Having neatly passed culpability, he leaves the sort of silence that introduces a soundbite.
“Make no mistake.”Another pause. “This is an act of terrorism.”
Yes.I didn’t vote for the PM, I didn’t vote for his party, but at least he’s calling it what it is. Not activists or environmentalists or laughable hippies stopping the traffic with rain dances. Terrorists.
“And we will not be held to ransom by terrorists.”
What? No! No, no, no, no…
“Environmental issues are a key part of my party strategy, and we are working across the aviation sector to achieve lower carbon…”
I don’t listen to the rest. There’s a roaring in my head. All I can see is Mina; all I can hear is the words of a man who doesn’t have anything at stake, doesn’t have someone he loves on a hijacked plane. Someone who is thinking about political spin, about point scoring and vote winning and the upcoming election.
We will not give in.
Where does that leave Mina?