Captive (12 page)

There’s a knock on the door.

‘Go away!’ I shout.

‘Robyn, please, let me in.’

There’s a calmness in Talon’s voice that something inside me yearns for, and before I’ve even registered what I’m doing, I’ve opened the door. Talon stands on the
threshold, his eyes dark with pity. And that makes me mad because I don’t want him to feel sorry for me. I want him to let me go.
Right now
.

I scream at him, but even as I do, I know that it’s not about him. I’m screaming at this stupid bathroom, at my own vanity for caring about my stupid stupid stupid hair and most of
all, at my dad, because I need him now and he’s not here. Why hasn’t he come for me? Why has he left me here like this, alone? The scream is loud and angry and filled with all the pain
I will ever feel in my entire life because nothing can ever be as bad as this. And just for a little while I want someone else to pick up the pieces of who I used to be and put them together again,
because I can’t remember how.

Talon flinches, but he lets me yell right in his face. I shout until there’s nothing left inside me, only a calmness as still and empty as my prison cell. Then I drop back, falling against
the sink, like all my energy has left with my yelling. Only then does Talon come forward into the bathroom. He moves very slowly, as though around a caged tiger, to sit on the bathtub. I stay
resting against the sink, its edges making grooves in the palms of my hands. Neither of us speaks. Neither of us moves for a long time.

Finally, Talon says, ‘Robins are very resilient birds, you know, and incredibly territorial. They will do anything to protect their families. They’ve even been known to fight with
much bigger birds, if necessary.’

‘And who usually wins?’ I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand, but most of my tears have already dried up. ‘Actually, don’t answer that.’

‘Feather will let you go, when your father gives her what she wants.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

Talon says nothing, because there’s nothing to say.

My legs hurt from standing and the floor is grubby, so I drop down next to him on the edge of the bath. It’s a tiny space and our arms almost touch. I remember how warm his hand felt on my
skin in the living room, and I let my arm fall against his. He looks up. There’s an intensity in his eyes, like he just wants me to understand that he’s actually a good person. It
scares me suddenly how much I want to believe that. I look away, up at the tiny grating. ‘What’s it like out there today? The weather, I mean.’

‘Grey. Miserable.’

Tears rise up again, so I shut my eyes and imagine a charcoal sky, fading to tarnished silver on the horizon. It is magnificent. It is the same sky that hangs over Addy and my mum and my dad. I
want to be standing under that sky. I want to feel the lick of wind on my face. I want the rain to kiss my cheeks. And I want to see all the birds I don’t have names for. I miss my
family.

I don’t realise I’ve said it out loud, until Talon says, ‘Me too.’

‘Your brother’s dead?’

‘Yes, and my dad.’

The silence between us stretches from here to Canada.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just what people say.’

‘Why did you go into politics?’ I ask Dad. We are walking back towards the hotel along the Seine. Dad’s meeting with the French President isn’t until
Thursday and that means we still have a whole day and a half, just the two of us. Well, five of us, if you include Gordon, Harold and Mary (Dad’s secretary), none of whom are ever far away.
For the moment, though, it is just Dad and me and the river. Gordon is hanging back, talking on his mobile. It’s late afternoon and the winter sunlight is thin. It will be dark soon and the
shadows of the buildings hang long over the cobbled banks.

‘I wanted to do good,’ Dad says.

I blow a raspberry. ‘Cliché alert. Try again.’

‘I wanted to protect people. Build a better world for our children.’

I blow two raspberries. ‘Are you trying to make me throw up? Come on, old man. Tell the truth for once in your life. You’re a politician, so I know that’s hard for you, but
come on!’

‘The truth; there is no truth.’

‘Is this one of those, “There is no tree” things?’

Dad isn’t listening to my bad existentialism, though. He is staring across the river. ‘Truth is a fabrication. There is never only one truth. Only versions of it.’ Dad nods
at the bridge ahead of us. ‘Le Pont de l’Archevêché. The lovers’ bridge. Couples attach engraved padlocks to the railings and then throw the keys into the
river.’

‘Do you and Mum have one?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should have made it a combination lock.’

Dad looks at me sadly. ‘Robyn, you know your mother and I . . .’

But I walk on ahead of him. ‘Can we go and see the padlocks?’ I don’t want another ‘Your mother and I love you and Adriana very much’ or ‘All marriages
have their difficulties’ conversation. I have heard it before too many times.

As we approach the base of the bridge, Dad says suddenly, ‘I meant what I said about going into politics to help people. To make a difference. To do good.’

‘And have you?’ The daylight is almost gone now. My dad is standing a step in front of me – a dark silhouette against a fading sky. Behind him, the thousands of padlocks
chained to the bridge wink in the last glow of the sun. ‘Dad?’

‘Yes . . . yes. On balance, I believe I have done more good than bad.’

I laugh then and slide my arm through his. ‘You could never do anything bad.’

‘I hope you always believe that, Bobs.’

‘I will,’ I say, just as all the street lights in Paris flick on and the river is filled with streamers of green and blue and gold.

‘Enjoying the book?’ Talon asks the next day, while returning me to my cell after one of my twice daily bathroom trips. There are now six scratches on the wall
under my bed.

‘The photos are nice.’ We’ve only seen each other a couple of times since I screamed at him, but there’s been a shift between us, and I’ve begun to look up
expectantly whenever the key turns in the lock. I’ve started noticing little things about him, too, like how there is a tiny fleck of brown in his right iris, or how his walk is ever so
slightly lopsided, or how I can tell he’s smiling by the creases at the corners of his eyes.

He was surprisingly calm about the torn page in his book. I told him last night when he brought my supper. ‘Accidents happen,’ was all he said. Now I point at a photo of a dark brown
bird that I’ve wanted to show him all morning. ‘This one is great. It reminds me of one I saw at the Wildlife Photography Exhibition last year. It’s not the same bird. The one I
saw was green, bright green, with an orange beak and a tufty darker green patch on top, like a quiff.’

‘Was it a parrot?’ he asks.

‘No. I don’t know what it was, and I know what a parrot looks like. Anyway, it’s not about what type of bird it was. Just that it was looking at you, head cocked like it was
assessing you. In this photo, the bird—’

‘A crossbill.’

‘—is doing the same thing. How come you know so much about this stuff?’

He sits down next to me on the bed. ‘Just picked it up over the years. My dad was into bird-watching. He wanted me and my brother to get into it too. I thought it was lame at
first.’

‘But you changed your mind?’

He shrugs. ‘Jez got really sick, and suddenly doing things as a family meant more. We’d always go out bird-watching on the days when Jez was well enough.’

‘Was it fun?’

‘No, it’s as boring as you’d expect. It’s cold and nothing happens for hours. Sometimes you can go the whole time without seeing anything but when you do, it’s
amazing. And you get kind of addicted to that rush. I saw a white-tailed eagle once.’ He catches my blank look. ‘They are seriously rare. Even went extinct for a while and had to be
reintroduced into the wild. They have these massive, long broad wings with what look like fingers on the ends. They are stunning. Seeing something like that makes all the waiting about in the cold
worth it.’

‘Photography’s like that,’ I say. ‘Waiting ages in the freezing cold for one photo. And if you’re me it isn’t even that good. Not like these.’ I turn
the pages of the book, stopping at a picture of a ball of beige downy feathers and two enormous dark eyes. ‘Oh, he is cute.’

‘That’s Bert.’

‘You named the pictures in your book?’

‘I didn’t. My brother, Jez, did.’

It’s the kind of thing Addy would do, only she’d want to call him Princess something or other. She’d slap her hand on the page and say, ‘Stroke owl, Byn. Stroke,
stroke.’

‘You must miss him,’ I say.

‘Yeah. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. None of us did.’ Talon sounds angry.

I shouldn’t care about Talon’s brother, but I do. Last night I even found myself thinking about what Talon’s face is like. His eyes are special. Is it weird to wonder if the
rest of him is?

I ask him what the weather is like outside. It’s beginning to feel like a thing between us, and for some reason that matters to me.

Talon’s answer is gruff this time. ‘Dunno. Sunny, maybe. I haven’t been outside.’

He leaves shortly after. Last night after dinner and then again this morning, he apologised for locking me in, but today he goes silently. It feels as though I’ve done something wrong.

We read a book at school by a guy who had been held hostage for fourteen years. He kept himself sane and fit by sticking to a routine. A set number of laps of his cell each
day. A set number of push-ups. When he became weaker, or was tied up, he would do smaller exercises and imagine doing the larger ones. I can’t think about being locked up here for fourteen
years. No amount of exercising would keep me sane. I get up off the bed and begin to walk around the room. It can’t hurt to keep fit. After four laps, I cross the room in three big strides
and then take five normal paces back. The next time across, I make nine really tiny steps.

It is nine shuffles, two and a half side steps, and one somersault – just – between the edge of the bed and the door. I pirouette, skip, jog backwards and forwards, walk like a bear,
stride like a tiger, tiptoe like a mouse, and swing one arm like an elephant’s trunk.

After a while, I begin to pace the room again, moving faster and faster, concentrating on the pounding in my chest, the pull of my muscles and the slap of my Converse against the tiled floor and
trying to push all other thoughts away. It is late evening on the seventh day. How can I have only been here for a week? It seems like a lifetime.

When I’m on my fourteenth lap, the door opens. I look up, expecting Talon. But instead, Scar is standing in the doorway, his mouth screwed up into a warped grin.

‘Hello, Princess,’ he says.

In the instant before he grabs me, I see that Scar’s eyes are red in the glare of the bare bulb. I can’t move quickly enough and he pushes me against the wall, his
hands on my shoulders. He’s so close I can’t help but take in the stench of him – the stale alcohol combined with rot, like something has crawled inside him to die. I squirm, but
he holds me fast. My feeble punches to his ribs have no effect either. ‘Gentle there, Princess. You don’t want to break a nail. No need to be afraid. I just want a little chat. We never
get any time together, just you and me.’

Panic is rising inside of me like a tidal wave until I remember the knife in his belt. Will it still be there?

He is telling me that we should be friends. ‘Maybe I could help you.’

‘How?’ I ask, feeling for the handle of the knife through his T-shirt. ‘Will you let me go?’ My fumbling fingers lift the fabric very, very gently.

‘Let you go? Well, I don’t know about that, but maybe I could be persuaded.’

My hand closes around the knife. I pull it free.

‘Oi, what are you doing?’

I jab the blade into his side – the fleshy bit just above the waistband of his trousers.

His hands go instinctively to his injury. I make a dash for the door, tugging desperately on the handle, but it is locked.

‘You’ll pay for that,’ he says. I turn to see him tug the knife out easily. And I realise how stupid I have been. The door is locked, he is stronger. All I have done is remind
him that he has a knife.

‘Help! Somebody, please!’ I scream as I bang my fists against the door.

Scar drags me backwards by what is left of my hair. ‘HELP ME!’ I scream.

There’s the sound of feet pounding down the stairs to the basement, then along the hall. The door is flung open and there’s Talon. I’ve never been so happy to see someone.

‘Get away from her,’ Talon growls.

‘What you going to do about it?’ Scar tightens his grip on the blade.

‘Robyn, come here. We’re going upstairs.’

Scar is blocking my path to the doorway. ‘Piss off, Talon.’

‘No. Move out of the way and let Robyn go.’

‘You want a fight? That it? Well, come on then. Show me what you’ve got.’

Scar is talking to Talon, but it is me who makes a move. I run at Scar, knocking him off balance, but it’s not enough. He shoves me backwards and I fall on to the bed. Talon comes at him
from the other side. Scar brushes him off easily, then jabs at his face with the knife, tearing his mask. Blood drips down Talon’s chin. Scar lunges again, this time aiming for Talon’s
belly. At the last second, Talon moves out of the way and seizes Scar by the wrist, propelling him around before slamming him against the wall. Talon shoves his forearm into Scar’s throat and
uses his free hand to ram Scar’s into the plaster again and again until the knife clatters to the floor. Talon kicks it away. Scar is strong and crafty, though. He punches Talon in the head
with his now free hand. Talon reels backwards from the blow and Scar pounces, pushing Talon on to the floor and crouching over him, both hands around his throat.

Neither of them is taking any notice of me. The door to my cell is open and unguarded. I could run so easily. I look at the door; I look at Talon. He is gasping for breath, his eyes bulging. He
saved me. I can’t leave him here to die.