Dear Beneficiary (31 page)

‘Baz is going to be late. So looks like you're me date for tonight,' she said.

We checked ourselves out in the small mirror beside the door, both smoothing our hair and rubbing hands down our sides. Me to check out any lumps and bumps in my dress, Tracey to wipe the crumbs off her hands from a packet of nuts she'd been eating.

‘Hope we get some decent grub,' she added, as we walked out of the door, arm in arm.

Buke's house was opulent and colourful, with plenty of influence from nature, either in the hue of material thrown casually over various pieces of furniture or through the display of African animals either in pictures or as statues.

‘Good evening, ladies,' said Buke as she glided towards us. ‘I'm so pleased to see you. Come, let's go to da garden for cocktails.'

We followed her through the house to the kitchen, which opened out onto a veranda shaded by a wooden structure draped with a pale blue flowering shrub that dangled its loosely hanging fronds into my hair. It smelled sweet and almost sickly, not unlike candyfloss.

A tall, slim man with a very thin moustache across a wide upper lip offered us an orange and pink-looking drink from a tray he was holding.

‘Please, enjoy,' he said and then nodded his head in deference. I noticed there were another eight or so glasses still remaining on a table placed against the kitchen wall.

‘How many are you expecting?' I asked Buke as I spotted Tracey helping herself to another drink without being asked.

‘Yous wait and see, me dear,' she said, looking at her watch. ‘Now, where is dat son of mine? He haf a wife to attend to.'

Buke went back into the house and I could hear her talking loudly in what I assumed to be an African language. There was a noise at the front door and then the sound of voices, male and female. Buke was welcoming them and it was difficult to tell how many people were there until they came through.

The group that was shown in looked similar to that surrounding the Audi I'd crashed. I knew it was him as the smell of his aftershave preceded him. It was Darius again. Just as I was beginning to think I could get over him.

‘Hello again,' he said to me, smiling. ‘What happened to you at the wedding? You were there one minute, and gone the next. Sorry I didn't wait to say goodbye but I had a car waiting.'

And a beautiful young woman to make love to
, I thought.

I took a deep breath to calm my heart rate, and although it didn't work I remembered everything I could about retaining dignity. I might be hurt, feeling used and most of all desperately wanting to feel his excitement again, but I mustn't show it.

‘I think it was too much food and wine. We weren't offered much in the camp,' I tried to joke.

I looked around for Chinaza and hoped my wish that she'd fallen off the planet had come true. I thought about asking after her but didn't want to look as if I cared.

It seemed the reason Buke had invited Darius to the party was to keep us up to date with the investigations which, we were told, had gathered much momentum in terms of publicity, first when we were reported as missing and then again following the arrest of various gang members including Chike and Fasina. Darius told us there would be a court case and we would be seen as heroines for escaping the kidnappers and helping to bring them to justice.

Baz was still conspicuous by his absence, so I assumed Buke's demands hadn't worked on this occasion.

‘Maybe we'll be in
OK!
magazine!' Tracey laughed, as Chinaza opened up a small laptop to reveal page after page of news reports showing pictures of us both. I wondered where they'd got the one of me in my dressing gown. I looked like something from a catalogue about nursing homes.

‘I'm not sure what we've been up to would be of sufficient interest,' I replied. ‘We would need to have had triplets and then lost all our post-baby weight in two days, or married someone related to royalty and sold the soiled sheets of our honeymoon bed to the editor for that kind of privilege.'

The conversation was lost on Tracey, but thankfully Darius and Lady Osolase chatted enthusiastically about the investigation, both taking turns to praise Chinaza for her work. I wanted to kick her in the shins, even though I knew it was churlish. Not only was my love rival a beauty, she was clever. No wonder Darius came back to Nigeria.

The evening drained me. Trying to smile when I wanted to spit was challenging. Every time I felt myself glowering I had to give myself an internal talking to. It wouldn't do to look like I was jealous.

When it finally seemed a reasonable time to go, partly because it was getting late but also because Tracey was getting drunk, I was relieved to be able to take our leave.

‘Come on, Tracey, you look tired,' I said, hoping that lack of sleep rather than excessive gin punch would explain the drooping eyelids and vague look of palsy her face had taken on.

‘Let me get a car to run you round,' said Buke.

‘No, no, the walk will do us good,' I replied, wanting to break from the evening as soon as possible.

We said hasty goodbyes and left as soon as we could, to protestations about us walking in the dark.

I thought maybe they were right. I could see and hear a myriad of things in the undergrowth, including something sneezing. There was a rustling in the bushes lining the road to our bungalow and I was ready to scream at the top of my voice.

‘What the fuck is that?' said Tracey, suddenly coming alive. The warnings about the ‘Big Boys' came flooding into my head and I was convinced our time was up.

‘We should have got the bloody car,' said Tracey. ‘Now we're in for it.'

There was another sneeze, and I nearly passed out with fear until I saw what could only be described as the biggest rat I'd ever encountered, scuttling across our path.

‘Jeez, that punch must have been strong, innit?' said Tracey. ‘That rat is huge!'

She then screamed and ran, as much as she could, to the front door, wobbling from side to side on her high heels until one of them broke. She kicked them both off in the direction of the rat, which stopped, looked round and sneezed again.

I thought I was going mad.

Tracey started fishing about in her bag for her keys. I pushed the door, which opened immediately, as it hadn't been locked.

She tipped her handbag out onto the table in front of the settees. She distributed the contents using splayed hands, picking up individual items and putting them back.

‘I'm sure I had a key,' she said. ‘I put it in here earlier.'

She slumped down in a chair and sighed while looking around the room.

‘Aha,' she said, coming to life and picking up a phone from the table. ‘Look what I have here, Cynthia. It's all fired up. You've got loads of messages.'

Tracey had mentioned charging it but I dismissed the comment, as even if it had worked, I didn't know how to use it. Why I can't just have something that rings and I answer it, I don't know. I'd mistakenly managed to take a picture of my shoe and a video of next door's cat when I first got it, but hadn't got to speak to anyone on the damn thing, so in my mind it was fairly redundant.

‘I don't know how to get to my messages,' I told Tracey. ‘My grandson got it for me and it might as well be a rusty Rubik's cube covered in baby oil for all the skill I have with it.'

Tracey frowned at me and jabbed at the screen.

‘I can work it for you. Look, you've got fifty-nine text messages, thirty-six emails and your voicemail is full.'

She showed me what to do. I went through the voicemail messages first, which included one from Tom calling after I'd been gone for three days. The concern deepened as time went on and then the emails were about the money transfer, the ransom demand and what the family were aiming to do to rescue me. I was touched.

Tracey slid down into her seat and appeared to be dribbling, half asleep but trying to keep her eyes open with various shudders and self-administered slaps to the face.

I thought that had we known all the effort and concern there was for us while we were imprisoned, it would have given us so much hope, rather than the worry of whether or not we'd be slaughtered and our bodies put out to rot with the fish and sewage. However, without the uncertainty we might never have found the impetus to plan our escape – one occasion where ignorance is a positive thing.

The messages included a number from Mr Gamble urging me to respond to letters he'd sent about my ‘financial circumstances', as he called them. He can be such an irritating little man. When I get home I'm going to tell him I'm investing most of my money in a farm for producing edible worms and the rest on learning to pole dance.
Let's see what he has to say about that
, I thought.

Tracey had fallen asleep, and when she tried to turn round she fell off the chair and onto the floor, landing with a thud. She remained there for a while, so I gave her a kick which brought her back to life.

‘Ow, that bloody hurt,' she said, rubbing her knee as she unfolded herself in an upward motion. ‘What are your messages about, then?'

I told Tracey how the gang had contacted my family by email and text message and that they'd sent a ransom demand giving my family five days to hand over the money.

‘I can't work out the dates, but it would appear we escaped before the deadline.'

A chill went down my spine. What would have happened to us if we'd been there at the deadline and the money hadn't come in? Would they have killed us or let us go? The thought of being there at that moment of their disappointment, when they had to decide whether our lives were worth preserving, made me go cold. I took a swig from one of the glasses of brandy left over from earlier, regardless of its sandpaper-and-fire aftertaste, and prayed to my new friend God, in the vague hope he existed. If he did, then I really wanted to thank him for helping us out in our dire need.

‘Well, they didn't bother contacting anyone I know,' Tracey said, looking a little forlorn as she picked up her phone. ‘Not a single bleeding message other than three texts asking me if I want a payday loan and an email from my catalogue telling me the shoes I ordered only go up to a size six. Nothing from anyone else.'

‘Perhaps they couldn't get through,' I suggested, and changed the subject before she noticed.

I read on and found out the bridge club had organised a fund-raiser to get publicity for my plight. ‘By all accounts my friends put together a big bridge event and a British Legion collection which raised over fifteen hundred pounds,' I told Tracey, who was making her way to the kitchen to get another brandy. I'd decided I'd had enough to drink for one night.

I could just imagine the men from the bridge club holding forth at the Legion. They would talk a story up about anything if it was sufficiently interesting to encourage an audience and the purchase of a pint or two of fine ale for the storytellers. I laughed out loud when I read a bit saying Mavis had made badges for the event with ‘Save Cynthia' on them. I didn't like the news that she'd told everyone at the club I'd been tortured and under threat of murder. Although I'm sure the tale earned her some attention from the others, who would have revelled in what they were being told, however unreliable the messenger might be. But then they hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary since Harry Winslett had mooned at the Girl Guide Remembrance parade three years ago, so any distraction was worthwhile, regardless of its provenance.

‘Don't know where the bastard has gone,' said Tracey as she came back into the living room, wearing a dressing gown she'd taken from the back of the bathroom door. ‘Do you want a drink? There's some brandy or beer.'

‘I think it's about time I went to bed,' I said to Tracey, who could barely keep her eyelids open. The messages had overloaded the inner workings of my brain and needed to be digested. I hadn't taken all the information in and needed some time to piece together the missing bits of our kidnap jigsaw. It seemed a lot of people in a lot of places were taking it all very seriously.

As I stood up to make my way to my room, Baz came through the front door with two men, one looking very shifty and carrying a large, full hessian bag under one arm and a roll of brown paper under another. The second man had a set of old-fashioned scales and a kitchen knife.

‘You two still up?' Baz said, ordering his two companions to sit in the spare seats opposite us. ‘I thought you'd be asleep by now.'

‘Come on, husband of mine, let's go to bed,' Tracey slurred. ‘I've got plans for you,' she added, as she pointed her index finger right at his nose.

‘You go, I'll follow when I've finished my business,' he said, pushing her arm aside sufficiently hard to knock her slightly off balance.

‘All right, Mr Misery Guts. I hope this business is worth neglecting your new bride for,' she said, and then blew a long raspberry while she staggered out of the room.

I took my leave, as I didn't want to be involved in a domestic situation between husband and wife, and I had a lot to think about.

‘Goodnight, Baz. See you tomorrow.'

He grunted and huddled down with his companions, making it clear they wouldn't be getting on with anything until we were out of sight and earshot. He watched until I'd left the room, and I could hear low-level mutterings of voices that didn't want to be heard.

I settled down into the large, wicker-framed bed and lay on my back with my eyes open. It was warm, and the sheet felt heavy on my body. Through the window I could see bright stars shining in a clear sky and could hear various animals making sounds of the night.

One of them was Tracey. She was snoring.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Baz had gone by the time Tracey and I emerged the next day. She'd been sleeping off a hangover while I'd been awake until at least five a.m., going over all the messages and information from my phone.