Hostage Three (25 page)

As I watched, a camel wandered past. A camel! I'd seen a couple of them from the yacht, like we were on some kind of really weird and slightly sick safari tour.

I watched until the camel disappeared behind a dune, then I just stood there. I thought of the sky camel, Farouz pointing out the stars. Then my mind went empty. I looked at this gnarled tree that stood near the shoreline. Every day, that tree was there, just being. It was strange how you got used to things like that. I mean, even now, I can picture that tree. I can safely say that if the whole world got blasted to smithereens by some alien invasion, and I was floating through space on some bit of rock and that tree floated past me, I would recognise it instantly.

But, as far as I knew, I would never touch it.

So I stood there for a while, thinking dumb thoughts like that. I was pretty much alone, though I could see a guard above me, in the bridge. There were always guards around, of course.

I looked down at the water and I thought about the turtle. I hefted the violin in my hand. It felt heavy and light at the same time. It felt, even after all these months of not playing it, like something special. Like an offering.

I held the violin out over the sea and got ready to drop it.

— Don't do that, said Farouz from behind me.

I turned my head.

— Why not? I asked. It doesn't matter anyway. And don't act like you care.

— I'm sorry, he said. I have upset you again. I'm sorry.

— You're
sorry
? This is our
lives
. We could die.

— No. Your father will have to pay more money. That is all.

— Oh, that's all, is it? I asked, my voice dripping bitterness. So you'll just get an extra million or so, right? Poor you.

I didn't tell him about watching him play the oud, about how left out it had made me feel, about how it had made me realise he didn't need me. I knew it would sound crazy and jealous, and that would give him an extra advantage.

Farouz took a step back. He raised his hands, seemed about to say something, but then Ahmed's voice came from inside, calling his name.

— Farouz! Farouz!

— Oh, yeah, I said. You should go to your boss. Go and see what he wants, make sure he's OK. Same way you went and told him about my dad.

Farouz sighed.

— You lied, too, he said. About the owners of the yacht.

— It's not the same! I said. You took us hostage. And then, just when I was liking you again, you told your fucking boss – who's in charge of a load of men with guns, including, oh, YOU – that my dad had lied to him.

— I had to, he said.

— Oh, you had to. For your precious brother.

He blew out a thin stream of smoke.

— No. It was Ahmed. I was checking the computer, to get the go plan that the navy were sending. He saw the word
owner
. He reads enough English to know that word. He made me translate the rest.

— And you did it.

— Of course I did it! What do you expect?

I hugged my knees up to my chest.

— It's just coincidence that this way you get more money? I said.

— This way I get to stay alive, he said, more angry than I had ever heard him. What happens if I lie when I translate? What happens if Ahmed asks Nyesh to read the email instead? I don't get fined. I die.

— Oh, I said, my voice all small.

— Please, said Farouz, just don't throw the violin, OK? I will explain everything. You will understand, I promise. Meet me here tonight, where I told you about the stars. About the camel. OK?

— I can't, I said. My dad.

— You can sneak, he said. When he's asleep. It will be all right, I promise.

I was feeling so angry with him, but there was something about the way he said this, about his grey eyes in the morning light, and even though I wanted to tell him what to do with himself and his promises, I didn't. I just nodded instead. I trusted him.

I was an idiot. Not because I shouldn't have trusted him. Not because of that at all. But because of what happened afterwards.

If I hadn't nodded, if I'd sworn at him, if I'd dropped the violin in the ocean and walked away without looking back, maybe things would have been different.

Maybe nobody would have had to die.

My dad was snoring
, the stepmother curled up on his shoulder. They were holding hands, which was disgusting. It was bad enough having the stepmother around all the time, like in our house in London, but it was another thing having her, my mom's usurper, in the same room cuddled up with my dad at night.

Tony was on the sofa, breathing heavily.

I got up from the armchair I was sitting on, moving gingerly. I took one step, then held my breath, looked around.

Dad snored on.

The room was dark as there was only one lamp on, in the corner, where Felipe had been reading a magazine. He was sleeping now, too. I crept towards the door, avoiding the obstacles on the floor – the discarded clothes, Damian stretched out on some sofa cushions, face down. I felt clumsy, but my bare feet were silent over the plush carpet.

It felt like a mile, the length of the cinema room, when really it was probably only twenty steps. I kept turning around, convinced I'd heard my dad sitting up. If he did, I'd say I was going to the toilet.

I put my hand on the silver doorknob and turned it. There was a barely audible squeak, and I whipped my head round again.

No one moved.

I pulled the door ever so slowly.

Creak
.

Shit. I froze, holding the door still. I listened. My dad had stopped snoring. I watched the shape of him in the gloom. Then, a sort of ratcheting sound, and the snoring started again. I felt breath rush back into my lungs, sudden, and hard as an attack.

Gritting my teeth, I opened the door a little further, then twisted myself through it, remembering to hold it as it closed to stop it slamming.

When I got out on the deck, the stars were out, of course. It was like there were never any clouds, never any rain. How the hell did anything grow here? I could understand why Farouz said that all Somali stories were about hunger. Even the squirrel and the lion – because the lion ate the squirrel, didn't it?

I sat down on a sunlounger. I'd dressed in the dark, but I had on an All Saints top I loved and a vintage 50s skirt I got on Brick Lane. Foolish of me to dress up, I know, and weird when I was still so angry, but go figure.

I didn't have long to wait for Farouz to come out. I knew the sound of his footsteps by then, the particular pace of his walk. I was seriously hoping that no one was going to wake up to go to the loo or something, and realise I was gone. I wasn't worried about the pirates. Most of the guards, Ahmed and Farouz excepted, were usually high on khat, or drunk, or wired from drinking that terrible coffee and sugar mixture they seemed addicted to.

So I was on my own, and then Farouz appeared, his hello when he saw me low and slow, so as not to alert anyone, and I wasn't on my own any more.

Farouz sat down on the sunlounger next to mine. His face was wreathed in smoke, as usual. He was toying with his gun. He started to say something, stopped, started again.

— I . . . I have told Ahmed that I will take the same share as before, he said eventually.

— What? I said, shocked. Why?

— For you.

I looked at him. I could feel something inside me, some hardness, softening, like stale bread in water.

— Won't Ahmed wonder why? I asked.

— Perhaps. Farouz made an equivocal gesture with his hand. He just knows I don't want any extra money. Ahmed is . . . he is not a bad man. He has children, a wife.

— I know, I said.

— Also . . . Farouz said hesitantly. I think Ahmed suspects that I like you.

A silence.

— You like me?

I couldn't be sure, but I think he blushed.

— Maybe, he said. And you?

— I don't know. There's someone I like. He's good-looking. Sweet. But there's a problem, you see.

— Oh?

— Yes. He's a pirate.

Farouz edged on to my sunlounger.

— Coast guard, he said.

— And that's another problem, I said with a laugh. There's this language barrier. He doesn't speak very good English, so –

He poked me, gently, on the arm.

— Hey!

Then he said something in Somali that sounded like a curse.

— I forgot, he said. I got you a present, for your birthday. I was going to give it to you before, in your cabin, but . . . Well, I was distracted.

I thought of that kiss: yes, he had been distracted. I had been, too.

— Anyway, he said. Here. He reached into his pocket and placed something in my hand. It was cool and compact, smooth.

I looked down at it, a very simple wooden box, about the size of a jewellery box. For a moment I thought, no, he couldn't have, could he? I mean, he's a –

And then I thought, stupid Amy. He could have stolen some earrings from anywhere. A ring.

So my veins were running a bit cold when I opened it. I was all prepared to be polite, but I already felt offended, like, did he really think some damn stolen jewellery was going to make me happy?

But it wasn't jewellery.

I didn't see inside the box properly at first, just had an impression of something heaped and multiple and glinting.

Then –

— Sand, I said.

He smiled.

— From Somalia, he said. I got it when I went for the eggs, from the beach. So that you have some of my country to carry with you, even if you never go yourself. Even when –

I held up a hand to stop him saying it, to stop him talking about when we would be saying goodbye.

I held the glittering sand in its box in my palm, then closed the lid and squeezed my hand tight around it.

— Thank you, I said.

He touched my hand with the box inside it.

— You are welcome, he said.

I loosened my fingers and held his hand, too, stopped him withdrawing it.

— It's cold, I said.

— It is, he replied.

We were very close together now. I could feel the heat from his body.

On his face, the bruises had barely faded. And the hard muscles of his arms were just there, in front of me. Muscles that were made for hitting people, for . . .

No.

I closed my eyes. Dad was wrong and the stepmother was wrong: I wasn't self-destructive, and I didn't have a death wish. I knew it most fiercely in that moment – not because I
wasn't
scared, but because I
was
excited. I wanted to live. I wanted to experience everything.

— Are you OK? said Farouz.

— Yes, I said.

I put a hand on the back of his neck, felt the shifting bulk of his muscle. It was like it rose to meet my hand, fitting itself there, in the curve of my palm, the way my violin used to sit perfectly in the compass of my touch.

He smelled of smoke. He smelled of the sea. He smelled of sand.

My heart was a foreign creature that had got into my body, fallen asleep for years and now was awake and leaping.

— Kiss me, I said.

And he did.

I think Farouz would have liked
to go further, but I wasn't ready for it, and he respected that. I appreciated that. Some people would probably say it was Stockhausen syndrome, or whatever it's called, where people fall in love with their captors, but really he was very gentle.

I hadn't done much of this kind of stuff before. I mean, I know: the piercings, and the smoking and the clubbing, right? So you might think, well . . . But you would be wrong.

I'd only ever kissed one boy, Travis, by the time I left New York. He tasted of onion bagel, and his glasses caught in my hair, so we had to disentangle him afterwards. Since then, nothing. I think the English boys were scared of me, or they hated me, I don't know.

Most of the time we didn't even kiss, me and Farouz. We just snuggled up, held each other's hands. If someone else was telling me this I'd want to puke, but there you go. We're all hypocrites.

So, we sat there, wrapped around each other. It was like we were in our own little world inside the real world, like one Russian doll inside another, everything just warmth and the stars, and the sound of the sea lapping at the hull of the yacht.

 

— Our country was made this way, said Farouz. Our language.

His fingers were interlaced with mine, brown and white.

— I'm sorry?