Hostage Three (9 page)

We moved as far away from the animals as we could. Already, one of them had shat on the mahogany slats of the deck. I could smell them, too, that sour, musky smell of animals that feed on grass.

— I make good curry with goats, said Felipe, who up till this point hadn't said very much.

—
Goats?
said the stepmother.

— Yes. It's quite sensible, if you think about it, said Dad. They don't have to worry about meat perishing, and the goats supply milk as well as –

— Oh, shut up, James, said the stepmother.

 

*

 

 

Later that first night
, when we were inside, there didn't seem to be any plan, or any sense of what we were meant to do. We asked Farouz if we could go to bed, and he shrugged and walked away, as if it were a matter of total indifference to him what we did. Even when he shrugged, I noticed how he moved kind of liquidly – not graceful, exactly, because that makes him sound like a dancer. More like someone comfortable in his own skin.

That struck me because it was so different to the boys at school, who didn't seem to have settled into their post-puberty bodies yet. The word people always use for that is
gangly
. But a lot of those boys weren't gangly – some of them were pretty bulky, or average size. They just didn't move like they knew their bodies very well. Or it was like their bodies had been made for some other mind to move into. Farouz, though – he moved like his body was a glove and his mind was the hand.

Tony had insisted on going outside to see what was going on, but he needed to lean on Dad's shoulder and Damian's to do so. He wasn't in terrible shape, but he wasn't doing well, either. He had gone quite pale. When we got back to the cinema room and had put him on the couch, I tapped Dad on the shoulder.

— Let's go and see if we can get him some painkillers, I said.

Dad nodded. He told the stepmother to wait with Damian, Felipe and Tony, then we went to look for Ahmed.

On the way, we passed our cabins. I was puzzled to see little paper signs with amounts of money written on them over the doors. I guessed the pirates must have stuck them there:

$500
on the door to my room.

$1,000
on Dad and the stepmother's door.

And, on the door to the bridge,
$5,000
.

I pointed them out to Dad, who splayed his hands out in an I-don't-have-a-clue gesture.

We found Ahmed on the bridge. He was watching the radar screen – I suppose he or Farouz must have known how to turn it back on, because I'd seen Damian surreptitiously turn it off when we were boarded. On it, a pretty big dot, glowing and bleeping, was slowly moving towards us from the east. I thought, that's the navy. And I was glad – it felt like the cavalry were coming to get us, which is pretty stupid in retrospect. You don't send commandos to liberate a yacht when there are men with guns on it. Too much chance of collateral damage, which is a polite way of saying that me and Dad and the stepmother and Damian and Tony and Felipe might get riddled with bullets.

— Hostage One, said Ahmed, when he saw us. Hostage Three. What want?

Ahmed was the only one of the pirates who wasn't wearing our clothes. He'd told them to return our stuff, though this seemed to be a slow process. Instead, he still had on some kind of Somali hooded cloak, a djelleba, apparently, that went down to his knees. He didn't wear shoes, but went barefoot everywhere, his feet surprisingly clean.

— We need painkillers, said Dad. For, ah, Hostage Four.

— Pain?

Dad thought for a moment. Then he mimed pain in his leg, clutching it and moaning, before going through the motions of swallowing a pill and sighing in exaggerated relief.

— Oh! said Ahmed. OK. We don't have.

— No, that's all right, said Dad. We have.

— You have?

— Yes. In the medical supply cupboard. If we can just take them . . .

I think Dad thought that Ahmed would let us go to the medicine cabinet and take what we wanted. Maybe he had some kind of idea of radioing for help, too, while we were at it. I could see it on his face – the desire to be a hero. But Ahmed wasn't an idiot. He lifted the VHF handset from in front of him and spoke some words into it. Someone gave a reply, and he hung it up.

— OK, he said. You show me.

We led Ahmed back down the corridor, down the steps towards the rear deck. We stopped by a recessed cupboard door in the wall, one you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it. This was the medicine cabinet. Mom, being American, would have called it a hurt locker, which seemed like quite a good name for the situation we found ourselves in. Locked up by people who could hurt us.

Dad opened it up and inside were rows of neatly packed first-aid supplies: bottles of pills, bandages, plasters, even hypodermic needles. Dad reached in and took out one of the pill bottles. He checked the label and put it in his pocket. Then, for good measure, he took some iodine, a needle and thread, plus a bandage.

— For? said Ahmed.

— Infection, said Dad. To clean. Yes?

Ahmed nodded. He had a certain expression on his face – of what? wonder? sadness? both? He raised a calloused hand and touched the things inside the cupboard, like someone might touch a holy relic.

— What is it? said Dad.

— Is medicine things, said Ahmed patiently, as if Dad were stupid.

— No, I mean, what's wrong? Are you OK?

Ahmed shut the cupboard. His brow furrowed in concentration.

— My children . . . when sick, I can give nothing. No medicine. Here, on yacht, is easy.

My stomach did a little flip. He had children? This guy with the scar on his face, and the AK-47? Well, of course he did. He must have been forty. Suddenly, and for the first time, I had a flash of what this yacht must look like to them. To people with no medicine to give to their children. With no shoes.

Then Ahmed's face went hard again, like it was clay that had come out of an oven.

— You tell captain we move tomorrow, he said.

— Move? I asked. I was thinking of the ship on the radar screen, the steady blip as it got closer; the navy coming to get us, I hoped.

— Move. To Eyl.

— Where is Eyl? said Dad.

— Is small town. In Puntland. In Somalia.

My heart sank. I'd been longing for land, thinking about the scary feeling of being adrift in wide, open ocean, and how nice it would be to see a beach. But I guess, in my head, it had been a neutral beach, not somewhere that made us even more powerless. Somewhere that we could . . . maybe . . . escape to. I'd been thinking vaguely of Robinson Crusoe, I realised, picturing us swimming away in the night, finding ourselves under palm trees, eating coconuts.

Somalia was not neutral. Somalia was home territory for the pirates. We could swim away, maybe, but not far enough away.

It seemed from the radar like there was a ship coming to rescue us – that was the irony – but we were leaving. Leaving to go to Somalia.

Like I said, the first time
the stepmother came home with Dad was after an office party. I have a feeling they thought they had hidden it from me, but I heard them, the giggling under their voices, after the taxi dropped them off at 3 a.m. This was, I don't know, months After.
Way
too soon, anyway.

The next morning, I watched out of the window as she sneaked out, then walked across Ham Common to the 65 bus stop. She was wearing purple high heels, a dark blue dress, and she was pretty. I remember being annoyed that she was pretty.

It wasn't long after that that my dad brought her home for dinner, so I could meet her. He'd mentioned her name a few times already, just casually – stuff she'd said or done at work. She must have been fairly high up, I suppose, for him to be spending time with her, but I never really asked what she did.

When she came, she brought me a CD and some expensive make-up. She stood on the porch and held them out. I didn't even have a CD player, just an iPod. She had blonde hair, and eyes so incredibly pale blue that it was as if you could see right through her head to the sky behind.

— I hope we can be friends, Amy-bear, she said.

I thought, don't use my name like that. I didn't even reach out for the presents until Dad dug his elbow into my ribs and I had to. A CD! It was a joke. She must have thought we were going to be best friends – it was like she got her idea of teenagers out of a magazine.

The whole time over dinner, she kept talking about bands, and TV, and male actors and stuff – to bond with me, I guess. It was just excruciating. And she kept putting her hand on Dad's arm when he made jokes, smiling at him. Like I couldn't see what she was doing – coming into our house, which was basically a mansion, getting her feet inside the door.

In the weeks that followed, Dad started taking down some of the photos of Mom.

And then came the day of the polo.

They weren't married at this point, so she wasn't the stepmother. She was just Dad's girlfriend, Sarah. She was, I don't know, thirty at the most. She phoned up one Saturday, and asked Dad, did he know that there was polo on at Ham Polo Club the next day, and had he ever been?

No, we had never been.

So, on Sunday, she turned up, wearing a big wide-brimmed blue hat with a kind of pouffe thing on it, like she was going to Ascot or something. And we all walked down the path that led from Ham Common to the polo field. I didn't want to go – I couldn't think of anything worse – but Dad made me. To get him back, I was wearing a torn vintage dress and Doc Martens.

Much as I hate to admit it, though, the start wasn't too bad. It was a sunny day, late April, the poppies and daisies out in the verges. We sat on a rug on the grass, on the far side from the stands, because Sarah said that was more like a picnic. I had no idea what was going on in the polo, but it was exciting, watching the horses galloping up and down, the men leaning over as they rode, almost to where you thought they would fall off, to hit the ball. We had a hamper, with all sorts of incredible food that Dad had ordered from the deli, and champagne – which Sarah insisted on pouring me a glass of, even though Dad objected. It reminded me of Mom, but in a good way.

I almost liked her in that moment.

But then one of the horses fell. It belonged to the orange and black team, whoever they were. There was no dramatic reason – it was turning, and it went down. I could tell immediately it was bad. The horse's head got kind of stuck under its own neck when it went down, and it took the whole weight of its body. I don't know if I'm just imagining this afterwards, or if I actually heard it, but I think there was a
crack
sound. The polo player managed to jump off just in time, but he hit the ground hard, too, and rolled.

Silence, from the crowd.

For maybe a couple of minutes, I thought the horse might get up. I could feel Dad tensely sitting there beside me. Sarah was clutching her champagne glass so hard her knuckles were going white, and I thought she might smash it. But the horse didn't get up.

Why didn't we leave? I don't know. It was like we were hypnotised, like we had to see it through to the end. None of us said anything for quite a long time.

Then Dad said:

— I think its neck might be broken.

— Why don't they get a vet? I asked.

No one answered.

The horse was kind of twitching. It was awful. One of the most awful things I have ever seen. The polo player was kneeling by it, whispering to it. Then, and it seemed like a long time before this happened, some official-looking people came with a sort of tent-like barrier with hinges, which they erected around the horse. This meant the people from the stands no longer had to look at it. Only, from our angle, we could still see it.

Yet we still didn't leave. We didn't drink any more champagne, and we didn't eat anything, but we didn't leave, either. A voice came over the tannoy, apologising for the delay, saying that the only on-call vet on a Sunday had been called.

— They don't have a vet here? said Dad, incredulous.

I checked my Chanel watch. An hour went past before a Land Rover turned up, with the logo of a vet's surgery in Reigate on its sides, and drove right up on to the polo field. A man with a leather bag got out and went over to the horse. He kneeled down beside it, palpated its neck, looked under its eyelids.

The polo player was young, I realised suddenly. Mainly because another man, who looked like him but older, turned up in a Mercedes, and went to stand with him just outside the barrier. The man put his arms around the guy whose horse had gone down, and I thought, that's his dad.

The vet stood up straight and walked over to them. He talked to the player for a few minutes, and then the player's dad gave him an even bigger hug. It was like watching a play that's being staged far away, where you don't hear the words, but you still know what's going on – the big stuff, anyway.