Captive (10 page)

A flush of adrenaline surges through me. I knew Dad would sort this. Everything is going to be okay.

‘Terrorists seek to destroy the fabric of our society and put in its place chaos, destruction and fear,’ Dad continues. ‘They will stop at nothing until their ends are met. The
fact that they believe that taking children hostage is a viable way to promote their cause is testimony to this.’

‘This is utter bullshit,’ Scar says. He leans over the back of the sofa; his bowl lies discarded on the table, pasta sauce crusting on its edges. ‘Your father is full of shit,
you know that, Princess?’ His fingers slide under my hair and up the back of my neck.

I jerk forward.

‘Scar, sit down over there,’ Feather orders.

Dad is still talking. He mentions the video I made in which I demanded the release of Kyle Jefferies. He brands him a terrorist. In fact, he is talking a lot about terrorism and how it must be
stamped out. ‘We must work together to ensure the safety of this entire nation.’ He holds his hands out, palms up. It is a gesture he often uses. It is supposed to be non-threatening
and to invite friendship and cooperation. I was in the room when the speechwriter first suggested it. All my dad’s speeches are written for him, carefully and elaborately scripted by a team
of people. He oversees them and makes suggestions, of course, but he doesn’t write them. He wrote this one, though, didn’t he? He wouldn’t let someone else write the speech that
could save his daughter’s life. Would he?

‘Terrorism cannot and will not be tolerated.’ He bangs his hand firmly on the podium and, for a moment, the speech feels like a performance. Almost as though Dad is going through the
motions. But for who? For the cameras? The AFC. For
me
. Why go on camera at all, looking cleanly shaven and neat in his suit and tie, like his daughter being kidnapped is a press opportunity
to prove that he is a good man in a crisis? He doesn’t look at all like a man whose daughter has been kidnapped. He looks like the prime minister, using an opportunity to talk about
terrorism.

Stop it, Robyn. Stop it.
He is the prime minister. Of course he needs to be in control.
I
need him to be in control; that’s what will bring me home. But why hasn’t he
just given the AFC what they want? Release Marble and this will all be over. In a few hours I could be back at Downing Street, with Mum and Addy and Shadow. Any second now he’ll say it.

Instead he says, ‘I want to say this to the people who are holding my daughter: Let Robyn go. Give yourselves up. This is not the way to get what you want. I will not be bribed, cajoled or
bullied. This is a futile mission. Let her go now and we will be lenient.’ His right arm on the podium, he stares deep into the camera. It is another of his ‘moves’, and is
designed to make the viewer feel like he is speaking directly to them. And right now, he is speaking directly to me and saying that he will do anything but the one thing that will secure my
release.

Dad’s speech is finished. His press secretary opens the floor to questions. I can’t believe it. Why hasn’t he agreed to the terms? The words
‘This is a futile
mission’
roll around in my mind.

One reporter shouts out, ‘In the video the AFC posted online, Robyn demanded the immediate release of Kyle Jefferies. Will you be doing that?’

‘I want to make it absolutely clear that we are doing everything we can to bring Robyn home,’ Dad says.

‘And that includes allowing a known terrorist back on to the streets?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Dad falters. He takes a sip from his glass of water – something he’s been taught to do when he needs to think about his answer. It’s a
stalling tactic. But why does he need to think about this answer? Of course he is going to release Marble. He has said he will do anything to bring me home. Dad replaces the glass on the podium.
His hand trembles as he does so. ‘I want to make it clear that Robyn’s safety is our first priority. We are in contact with the terrorists and we are working through a plan to bring her
home. But Britain has not, nor will it ever be bullied or blackmailed by terrorists. These people will release my daughter or they will face the severest consequences.’

The other journalists all ask variations of the same question. After a while the press secretary intervenes, ushering my dad back inside. The door to Number 10 shuts behind him. I feel numb as
Feather switches the TV off.

Scar says what we are all thinking: ‘Looks like somebody’s not daddy’s little princess, after all.’

My mum cried on the afternoon of the election results. It was shortly before the car came to collect us and take us to our new home at Number 10. She’d gone upstairs to
put on her face. It’s always a big photo opportunity and the advisors had picked out an outfit for Mum especially. I’d followed her up to her room. Dad wasn’t back from Buckingham
Palace and the house felt oddly empty, as though we’d already left it. As I walked into the master bedroom, Mum sat frozen at her vanity table, one hand on her enormous belly. My baby sister
was due in four months. I could see that Mum’d been crying. She picked up her hairbrush when she saw me, like she wanted to hide the fact that she’d been sitting staring at nothing.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’ She waved me away with the brush. ‘Hurry up and get dressed. The entire nation won’t want to be kept waiting by you.’

I didn’t leave. Instead I sat down on the bed, next to the neat blue twinset that had been laid out on it, and fingered the pearl button on one of the cuffs. ‘Everything’s
going to be different now, isn’t it?’

She didn’t answer. She was rubbing her stomach.

‘Is she kicking?’

Mum smiled. ‘Your new sister is going to be an acrobat. Come here. Come and see.’

I crouched down beside her and put my hand on her tummy. ‘Ha. There. That’s brilliant.’

Mum stroked my hair off my face. ‘Your fringe is always in your eyes. It’s a shame. You’ve got such pretty eyes.’

‘I have Dad’s eyes.’

Her mouth pinched. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, you do.’ She stroked my hair absently for a while longer. Normally I would have pulled away, but I was scared that day. I knew
there would be loads of cameras waiting for us on the ride to Downing Street, and I already felt homesick. Mum said I could decorate the new room however I wanted. It didn’t matter; it still
wouldn’t be home. ‘Your father’s a good man deep down,’ she said as if she were answering a question. ‘He loves you very much. No matter what happens, I want you to
remember that.’

‘Are you getting divorced or something?’ The parents of a couple of girls at school had split up. I didn’t want that to happen. Also it seemed like really bad timing as Dad had
just been made PM.

Mum must have thought the same thing because she laughed. ‘That would not fit with your father’s election promises. This is going to be a big change for all of us, but for your
father most of all. He will be in charge of a whole country now. An enormous privilege and a great responsibility. You – we – will come first in his heart, of course, but sometimes Dad
may have to make choices . . . difficult ones . . . that we may not agree with or understand. He may not always be able to explain them to us.’

I hadn’t known until this moment what Mum had meant or why it had made her sad. Dad had squirmed on camera because he was lying when he said they would do anything to bring me home. All he
has to do is release Kyle Jefferies; it’s that simple. Surely the police could just recapture him again as soon as I’m safe?

But a part of me knows it is not that easy. How can the British government be seen negotiating terms with kidnappers? It would make Britain seem vulnerable. If I’m being honest, I have
half known this all along. I just didn’t want to believe it. I was sure Dad would find a way to bend the rules. This is me. His daughter. Despite Mum’s warning on election day, I always
believed that no matter what, I would be his priority. Before politics. Before his job. Before his ambition. Even though he has missed parents’ evenings and my GCSE art show and Addy’s
third birthday and my twelfth and fourteenth – when it mattered, I was sure that he would stop being the PM for as long as was needed, and he would just be Dad.

The patches of light and dark on the wooden floor of the living room form patterns like waves on a beach. I feel like I am sinking into that sand. Everything I knew about my dad and his beliefs
– the absolute faith I have placed in him to do the right thing – is falling away. I feel unsteady in this new world. More is at stake now, though, than my relationship with my dad. If
Feather doubts, like I do, the sincerity of Dad’s promise to do everything he can to bring me home, then my life is worth nothing to her and she will kill me.

Feather is furiously pacing the room, her nostrils flaring. ‘He is making idiots of us.’ Scar flicks manically between news channels, hoping for updates, until Feather seizes the
remote control and flings it across the room. It lands between me and Talon. He has not moved since the news broadcast, but he sits forward now to place the TV remote on the table. His expression
is hard to read. If I had to guess, I’d say he is feeling sorry for me, like somehow he knows what watching my dad abandon me on national TV feels like. Which is ridiculous. And yet, despite
kidnapping me, I sense that he is a good person. I wonder, not for the first time, what brought him here.

Talon snatches at Feather’s hand as she passes, pulling her to a stop. ‘We need to stay calm,’ he says, looping his fingers with hers.

‘How can I be calm?’ she asks. ‘When my brother is locked up and they are doing God knows what to him! Robyn, it seems your little video wasn’t convincing
enough.’

‘She wasn’t scared enough,’ Scar says.

‘Hmm,’ Feather responds. ‘But maybe her father will be more willing to cooperate if
both
of his daughters have been taken hostage.’

I leap up from the sofa. ‘No! You can’t take Addy. Please. She hasn’t done anything. She’s tiny. She’s only a baby.
Please!
’ I say.

Talon’s voice cuts into my rising hysteria. ‘It wouldn’t work anyway. We’d never get close enough again. Security will have been stepped up like crazy. It’s a
miracle we managed it this time. Fee, we need to think things through. Stay calm.’

‘Will you stop telling me to be calm? It is really pissing me off.’ Feather goes over to Scar. ‘What do you think we should do?’

‘Kill her.’

You have no idea how you are going to react in certain situations until you’re in them. Until Scar said those words, I’d never really thought about what it meant to die, to no longer
exist. I’m sixteen years old. I can’t die. Why didn’t Dad just give up Kyle?
Oh God, I can’t die here. Not like this.

It is Talon who speaks next. His voice is steady, a thrumming muscle in his neck the only evidence of how tense he really is. ‘It’s kind of hard to bargain with a dead
body.’

He is arguing for me to live. Why? I don’t know, but it gives me a second to think. ‘What has the negotiator promised you?’ I ask.

‘Shut up,’ Scar says. ‘Who said you could speak?’

‘What are you talking about, Princess?’ Feather asks, ignoring him.

‘The person you are talking to about Kyle. The contact between you and my dad.’ My brain is turning over, fast. There must be a negotiator.

Feather nods.
Go on
.

‘He is the one who’ll be able to arrange stuff. Dad . . . Dad can’t admit to any secret talks on TV. That press conference would have been just for the cameras.’

Is that true? Could it really have been a performance, not for me, not for the AFC but for the rest of the world? Suddenly it feels like a possibility. A dangerous, stupid possibility but one
all the same. Of course Dad can’t be seen to be cooperating with terrorists. But a negotiator could promise anything in private. The thought gives me new confidence. ‘The negotiator is
probably getting ready to free Kyle right now. If . . . if you’ –
don’t say ‘kill’
– ‘hurt me, they won’t let you have your
brother.’

‘I’m aware of how an exchange works, Princess,’ Feather says coldly.

‘She’s talking crap. What does she know about this stuff?’ Scar says.

‘She’s his daughter. She knows him.’ Feather pauses, then says, ‘We wait. We kill her and we’ve got nothing left to bargain with. She lives, for now.’

Next to me, Talon sighs. In relief? Is that possible? The important thing now is that Dad is coming for me. He is doing everything he can to save me. He just can’t tell anyone about it. I
ignore the small doubt inside me. It is going to be okay. I
am
going home.

There is some more discussion between Scar and Feather, but Feather wins, as usual. She tells Scar, ‘Take her back to her cell. I’m sick of looking at her.’

Scar cracks his knuckles, but Talon stands up. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘I want to talk to you,’ Feather says.

‘We can talk later. You said we needed the girl.’

‘I’m not going to kill her,’ Scar says with a feral grin.

Talon ignores him and draws Feather to one side. He’s dropped his voice but I pick up the odd word: ‘Unstable . . . Need her. Safe.’

‘Fine,’ Feather says finally, ‘you take her back downstairs. Scar can prepare the camera.’ She turns to me. ‘We are going to make another home movie, Princess, and
you’d better hope they release my brother. Otherwise . . .’ She draws one finger slowly across her throat.

Feather says we will make the new film today. It is only my fifth day here, but time passes so slowly in this cell that one minute feels like three weeks. At times, it is as if
I have been here forever. All the things that came before belong to some other Robyn.

I am flicking through the book Talon gave me, because it is better than staring at the walls, imagining how my kidnappers might kill me if Dad doesn’t give them what they want. I have been
trying to think positively. To conjure up images of secret agents crashing through my window and knocking Feather out with a swift roundhouse kick to the head before leading me to safety. Those
thoughts are as delicate as smoke, though, and evaporate immediately. It is the visions of Feather pointing a gun at my chest that solidify inside my mind.