Captive (2 page)

Still, he taught me a bit about photography, so not all bad.

Addy’s princess doll is lying on the floor by my bed. I pick it up and put it on the table, bending its legs so it can sit on the edge. The doll smiles a smug smile at me. This is the kind
of daughter the PM should have – a plastic one with neat blonde hair and a designer outfit for every occasion. The public think they know me because some fashion magazine is able to determine
that I buy my clothes from Topshop rather than Prada, and because some person we met once for a few minutes on a crowded beach in Morocco two years ago wrote a piece for the FeMail about ‘The
Real Knollys-Greens’. They called me the ‘shy and thoughtful elder daughter’, with a ‘stubborn streak’. ‘She knows her own mind’, the author wrote,
‘and she doesn’t always agree with her father’s policies’. I reckon the latter was because I was reading
Animal Farm
. It was for a school project, but the journalist
wouldn’t know that from the two second conversation she had with me.

I take the shutter off my camera and snap a few shots of the doll, zooming in really tight to its face. There’s a potted plant on my dressing table and I position it in front of the doll,
poking my camera through the leaves to take a couple of ‘pap shots’. When I first started taking pictures, it amused me to photograph the paparazzi who were snapping photos of us. They
did not like it. After one photographer got particularly nasty, Dad suggested I stick to taking photos of inanimate objects like trees and flowers. He said they tend to be ‘less
sensitive’.

The door to my bedroom opens and Dad comes in, a tie in each hand, a magazine tucked under one arm. He looks tired, but then he always does these days, especially after meetings with Michael.
‘Ah, here you are,’ he says. ‘I need your advice. Red or yellow?’

The red, a near-crimson, against his white shirt, is too much like blood on snow. ‘Yellow,’ I say quickly.

‘Jolly good.’ He drops the red tie and the magazine on my desk chair so he can wrap the yellow one around his neck. His jaw sets in pain as he rotates his shoulder. I wince and Dad
immediately smiles reassuringly. ‘Just a twinge.’

‘Did you take your painkillers this morning?’

‘Yes, Nurse Robyn.’ He pushes the end of the tie through its knot. ‘Straight?’

I nod, glancing down at the magazine.
Science Today
. One of the headlines reads ‘Bell-Barkov’s landmark kidney drug Amabim-F given international go-ahead’.

‘Did Michael bring you that?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ He can see I’m lining up for another question, so he quickly changes the subject. ‘Are you nearly ready for the off? Your mum wants to be there by lunchtime.
Gordon informed me that two armed police officers on motorcycles will escort you.’

My heart thumps in my throat. I am worried about travelling up to Cheshire. It’ll be the longest trip I’ve taken since we came back from Paris.

Dad reads my expression. ‘You’ll be fine, Robyn. You need to be brave, my darling.’

I wish everyone would stop telling me that everything is going to be okay and that I need to trust the security services. The truth is
I’m
scared. I can’t stop thinking about
what happened in Paris. Dad nearly died that day.
I
nearly died that day. The world is not safe. I know that now and I can’t
un
know it, however much people might tell me to.

‘You’ll take the car to Whitehall again today, won’t you?’ I ask. Before the assassination attempt, Dad used to walk to parliament. I dread the thought of anything
happening to him again. He doesn’t look after himself the way he should. He’s too busy thinking about other things, like running the country.

‘Of course. “Keep buggering on”,’ he says, quoting Winston Churchill. He always quotes other people when he wants to avoid talking about something. Familiar worry lines
spring up on his face, and I know I’m right. He’s concerned too, but he’ll never admit it. There’s anxiety in his eyes. They are the exact same shade and colour as mine.
Everything else about me is my mum’s: long dark hair, pointy chin and freckles, lopsided nose. But my eyes are my dad’s. ‘Chameleon eyes’, Mum calls them – sometimes
green, sometimes brown and sometimes almost golden. They change with the seasons and our moods.

‘Have you said goodbye to Poppy?’ Dad asks, smiling more broadly than the question warrants.

‘No,’ I snap, irritated that Dad is pretending everything is okay, just like everyone else is. Then I instantly adjust my tone. Dad has enough worries. He doesn’t need me
adding to them. ‘I’m going to see her now.’

‘Well, best get a move on. You’ll be leaving in twenty minutes.’

Number 10 and Number 11, where the chancellor of the exchequer lives with his wife and daughter, Poppy, are joined by interconnecting doors. Poppy is nearly seventeen like me. We
didn’t know each other vey well before we both moved here four years ago, but we’ve got really close since then. She is the only one who gets what it is like to live in this place,
protected, guarded and constantly watched. It’s odd to be so important and yet so utterly ignored. My safety is everyone’s priority, but no one is really interested in me. Unless I do
something wrong, of course. Then a lot of people are very interested.

Poppy is reading a book on her bed when I come into her room, her legs propped up. (Someone told her this would prevent varicose veins. I told her she didn’t need to worry about that for
at least another fifty years, but Poppy said she didn’t care. Her legs are her best feature and she intends to keep them that way.) She puts the book down as soon as she sees me.

I take my camera out of my shoulder bag and Poppy immediately shrieks and covers her face. ‘Don’t take any photos of me! You always give me a big nose.’ She fingers her perfect
little button nose.

‘It’s a camera, Poppy. It just records what it sees.’

‘No. It’s the angles you use. All odd and distorted.’

‘Is that the technical term?’

‘Shut up. You know what I mean.’

I sit next to her on the bed.

‘Are you going to be back for Millie’s party on Saturday?’ she asks.

‘Probably not. Mum wants to come back late Sunday evening.’

‘Ed might be there.’

‘Yeah and so will Cassandra.’

‘She’s a cow, isn’t she? I mean, she knew you two were . . . Wait, what were you two doing? I mean, aside from taking pretentious arty photos.’

‘Art is my life, Poppy. There is nothing for me beyond that.’

She laughs, as I meant her to. ‘You could get the train back. I’m sure Mum would pick you up from the station. Unless you don’t want to go?’

‘I hate those parties. There will be people we don’t know there.’

‘Oooh, scary.’

‘And they always stare at me, or think it’s hysterical to give me double shots so the PM’s daughter ends up more hammered than anyone else.’

‘I’ll be there. I promise to guard your drink and not let anyone else touch it.’

‘I just don’t fancy it. Besides, Dad’s really fussy about where I go now.’ That’s not true. Dad wants me to move on and stop worrying. It’s me who
doesn’t want to go out so much.

As usual, Poppy reads me so well. ‘You can’t hide forever,’ she says.

I lift the camera to my face and take a snap of the corner of her room, where the shadow of the curtains creeps across the floor like a huge hand. I switch to black-and-white. If I get the shot
right, the picture should look like a still straight out of a Hitchcock movie. ‘Watch me.’

‘I’m the chancellor’s daughter and you don’t hear me complaining.’

‘Only because no one actually knows what the chancellor does, including half the cabinet. Dad’s always saying, “What does that chap next door do again?”’

‘Oh, funny!’

I take the picture and then let the camera fall back into my lap. ‘I hate it here, Poppy.’

‘Only one more year to go.’

‘And then five more, when he runs again.’

‘He might not.’

‘Can you imagine my dad doing anything else?’

‘He must have. He’s only been PM four years.’

‘And he spent the eighteen years before that preparing to be PM. Let’s face it, I’m stuck here.’ I glance across the Downing Street garden and over its high walls at
Horse Guards Parade. The early-bird tourists are already lining up for the first changing of the guard. A shadow moves at the corner of my eye and I jump, but it’s just Poppy.

‘He’s locked up,’ she says gently. ‘He can’t come after your father again.’

‘But if not him, then someone else—’

There’s a knock on the door and Poppy’s mum sticks her head around it to tell me that the car is here.

‘Have fun in Cheshire and stop worrying about everything. It’s all going to be fine,’ Poppy says. ‘And come back for the party on Saturday night. You’re in danger
of becoming a total loser.’

I give one last nervous look out across the grounds and into the world beyond, then force a smile. ‘I’ll try. And, Poppy,’ I say at the door, ‘say cheese!’ I snap a
picture and dash down the corridor to the sound of her yelling. ‘I hate you, Robyn Knollys-Green! You better not post that online anywhere! I haven’t got mascara on.’

Ben is the police officer on duty out front today. He steps aside to let me out of the front door. ‘All ready for the trip, Miss?’ he asks. The door opens again
before I can answer, and Addy dashes out, barrelling into my legs. I catch her around the waist and swing her upwards. Mum and Dad are right behind her. ‘You’ll take your pills,
won’t you?’ Mum is saying. ‘Every day, Stephen.’

‘How is it, Eliza, that you trust me to run the country but not my own life?’

‘You care about the country,’ Mum says.

Dad turns to Ben. ‘Do you hear this? I bet you don’t get this at home.’

Ben smiles politely but Mum’s jaw tightens as she grits her teeth. ‘So I suppose you’ll survive without us for a few days?’ she says.

‘“Liberty is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed on mankind.”’ Dad grins. ‘But I shall miss you, my love.’

Mum steps back from his kiss, screwing her face up. ‘Stephen, darling, I’ve just done my lipstick.’

Dad kisses Addy instead, taking her out of my arms and then lifting her above his head, making her giggle. After giving her to Mum, who makes a big fuss of smoothing out the imaginary wrinkles
in her dress, he turns to me. ‘You’re a bit big to fling in the air. Be safe,’ he whispers, hugging me. It’s brief but for a sudden I’m caught up in the familiar smell
of his aftershave and I’m protected, in a world where the shooting never happened. When he steps back, the April breeze whips up my spine. Dad and I haven’t spoken much about what
happened in Paris. Mum says this is unhealthy, but she wasn’t there. Remembering is bad enough. I don’t want to give words to the memories as well.

‘Look after my family,’ Dad says to John, the special ops driver, who nods and replies, ‘Like they were my own.’ I want to make Dad promise me again that he will take a
car to parliament, but there’s no time and I know he won’t want me making a fuss with all these people around.

Addy is whimpering by the time I get in the car, straining against her seatbelt and kicking her little legs up and down. She’s going to be restless the whole way to Cheshire. Dad pats the
car door like it’s a horse’s flank. ‘Send my love to Granny and Grandpa. Bye, my darlings,’ he yells as we drive towards the gate. I turn to wave, but he’s moved back
to stand on the step and all I can see is his headless torso.

A man is standing on an upturned crate outside the mini supermarket by Westminster tube station. His arms are spread wide, his head angled towards heaven. His mouth opens and
closes with inaudible sounds while behind him a poster flaps in the strong breeze. ‘Be vigilant. Report any suspicious behaviour.’ He is one of the religious nuts, the ones who believe
that the global financial catastrophe five years ago was an act of God. We were being punished for worshipping the false idol ‘Money’.

The car takes a right at parliament, passing Westminster Abbey, and drives along the north bank of the River Thames. I gaze back across at the murky brown water and Westminster Bridge. It would
make a good photo: the bare black trees stencilled on the dead grey sky, the bridge disappearing behind the fog, the water punctuated by the light splattering of icy rain. If only my camera
weren’t in my bag in the boot of the car. I make a square with my fingers and hold it up to the window.
Click. Click
. Shift the angle as the road curves with the river.
Click
.
I’ll have to remember this view for when we drive back.

Addy, Mum and I are spending the rest of the Easter holidays at Groundings. I overheard Mum saying to Dad that she thought a break from London would be good. She didn’t say whether she
meant it would be good for me or for her. She and Dad haven’t exactly been getting along recently – or ever really.

Addy is sleeping now, murmuring to herself as she always does. I stare out of the window at the sky that is as blank as a dead computer screen.

Mum flicks on the radio: ‘. . . a judge this morning refused to grant bail for Kyle “Marble” Jefferies, the man accused of the attempted assassination—’

Mum switches the channel.

‘Leave it,’ I say. ‘Please.’

‘Robyn, you know all of this,’ she says gently, but she turns the radio back to the BBC. I worry more when they try to keep things from me.

‘. . . shots were fired at the PM and his eldest daughter as they were fleeing a hotel in Paris in January of this year, following a bomb threat. A small radical anti-capitalist and animal
rights group, Action for Change (the AFC), of which Jefferies is a member, claimed responsibility for the attack. Jefferies maintains that he worked alone, but experts believe it likely that a
number of people were involved.

‘The PM is believed to have been targeted because of his long-standing friendship with Michael Bell, the head of the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company, Bell-Barkov. The company has
come under attack from these extremists before, with Bell and his staff receiving death threats over their use of animals in laboratories and drug-testing practices.