The Castle (7 page)

FOURTEEN

T
he next day, the yacht sailed on, and the seas grew more stormy. With nothing to read, no internet, and not daring to turn the TV on, I discovered that even a superyacht can get a little boring after a while. Very boring, in fact.

I thought about what I would do when the boat landed. Find Max, find Dad, escape. Somehow. I had no idea how. Max Wahool would help me. I'd just have to make it up as I went along.

I became obsessed with watching the ever-changing sky, which was the only thing that
did
change around here. At sunset, I was sitting on the bed, admiring the way the sinking
sun created a pale gold ribbon of light under the glowering clouds, when out of nowhere, a crewman appeared outside the window. He had bright white teeth to match his white sailing jacket, and wore sunglasses despite the gloomy weather. Behind them, he was staring right at me.

I froze. No breath to scream, no time to hide. He grinned and adjusted his shades to a nattier angle. Then he walked away. For a moment, I was rooted to the spot, before scooting – too late – to the blanket box. I waited in the stuffy darkness as the seconds ticked by, but there were no shouts, no running feet. Nobody came barging through the cabin door, searching for a stowaway.

Back in my hiding place, still gasping for breath, I tried to make sense of it all. It was as if the crewman had just been admiring his own reflection. Yes! He had! The windows must be mirrored on the outside. Even if they walked by, nobody could see me. Privacy glass. I liked it. I liked it very much.

I'd also learnt another thing. I'd been worrying that at any time the princess might come and find me in her cabin. Now, though, I knew I didn't need to worry – about the princess anyway. There was no princess.

Or rather, there was. The crewman's jacket had said
Princess Nazia
in smart blue letters, matching letters on the silk robes in the closet.
Princess Nazia
was the yacht. And she
was
magnificent: the best in her class.

The
Princess
sailed on for another day. I spent most of it sitting by the window, staring out at the stormy skies. By now I assumed we must be heading for one of Mr Wahool's properties in Miami or the Caymans. Where else could possibly be this far away?

The following morning, though, when I woke up
something was different. It took me a long time to work out what it was, but the hum from the engines had changed: it was lower and slower. The permanent vibrations I'd been feeling through the floor were almost gone. I wondered whether the boat had stopped, but then it pitched and rolled as it went over a wave.

I peered out cautiously into the bedroom: still empty. Outside, the sea was calm and the sky was a piercing blue. There was land ahead at last. Scrubby green hills with white houses on them and, near the waterline, white blocks of flats. This wasn't how I'd pictured Miami.

I could just about make out the crew calling instructions to each other as the
Princess
navigated a careful course between dozens of other boats. The place was packed with them, heading to and from the shore and lined up in neat rows. The
Princess
was bigger than all of them, and every single person on every other boat turned to check her out. She must look good, I guessed: sleek and elegant, but most of all, absolutely huge. From my hiding place near the top, it was like looking down on toy boats in the water.

It was time to hide again. At first I tucked myself up in the too-small steamer trunk, waiting for someone to come and unload the furniture, but when the pain got too much, I stumbled back to the closet and hid in the blanket box, where I must have fallen asleep.

When I woke up, the vibrations were back and the engine hum was higher. We were moving again. I risked a peek through the closet door into the room beyond. Still empty. We were sailing along the coast now, past other yachts decked out in fairy lights. I had no idea what we'd just been up to in the port.

*

That night, I found out. Not intentionally.

I was crouching down behind the bar, getting more snack supplies. It was two-thirty a.m. The saloon door opened and someone switched the lights on. I froze to the spot.

‘You want a drink?' a man's voice said. Steps moved across the carpet towards my hiding place.

‘No, Papa.' A girl.

The steps stopped. ‘What makes you so sad, my angel? When I saw you on deck, I thought your little heart was going to break.'

‘No, I'm fine, really,' she lied. I know when a teenage girl is lying to one of her parents. So this must be Yasmin Wahool. Oh my God. The Wahools were on the yacht now. ‘I was just thinking about . . . my party.'

‘It will be magnificent,' the man said. Emil Wahool. Ex-Finance Minister of Marvalia. The man who was holding my father prisoner. Standing only a few metres away from me. He resumed his steps and the floor shook as he got closer. ‘You will be sixteen. My little girl, sixteen. We will celebrate.'

In ten seconds he would find me, maybe seven. I looked around for somewhere better to hide and spotted a tall kitchen bin under the sink. In one quick movement I pulled it forward and crouched in its place. Any barman would notice it wasn't in position. I held my breath and listened to my own heartbeat while I hoped Mr Wahool wasn't overly familiar with bars.

White trousers appeared at the far end, and bare feet in white leather slippers. He selected a glass and a bottle and poured himself a drink. Whisky. I could smell it from here. Despite holding eight snack packets, I didn't rustle. Amazing how long a girl can hold one breath.

‘Ice,' he said. ‘Do you know where they keep the ice?'

I did. The fridge was right next to me.

‘No,' Yasmin answered, in a not-interested voice.

‘Aah. Don't worry. This is good.'

He walked away again. I breathed slowly and deeply.
Thump, thump, thump.
My heart, pounding.

‘About the party, Papa . . .' Yasmin said.

‘Ah yes! I have a present for you. Something special for your birthday. I was going to give it to you on the island, but tonight will do. You need something to make you smile.'

He pressed a buzzer and a minute later someone coughed politely from the doorway.

‘Sir?'

‘Get me Dixon. Tell him to fetch the box he's been looking after for me.'

‘Now, sir?' asked an English voice.

‘Yes, now. Is there a problem?' Mr Wahool's voice was suddenly sharp and threatening.

‘No, sir. Of course, sir. I'll get him straight away.'

The door closed. Mr Wahool sighed.

‘Some of the new servants have no manners,' he said. ‘I'm sorry, my angel.'

It was two-thirty in the morning and somebody was being woken up so they could fetch a
box
? Uh-oh:
the box he's been looking after for me.
That could be the box in the desk in my cabin. Maybe Mr Dixon was Muscle Man, and he could be heading there right now. I rapidly thought through the room. I'd tried to be careful: clothes in backpack; backpack in blanket box; blanket box shut; bathroom in immaculate condition. Had I forgotten anything? I didn't think so.

Yasmin began to speak.

‘Yes, Papa, but about this party . . . I had a new idea about the theme.'

‘You did? But I thought we agreed: Pirates of the Mediterranean.'

‘But that isn't even, like, a film or anything.'

‘No. It is “like” history. It is learning. The castle was built to defend the coast from pirates. And the Grandfather has approved the theme. He finds it . . . amusing.'

‘Sure, Papa. But it's not the Grandfather's party, it's mine.'

Yasmin sounded sulky. Mr Wahool padded over to her and made little clucking noises to reassure her.

‘I know! We will call it Pirates and Princesses. That is good, no? Girls will like it. Every girl wants to be a princess.'

‘No, they don't. That's so lame. It's like a six-year-old's party.' There was a pause, then her voice changed and sounded more caressing. ‘It's just . . . I was thinking . . . as the castle's in Italy, Papa, it might be nice to have the theme of
Roman Holiday
. It's so much more stylish and—'

‘Hmm.
Roman Holiday
. Let me think. Yes. I see what you mean. The Emperor Tiberius had a palace on Capri. We could do things with togas and grapes and so on. The Grandfather would enjoy it.'

‘I wasn't thinking that kind of Roman,' Yasmin said crossly. ‘I was thinking of Audrey Hepburn. You know? The film? She was a princess in that, actually, but she was pretending to be a normal girl. It's my favourite movie at the moment and—'

‘No, not that,' her father cut her off. ‘The Grandfather doesn't approve of Hollywood. No, we'll go with togas. It's historical. Your mother can be a Roman queen.'

‘But, Papa! I don't want a toga party for my sixteenth birthday! It's such a cliché!'

She was right. But her father wasn't listening.

‘It's decided,' he said. ‘The Grandfather will be delighted.
You are very honoured that he is coming to your party. And soon . . . well, soon there will be lots more parties, I promise you, my angel. Parties like the old days.'

‘I hated the old days!'

‘Don't say such things!' Mr Wahool's voice rasped, but at the sound of a subtle knock, it turned instantly to velvet. ‘Ah! Here he is. Come in, Mr Dixon.'

‘Good evening, sir. I have what you requested.'

I smelled it straight away. Even at three-thirty in the morning, he was wearing lemon-scented aftershave. Muscle Man walked across the room. I shrank further into the shadows.

‘Open the box,' Mr Wahool instructed.

There was a rattle, a click, a pause.

‘Oh wow,' Yasmin said flatly. ‘Diamonds.' I had never heard anyone say that word with so little interest. She wasn't even trying.

‘Two hundred and eighty-nine, to be exact,' her father said proudly. ‘It's a historic piece, made for one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters. It was recently sold at auction by a duchess. I had the stones reset, of course, to suit you, my little princess. A special present from your papa for your birthday. Isn't it lovely?'

‘Lovely,' she said. The same way I'd say ‘lovely' if you asked me to admire Jason Ridgeway's googly-eye impression.

‘Put it on.'

There was a bit of fiddling.

‘It's exquisite,' Muscle Man said in a deep, respectful voice, like he used the word ‘exquisite' a lot, and meant it, which I doubted. ‘Perhaps you'd like to see for yourself, Miss Yasmin?'

He must have indicated the mirrors behind the bar,
because Yasmin walked over towards where I was hiding. She remained on the far side of the copper counter, staring at herself in the mirror with serious dark eyes. I watched her reflection. If she'd glanced down she might have seen my eyes glinting in the darkness. But instead she focused on the total bling area around her neck.

There were so many big diamonds they looked fake to me. I was more interested in her face, which was bare of make-up, tousle-haired, very beautiful and quite miserable.

‘Thank you, Papa,' she sighed.

She turned away, glittering in the light. I almost felt sorry for her.

So we'd been picking up passengers today, and that made things more complicated, but much more interesting. I'd learnt more in those few minutes than in all my other days on the boat.

Yasmin said she was tired and went off to bed, and her father soon followed. I waited long enough to let Muscle Man put the diamonds back in their place, heard him take the lift down to another floor, then crept silently back to my cabin. (I was starting to think of it as ‘my' cabin now.) I practically fell inside and sank down with my back to the door.

Made it, Dad. Not sure how, but somehow I made it.

Those white leather slippers . . . They'd come so close I could almost have touched them. That sour whisky smell . . . If Mr Wahool had glanced down even once, I'd be in some dark hole at the bottom of the boat by now, locked up where no one would ever find me. And yet here I was. I'd never felt so alive. I felt sharp and bright, like diamonds.

I ate two packets of pistachios to celebrate, and thought about our new destination.

Italy. It was obviously a lot further away by boat than I thought. Luke said that Mr Wahool had bought an island there: ‘
I bet it's mega.'
Well, if this boat was anything to go by, it would be.

Was I wrong about Dad being in London? Could he perhaps be in this castle they mentioned? Was he a prisoner, like the Count of Monte Cristo, maybe? Dad and I read that story years ago.

Yeah, right, Peta. Your supposedly dead dad is really being held captive on a MEDITERRANEAN ISLAND and he's going to come back as some kind of fake aristocrat and get his revenge. Because that's how life works. IN YOUR STUPID, CRAZY HEAD.

One thing I was sure of: wherever he was, Dad was not bits of ash and bone, sunk by the rain into the scrubby grass around Winchelsea Church. I'd often wondered if he was in a monastery in Tibet or Bhutan or somewhere, leading some kind of spiritual life. Maybe he'd lost his memory. Maybe Dad had no idea he even had a family. Of course, that wouldn't explain me finding the kitten, but then nothing made sense about Dad . . . nothing at all. If he could be in Tibet, then why couldn't he be on this island?

I wasn't properly crazy yet, I realised, but I was pretty close. This whole ‘hiding out on the blingiest yacht on the ocean' thing wasn't helping.

FIFTEEN

W
hen I woke up the next morning, I looked out for the Wahools. I noticed Yasmin sunbathing on a spot near the front of the yacht, and I occasionally caught sight of Mr Wahool doing tours of the deck or talking to the crew, but I didn't see any other passengers. It seemed as if Yasmin and her father had been the only ones to join the boat.

When I'd given up on scanning the decks, I reconsidered the antique desk. It sat there in the cabin, big and dark and ugly. It was the reason I'd got caught in the van, because I'd spent too long trying out its stupid locked drawers. But what I'd forgotten since then was that Muscle Man had shown me
how to open those drawers. Maybe they
did
contain some information about the castle or Dad. Or just
something
to explain what was going on.

Muscle Man had produced a key from the one drawer that would open. There had to be a secret compartment in there somewhere. I opened the drawer again and felt around as carefully as I could. Eventually, by pressing every spot on the wood, centimetre by centimetre, I felt the shelf above the drawer give way to the pressure from my finger. A little box dropped down on smooth, oiled hinges. The key was inside, small and silver. I tried it in the drawer that held the diamonds. It worked: there was the box. But that was locked with a key I didn't have. I put it back again with a sigh.

Afterwards, I opened all the drawers one by one. Most were empty, or contained loose bills for work to the house in Eaton Square, generally for many thousands of pounds. I read each piece of paper and put it back exactly as I found it. Nothing remotely mentioned Dad, or a man called ‘Mr Allud'.

There was one paper I rather liked, though. It wasn't a bill, but a proposed list of costs for Yasmin's birthday party. They included fifty thousand euros for flowers, twenty thousand for food, a hundred thousand for champagne, the same again for musical fireworks, and a
million
for ‘entertainment' (unspecified, but several famous pop stars were mentioned, with question marks after their names). When Mr Wahool said ‘celebrate', he wasn't joking.

There was also, I was pleased to see, a chocolate fountain. Because you can't have a decent party without a chocolate fountain, can you? That was priced at two thousand euros, but I knew of several places near Rye where you could get one much cheaper. Although not, admittedly, musical fireworks
or Rose Ireland and her backing band.

In one of the bottom drawers there was also a sample invitation for the party itself. It was being held at ‘Castello Rodolfo, Isola Sirena, Italy' on the twenty-first of July. So in about two weeks the castle would presumably be full of teenagers in fancy dress, drinking champagne (maybe that was legal for teenagers in Italy? Or maybe the people on the island just didn't care?), listening to music and lounging by the chocolate fountain, talking about their Ferraris, taking pictures of themselves and posting them on Interface. I popped the invitation into my backpack as a weird souvenir. I needed some sort of proof that I'd ever been in this place.

The day wore on. I got bolder and madder. Some of the excitement from not being caught last night still hadn't worn off. While I pictured the party at the castle, I couldn't resist trying on some of Yasmin's dresses. I swapped my trousers and vest top for a series of frothy cocktail dresses, posing in front of the full-length mirror near the window and admiring myself in the beads and feathers. Or sort of ‘admiring'. Yasmin Wahool was much taller than me, and bigger in the chest department. Also the bottom department. Most of the dresses were probably designed to skim her thighs, but they came down to my knees.

I ignored this, and my dirty, messy hair and freckles, and danced around barefoot to music in my head. Despite me, the dresses moved with their own innate grace. They were possibly even worth the thousands of pounds it said on the store labels that were still hanging from some of them.

It was getting dark. I was in a yellow fringed number that said ‘Crow Lamogi' on the label, when I heard footsteps in the corridor outside.

No? Really?
Now?

As the door flew open, I disappeared behind a curtain, which was the closest thing to me.
Seriously, Peta, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
I had no idea if they'd seen me. Thank God I'd kicked my normal clothes into the closet. All I could do was hold my breath and wait.

‘It's OK,' a voice said. Yasmin. ‘This is my mother's room. They're using it to store some stuff from the London house. No one comes here.'

I sensed that my bare toes were peeking out beyond the hem of the curtain. Slowly, carefully, I scrunched them in.

‘Somebody's been here,' a deeper voice said. My heart was pumping.

‘Really?' Yasmin asked.

The other person laughed. ‘Look at this!'

If I looked at the window, I could just about see their reflections. Yasmin was with a young man, wearing the crew uniform of navy and white. He was thin, with the beginnings of a beard, and he was holding up an empty cashew nut packet. Oh no. I'd been eating the last of them as I pranced around in the dress.

‘Huh, servants stealing,' Yasmin grumbled. ‘They do it all the time. So . . .' her voice became low and seductive, ‘. . . you saw me last night. Why did you want to see me again?'

She didn't care about the nuts: she was flirting with this man. She was prettier than ever when she flirted. She looked safe. And happy. So did he.

‘I want to see you all the time,' he said. ‘Why d'you think I got the job on this boat? I hate the sea!'

‘You must be a very good liar.' Still flirting. She moved closer. She was only wearing a simple vest and shorts, with bare feet and no make-up, but she looked a million times
more amazing than I did in her dresses.

‘I'm an
excellent
liar,' he laughed. ‘For you. But however well I lie, I'm not going to see you tonight. We're having a party in the mess. They'll notice if I'm gone.'

‘A party? The crew aren't supposed to have parties. Not when we're on board.' She sounded piqued. When she wasn't focused on him, there was a touch of the princess about her.

‘Shhh,' he giggled. ‘Don't tell anyone. But it's the last night of our maiden voyage. We have to celebrate.'

‘And you'll be celebrating without me.'

She pouted. It worked. He lifted her face up towards his and kissed it.

‘I'm only here because of you, and you know it. There's something I wanted to give you.'

He pulled a slim box out of his pocket and put it in her hands. She waited while he opened the lid, and gasped slightly at what was inside. Whatever it was, it was way more precious to Yasmin than two hundred and eighty-nine diamonds.

He took out a slim gold chain with some sort of charm on it. She lifted her long hair and turned round so he could put it on for her. Then she ran over to the mirror to admire herself. He followed and, stuck behind my curtain, I couldn't see even their reflections from here.

‘It's beautiful, Nico. I'll wear it all the time,' she said.

‘Don't! Your father will guess.'

‘He won't. I'll tell Papa that Mama gave it to me, and Mama that Papa did. They never talk to each other, so they'll never know. You're the only one who's ever cared about me, Nico. I wish . . .'

‘Well, we can't. Your dad would never let us.'

She sighed. ‘I know. But I won't take this off, I promise.'

He moved in closer and I guessed he was giving her a hug. Then I heard a slurping sort of noise and realised it was more than a hug. I waited. Places I'd rather be right now . . . plenty of places.

‘When will I see you?' she asked eventually.

‘Whenever you come to the boat.'

‘I'll come every day.'

‘Don't make it too obvious.'

‘It's Papa's new toy!' she said. ‘He'd be surprised if I
didn't
come. But when can I see you alone?'

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I'm sorry, baby.'

Eugh. He called her ‘baby'. She seemed to sob into his chest, and then there was more slurping. I took my mind off it by admiring the lights on the distant coastline.

After a couple more minutes he left, and soon afterwards, checking that the corridor was empty, so did she. I sank to the floor in a puddle of relief.

So I wasn't the only girl on this yacht with a secret life. Interesting.