The Prisoner(12)

“Hello! Dinner’s ready!” I called back.

“It had better be,” Carolyn joked. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

“It’s fish,” I told her, going into the hall. “I hope that’s alright.”

“Perfect.”

“Where’s Justine?” I asked, noticing she wasn’t with them. The four of us had dinner together every two weeks, on a Friday night, sometimes at Lina’s apartment, sometimes at Justine’s, but usually at Carolyn’s.

Lina pulled a face. “Ned needed her to do something for him. I think it’s just an excuse. But she said to start without her.”

“Is he still pestering her to go out with him?” Carolyn asked, moving to the kitchen and drawing a deep breath in through her nose. “That smells so good.”

“Yes.” Lina dragged Carolyn from the kitchen into the sitting room, and I followed them in. “And she tells him what she always tells him, that she doesn’t mix business with pleasure.” She folded her long legs onto an armchair and sat cross-legged. “That’s one piece of advice I can give you, Amelie. No office romances.”

Carolyn nodded. “She’s right, look where it got me.” She walked to the table, drawn by the candle. “What a beautiful scent! Amelie, you’re too kind.”

“At least you’re your own boss now,” Lina said.

“I know I’m better off without my ex, but it was hard at the time,” Carolyn replied, coming to sit next to me. “If Amelie hadn’t come along, I’m not sure where I’d be.” She turned to me and smiled. “You saved my life.”

“No, you saved mine,” I told her. “I could have ended up on the streets if it hadn’t been for you.”

Lina rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “Always this same argument. How about you agree that you saved each other?”

“No,” Carolyn said. “Because Amelie saved me.”

“No,” I said. “Because Carolyn saved me.”

We ducked as Lina threw a cushion across the room toward us.

Justine arrived as we were having dessert.

“That took a long time,” Lina said, raising her eyebrows. “What did Ned want?”

“A party.” Justine reached for her wineglass. “And to invite all the people that we’ve featured in the magazine, as well as those we’d like to feature. He wants me to help him organize it.”

Lina nodded. “Sounds good. Will we be allowed to go, do you think?”

“Yes, the staff will be invited, and we can bring a plus-one.” Her eyes danced as she looked across the table at me. “I don’t have a boyfriend so I can take Amelie. But I don’t know about you, Lina. It would be a shame if Carolyn couldn’t come.”

Lina sighed. “You know I don’t have a boyfriend, Justine. So yes, Carolyn can be my plus-one.” But I saw that her cheeks had flushed. Maybe Justine was right, maybe Lina did have a boyfriend.

“When will the party be?” I asked, feeling a buzz of excitement. I’d never been to a glamorous party.

Justine pulled her panna cotta toward her. “Not until late September. We need time to arrange it and for everyone to be back from their summer breaks. Ned wants to make it a fundraiser, with the proceeds going to the Hawthorpe Foundation. I wanted to tell him that his father will never accept it. But I want to keep my job, so I didn’t say anything.”

“Why won’t his father accept it?” I asked.

“Because Jethro Hawthorpe doesn’t approve of the way Ned lives his life.” Justine glanced across at Lina and they exchanged a look I couldn’t quite read. “I’m not telling Amelie anything she can’t find out from the internet. Everyone knows that he didn’t intend for Ned to inherit vast amounts of money, which is why he invested it in the foundation instead.”

Lina leaned toward me. “Jethro had another son, but he died from a drug overdose.”

“She doesn’t need to know about that,” Carolyn reproached, and I loved that she was so protective of me. But I was intrigued.

Later, when Lina and Justine had left, and Carolyn was in bed, I googled Jethro Hawthorpe and discovered that after the death of his eldest son, he created the Hawthorpe Foundation to help fight drug addiction, and donated almost all of his money to it. If some of the more salacious articles were to be believed, Ned resented what his father had done and appealed to his doting grandfather, who changed his will in Ned’s favor, bypassing his own son Jethro. He then conveniently died when Ned was twenty-one, making him one of the wealthiest young men in the whole of the UK.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


PRESENT

I’m standing at the boarded-up window, my fingers working their way over the wood, feeling again for any weakness in its barricade.

There are twenty-four nails along the top and bottom of the board, and eighteen down each side, spaced about two inches apart. Whoever hammered them in was meticulous about conformity. I push my hair from my face and continue my search.

I find it halfway down the left-hand side—the nail that cut me, its head slightly raised. With a rush of adrenaline, I grip the tiny nailhead between my index finger and thumb, and try to pull it out. But I can’t get enough leverage.