The Prisoner(15)

“Maybe it’s to do with the party? It’s only a few weeks away, isn’t it?”

“Even if it is, it can wait until tomorrow. He might be the boss, but I don’t want him to think that he can contact me out of hours. It’s one of those slippery-slope things.” She stood up, stretched her arms above her head. “How about we go and get pizza?”

“Good idea. As long as we don’t bump into Ned,” I teased, because their offices were just around the corner.

“I can’t imagine him eating pizza, so I think I’m safe on that score. Shall we invite Carolyn and Lina? Have an impromptu ‘family’ dinner?”

“Carolyn is out with Daniel tonight.”

“Then I shall phone Lina.”

But Lina was also going out.

“Although she didn’t say who with,” Justine said, raising her eyebrows comically. She linked her arm through mine. “So, it looks as if it’s just you and me.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


PRESENT

I’ve been dreaming of Papa. I don’t know where I was, in this room, or somewhere else, but he was standing next to me.

Well, Amelie, he asked. Which would you choose?

And I’d shaken my head and told him that I hadn’t decided yet.

I haven’t dreamt of Papa for a while, so I want to believe that the dream means something. And a memory comes flooding back, of me standing by his chair, and him asking me the same question.

“Well, Amelie, which would you choose?”

“Could you repeat it, please?” I asked.

“If I offered you a million pounds today, or I promised to give you a pound now, and double it to two pounds tomorrow and four pounds the next day, and eight pounds the day after, and carry on doubling each day’s total for a month, which would you choose?”

My heart leapt. “Has the money from the hospital come through?”

My father shook his head and my shoulders sagged.

“It’s just a hypothetical question,” he said.

I thought for a minute. “Would it be a month of thirty days or thirty-one days?”

“Would that make a difference to your answer?”

“It might, because if the doubling thing got to over five hundred thousand on day thirty, then it would come to more than a million the next day.”

He smiled. “In that case, let’s make it a month of thirty-one days.”

“Then I choose the doubling thing—as long as you promise not to die before the thirty-one days are up,” I added.

He laughed. “You’re a very clever girl, Amelie,” he said, patting my hand. “You’re going to be fine.”

Maybe the dream was an omen, maybe Papa was telling me that I’m going to get out of here.

I go to the bathroom, scratch an eighth mark into the wall. Today is Saturday, the twenty-fourth of August. My heart sinks; we’ve been here for a week. No one is coming for us.

I rinse the spoon I used for my porridge, walk six steps toward the main door, stop, crouch down to place the spoon alongside the other three. But I can’t find them. I shift on my haunches; maybe I’m not as close to the door as I thought. I stretch out my hand, find the doorframe, move my fingers downward to the floor. Nothing. But they have to be there, they always are. I sweep my fingers farther to the right. Nothing. I put my hand flat on the floor and move it around, searching frantically for my spoons. They aren’t there.

Shock rocks me backward onto the floor. The spoons were there yesterday, now they have gone—but when did they go? The man didn’t remove them when he brought my porridge; I’m certain of it. I heard him pick up the tray from last night and go straight out of the room. I would have known if he’d stopped, I would have heard the rattle of plastic as he put the spoons on the tray. But I hadn’t heard anything, which can only mean one thing. He removed them at some other time.

Frightened of what it means, I move unsteadily to my mattress, clutching the spoon to my chest, and sit down. I thought that this room was my room, my universe. But it isn’t. The abductors can come in whenever they want, they can come in while I’m in the bathroom, or during the night, they can remove spoons, watch me while I sleep, listen on the other side of the bathroom door. The knowledge is devastating.

The need to escape presses down on me. I push up from the floor, steady myself against the wall, walk to the window. My fingers find the board, I move my hands across it until I reach the left-hand edge, searching for the gap from the missing nail. I find it, feel for the next nailhead up. I try to grip it between my index finger and thumb, but it’s too firmly nailed in to be pulled out, even with my pajama top padding my fingers. Sliding a fingernail under the nailhead itself, I try to wiggle it. But I can’t pull it out. I try the other nails and by the time I’ve made my way around the whole of the board, I’m panting, and my fingernails are sore and broken. I blow air up my face. I’ll never be able to pry the board off, not without a tool of some kind. Which means that when I escape, it will have to be through the door.

But then what? The hall outside is kept in darkness, I know that because there is never the slightest glimmer of light when the man comes into the room. How will I be able to negotiate an unknown space in the dark? How would I get out of the house? If I turn left in the hallway, I’d be able to find my way to the door that leads to the basement. But what if it’s kept locked? If I were to find it open, and I went down the twelve stone steps and along the corridor to the door we came through eight days ago, it would probably be locked too.