Captive

by A. J. Grainger

  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 viewers 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 onto our 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 AFC, and we are working through a plan to bring her home. But Britain has not been, 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.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  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 advisers 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 had 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 your 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?”
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  “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.” She turns to me. “We are going to make another home movie soon, 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.

  I turn a page of the book. I don’t much care about birds, but the photographs are beautiful. I get a lump in my throat just looking at them. One of my favorites is of a bird with iridescent blue tail feathers, pecking at a red berry. I wish I could take photos like that. The description on the opposite page tells me it is a jay. “A colorful crow, about the same size as a jackdaw. Jays are sociable birds with the ability to mimic others’ songs. When out bird-watching, listen for a krar krar—this is their alarm call.” I turn the page. My namesake, a robin, its red chest puffed up, perches on a snowy branch. “Britain’s national bird. Their sweet song—twiddle-oo twiddle-eedee—often leads them to be mistaken for nightingales.”

  I glance over a few more pages, but I can’t identify the birds outside, and really, who cares? I push the book off my lap more forcefully than I mean to. It lands facedown on the floor. When I pick it up, I notice that the jay’s page is torn and crumpled. I flatten it out and then close the book, feeling sad. I’ve managed to ruin the one beautiful thing in this place.

  The door opens, and I push the book under the pillow. I don’t want Talon to know a page is ripped.

  Feather stands in the doorway, a pair of scissors clutched in her hand.

  She gives no explanation as she drags me from the cell and down the hall, into the bathroom. She doesn’t even bother to cover my eyes. She shoves me forward now, and I stumble into the bathtub. “What—what are you going to do?” I ask.

  “Just a little trim.” She snaps the scissors at me.

  “Of what?”

  “Your hair, stupid.”

  I snatch my hair up into a ponytail at the back my neck. As I do so, I catch a whiff of Mum’s shampoo, which I used to wash it on the day I was taken. The smell must be in my head; my hair stinks of grease and sweat. But I don’t want Feather to cut it. I wonder if this has anything to do with Talon standing up for me. It’s a fleeting thought, not full-formed, and it vanishes the second that Feather moves toward me with the scissors. Then my whole attention is focused on keeping her at bay and keeping hold of my hair.

  She lunges and I duck, but not quickly enough, and the blade opens a thin cut down my arm. I don’t want to let go of my hair, so I only have one arm to defend myself. Feather may be tiny, but she is strong. It quickly becomes clear that I’m no match for her. She tugs on my forearm, her skinny fingers digging into the graze and making my eyes sting. She forces me to sit on the edge of the tub, and she jabs the point of the scissors into the hand holding my hair until I let go. Then she wrenches my head back.

  A moment later, I hear a snip and feel a tug on my scalp. My hair falls to the floor in a ribbon.

  “Why?” I whimper.

  “To show we’re serious.” Feather stands up and puts the scissors in her pocket.

  Long dark strands of my hair lie scattered across the bathroom floor. I grab a handful of it and try to stand. I have to use the sink to steady myself. It’s like I’ve been beaten. Hands trembling, I touch my head, so gently, like it is a wound. I can’t bring myself to look in the mirror. I duck my head automatically, but there’s no curtain of hair to protect me. The hair in my hand is soft and I loop it around my fingers. I never realized before how much my hair was a part of who I am.

  Feather smiles at me. “You look like a soldier now. You look ready for the revolution.”

  • • •

  My cell is a TV studio again, only this time it is not Scar operating the camera. A small remote in Feather’s hand does that. Oh, and this time I won’t be talking. My mouth is gagged and I am bound to a wooden chair. The lamp is also back, and it’s pointed right into my eyes. Every time I turn my head out of its glare, Feather pushes me back into it. She could have tugged me by my hair, but there isn’t enough of it left now. Not after she hacked it off this morning. That scene in the bathroom keeps playing over and over in my mind. Every time Feather moves too quickly, I flinch.

  Feather has been talking for what feels like hours. A muscle over her upper lip is ticking rhythmically, like the countdown to something. She is angry. Her voice i
s as powerful as a river in full flood. I think of something Dad once told me, what some previous PM had said about a fanatic being someone who can’t change their mind and won’t change the subject. Feather talks about corporate greed and the devastating effect humans are having on the planet. She talks about social injustice and surveillance and corruption and complicity and revenge. She talks about illegal drug testing, not just on animals but sometimes on humans, too, in poorer countries where people turn to trials in a desperate attempt to get themselves and their families the drugs they need or even just to earn some extra money. She talks about a million other things too, but I am losing focus. A lock of my severed hair is still wrapped around my fingers, and I keep stroking it over and over. In my mind, I am at home on my bed with Shadow. Stroke, Kitty. Stroke, Kitty. My brain is foggy. It won’t cooperate like it usually does. That scares me. I can’t fall apart. I am all that I have in here.

  Feather goes on and on. “You seek to demonize us by labeling us as terrorists because we are threatening your status quo—your world of inherited wealth and privilege. We are not the enemy of the people, though. We are their salvation. A revolution is coming, Mr. Prime Minister. We will live together in harmony on a planet that we seek to care for and sustain, without harming any of its creatures or resources in the pursuit of our own ends.” Feather shakes me by the neck like a dog. “Do not make your own daughter the first sacrifice in the coming war. Give me back my brother. Save your daughter’s life.” From her pocket, Feather pulls out something shiny: a strip of silver in the lamplight.

  A knife.

  Oh my God.

  I shriek into the gag as she slices one of my wrists free from the bindings that were holding it to the chair. Her fingers dig into my skin, and she doesn’t let go, no matter how much I struggle. “And if you don’t cooperate,” she snarls at the camera, “I will send your daughter back in pieces. You can have the first piece now; let’s call it a show of good faith.” And as the knife rips into my index finger, I open my mouth and scream.