by Nick Lake
Farouz’s hand was holding his pistol, and it was smoking from the barrel. I didn’t realise they actually did that. He was standing in, like, a lozenge of light from one of the portholes, and there was a smile, or what looked like a smile, on his face.
He shot him, I thought dumbly.
I glanced at him again, and his smile was gone. Maybe I imagined it, I thought. Yes, I must have imagined it. He saved me, yes, and that meant killing Mohammed. And I was sure he hadn’t enjoyed it.
Wasn’t I?
When the yacht had stopped spinning enough for me to get to my knees and look up, Farouz was already dressed. I didn’t understand how he had done that already. There was a look almost of surprise on his face. I started to button up my top, but he shook his head.
— No, he said. This looks better. The tears, too. His voice came at me like underwater speech.
With trembling fingers, he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, then a lighter. He lit a cigarette. I watched the whole sequence, like it was the only thing I had ever seen. The tap of the packet. The cigarette falling out into the other hand, the faint pop when the lighter thrust out its little flame. The first deep drag, right down into the lungs, the smoke drifting out again through his nostrils.
— Jesus, I said, looking at the dead man.
— No, said Farouz, his face not moving, save for the wisps of smoke still curling from his nose. That is Mohammed.
I kind of half-laughed, but at the same time, I didn’t know if I would ever be able to stand up again.
— You were alone out here. He tried to rape you, said Farouz, as if explaining something to a child. It was lucky I came out for a cigarette.
— He . . . Right, I said, yes, as I understood that Farouz was creating our cover story.
That was it, that was all the time we had to prepare, because then Ahmed appeared, a look – of what? terror? anger? – on his face. I could see him taking in the whole scene, his eyes flicking from Mohammed, his head haloed in blood, bits of brain and skull scattered on the sunlounger, to me, in my torn top, my hands clutching at myself, to hold myself together, to cover myself. And to Farouz, standing there with the gun.
— Did he . . . ? Ahmed began.
— No, said Farouz. I came in time. Then he added something in Somali.
Ahmed nodded. Even then, I don’t know if he really believed it. In his face, there was no emotion at all. But what was he going to do? Secretly, he was probably pleased with the result. I’d seen him roll his eyes behind Mohammed’s back. The man had been imposed on Ahmed by people with influence, that much was obvious. He came closer to me.
— Are you OK? Ahmed asked.
— No, I said truthfully.
— I mean, did he . . . hurt?
— No, I said.
— Good, good. You precious, said Ahmed’s mouth. We do not want hurt.
Ahmed’s eyes, though. His eyes said nothing at all.
— No, I said again. No, he didn’t hurt me.
Ahmed nodded slowly.
— You don’t speak now. With Farouz. Never alone. Understand?
Something gripped my throat, something with long thin fingers.
— Yes, I said in a low voice.
Ahmed raised his eyebrows at Farouz.
— Yes, OK, said Farouz.
I could hear shouting from inside – I guessed that the guards were stopping any of the passengers from coming out. Dad, I thought. Shit. Dad.
Ahmed looked into my eyes.
— Your father – he began.
— I understand, I said. Mohammed grabbed me. He threw me down on the sunlounger, and that was when Farouz shot him. Farouz never touched me. Mohammed tore my clothes.
Farouz was translating, just in case, but Ahmed didn’t need it. He just put his hands together, like a prayer.
— Thank you, he said.
It sounded important.
It sounded like doing a deal.
Then, yes, Dad came out on deck, and he hugged me, and examined me. There might have been other people, too, the stepmother, maybe. I don’t know.
Only then did Dad see the stuff on my face, the man lying on the wood, blood pooling in the cracks, the way it had with the goat.
— What happened? he asked.
— I came outside, I said.
— Why?
— For a cigarette, I said. A flash of guilt passed through me. I was lying to him, saying something he wouldn’t like, but it was so, so, so much less bad than the truth, which might just kill him. Looking at my dad’s face, his grey hair and his crow’s feet, while the image of Mohammed’s body was still in my mind, made me feel a little sick.
— Jesus, Amy, he said. And then?
— Mohammed tried to –
— Mohammed?
— The one who took my watch.
— Oh, right. God, Amy. And . . . he . . . ?
— No. Farouz caught him in time.
— Shot him, said Dad blankly.
— Y-yeah, I said.
Dad turned to Farouz then. Dad looked shaky – I don’t know if it was from fear, or the blood, or both.
— You did this? he asked, pointing to the body, the blood.
— Yes, said Farouz.
You know in films when robbers are breaking in somewhere, and they loop the CCTV footage from a camera so that they can walk down a corridor without being seen? And the reason the guards realise is that they see a glitch, someone – a receptionist, say – flicking between sitting down and standing up, or whatever? That was what Dad looked like – one version of him was standing still, angry, and the other was taking a step towards Farouz.
Then he did take a step, and he shook Farouz’s hand.
Farouz looked down, surprised.
— Thank you, said Dad.
— Ah. You’re welcome, said Farouz.
I was only half-paying attention to this exchange because I was looking down at my hands. I guess I had been functioning on adrenalin up to this point, lost in the focused tunnel it made of the world, and now I was surprised to see that my hands were shaking. I mean properly shaking, like when it’s incredibly cold, compulsively, involuntarily. I stared at them, like they belonged to someone else and were complying with that other person’s nervous impulses, not mine.
Ahmed spoke in Somali.
— Mohammed dies a traitor, translated Farouz. A criminal. His family receive nothing.
— Oh. Er, good, said Dad. He turned to Ahmed. But what about my daughter? Your men are meant to be protecting us. You said it yourself. We are valuable. More valuable than the yacht.
When Farouz had finished interpreting, Ahmed made that sort of praying gesture again.
— I am sorry, he said.
— You realise, said Dad slowly, smiling to bring Ahmed into his circle, into his confidence. And in that moment he truly was a pirate, you could see he always had been one, and that was why he was such a successful banker. You do realise, don’t you, he said, that you can’t possibly ask for ten million now?
Dad was angry with me on some level, but he seemed to accept my story about going out for a cigarette – or find it convenient to accept it, anyway. The stepmother tried to have a conversation with me about it, which I’m sure Dad put her up to, since he was still treading on eggshells around me. It was excruciating. She talked about How I Felt As A Woman, stuff like that.
I didn’t know how I felt as a woman.
I didn’t even know if there was a name for what I was feeling. I was terrified of Mohammed, but it wasn’t quite fear, because he was already dead. I was scared, I suppose, of what could have happened, and at the same time I kept seeing, in my mind’s eye, the crimson explosion of his head, the blossoming of gore, the wrong stillness of his body. I was shocked, I guess, but it was a complicated kind of shock.
Pretty much straight away, Nyesh and Ahmed summoned us to the dining room to talk about the money. Dad and Tony and Damian got up to go with them. I looked over at Felipe, sitting quiet
ly in the corner.
— Take Felipe, I said.
— Sorry? said Damian, turning round.
— Felipe. He should go, too.
— But he’s –
— He’s a passenger on this yacht, I said. He deserves to be part of the conversation.
— Come on, Amy, said Tony. He’s a cook.
— Yes, I said. And by leaving him here, you’re making sure the pirates know that. You don’t think they’ve thought carefully about who might be expendable, who they might shoot first?
Tony paused.
— Amy, said Felipe. This isn’t –
I waved a hand at him.
— Think about it, I said to Tony. They didn’t know Dad owned the yacht. They’ll be worried they got other things wrong, too. It couldn’t hurt to cause them some doubt.
— She’s right, said Dad. How do they know he’s not a trusted advisor of mine?
— Well, said Damian, they’ve got the manifest, for a start.
— True, said Dad. OK. Fine. They know he’s a cook. But he can still come with us. It’s his life, too.
I caught Dad’s eye and nodded my thanks.
Damian beckoned to Felipe and he got up and joined them.
— You coming, too, Amy? said Damian.
— No, I said. I’ll leave the money stuff to you big men.
I don’t know why I said it so bitterly; I think I was still angry with him for lecturing me about Farouz.
— Fine, he said, and they left.
An hour later, they came back.
— Five million, said Dad. And we can do it soon. Tomorrow, possibly.
I was impressed, despite myself. Half off. We were also right back to where we had started.
— It was tricky, said Tony. Ahmed tried to argue that the whole thing with Mohammed shouldn’t lower the ransom. He said it just showed the danger we were in, so all the more reason to pay up.
— Yes, said Dad. But then Felipe pointed out that if Mohammed had . . . had hurt you, Amy, then the navy might have come down on them like a ton of bricks, so five million was actually a good deal. That shut them up.
I looked at Felipe, and he looked back, and I smiled.
One day left, maybe. It was a weird feeling. I think all of us had it. Like it was Christmas tomorrow, but there was also a chance someone might cancel it. And a chance that it wasn’t Christmas at all, but something terrible, like a funeral. I didn’t know how I was going to feel about leaving the yacht, about going back to my life. It would be nice to not have the smoke everywhere, the gobbets of khat on the ground, the stink of coffee, the danger.
But . . .
There was Farouz. And he was the smoke everywhere, he was the danger, and I knew it was going to hurt when we said goodbye.
Out there in the public spaces of the yacht the next morning, Ahmed and Farouz looked on edge. I don’t know if that was anxiety over the exchange, or them worrying about Mohammed’s family coming back at them, the reprisals that might take place when they got back to shore. I noticed that once Mohammed’s body left the yacht, there were no more shift changes, no more reinforcements from the land, almost as if they were afraid who might come aboard.
Finally, Tony announced that the exchange was going to take place at 6 a.m. the following day. Now it felt even more peculiar, the idea of going home. That things there had just kept on going in our absence – traffic lights changing, cars driving around, Doctor Who on a Saturday night. I’d thought that same thing when Mom died – how strange it was that the world kept on turning regardless. But now we were the ones who were gone, and that was even stranger. I didn’t know how I felt about it. There was a part of me, odd as it might sound, that didn’t want to leave, no matter what had happened to Mohammed, and even though there was a little voice in my head that kept whispering it was my fault that he was dead.
That night, I don’t think any of us slept. We all sat up in the cinema room, playing a game, which was: what’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home? For the stepmother, it was a bath. Felipe was going to hug his daughter and give her a kiss. Tony was going to get drunk. Damian was going to order steak and chips at his favourite restaurant. Dad was going to play golf.
And me?
I didn’t know. Nothing came into my head, nothing at all. When I got home, I’d be safe. But there would be no Farouz, no school, and still no Mom. Only, everyone was still looking at me, waiting for me to play the game, so I said:
— Well, I guess I’ll just catch up on TV.
Obviously that was the wrong thing to say because they all laughed, patronising, like I was an idiot.
After that, I went to the loo before going to bed – or trying to go to bed, anyway. As I was leaving the cinema room, Damian touched my arm.
— I’m sorry, he said. That whole thing with Farouz. I guess . . . I guess it was lucky he was there last night.
— Yes, I said.
— I was just trying to protect you, he said.
— I know. But I don’t need two dads.
Damian cleared his throat.
— No, of course not. His cheeks were quite red, and I was glad because that told me what I had suspected anyway.
Yes, he’d been trying to protect me. But he fancied me a bit, too. I mean, I wasn’t glad that he fancied me – it wasn’t like that. But I was glad that he had a weakness. There was too much power on that yacht, too much control. I didn’t want someone like Damian having any power over me, too.
— It’s cool, I said. Don’t worry about it.
I brushed past him.
As I came back into the room, the stepmother was waiting by the door.
— Everything OK with you and Damian? she asked.
— Er, yeah, I said. I thought quickly. I was just apologising, I said. For being a hard-ass about Felipe.
— You shouldn’t apologise, she said. You think Damian and Tony don’t know they’re getting big bonuses if we get out of here alive? Damian’s the captain and Tony’s paid by the bank. If you think about it, Felipe’s the only one who’s really crew.
I looked over at him, sitting a little aside from everyone else, and I saw that it was true.
— Shit, I said.
— Don’t worry about it, said the stepmother. You did what you could. And anyway, we’re nearly out of here.
— Yeah, I said, but I think she could hear in my voice that I wasn’t sure about it, and her face went all concerned, so before she could ask anything I went past her and lay on my bed of pillows on the floor.
You know when the world sort of shrinks to just the one thing you’re looking at? For me that night, it was the halogen strip light in the ceiling that was flickering at one end. I lay there, my head hanging back, and stared at it the whole time, not sleeping. When you’re waiting like that, it isn’t like it’s a long time. It’s like, in some way, the waiting lasts for ever. Like there’s a part of me, somewhere, that’s still looking at that strip light. I would almost believe it’s the rest of my life since that’s a dream, a blink of the eye, and I’m still just looking at that light. It’s hard to explain.
As I looked at the light, I thought and I thought about Farouz. Was I in love with him? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if it was possible to be in love with someone who had taken you hostage. Or maybe what I mean is, I knew it was probably quite easy to fall in love with someone who had taken you hostage. Because you got used to saying the things they wanted to hear, the things that would keep you alive. You got used to pleasing them, which meant you were always thinking about what they might think, about what was in their minds, instead of what was in your own mind.
That looks a lot like love, from a certain angle.
I didn’t like the idea of leaving the yacht, leaving him behind, never seeing him again.
I wanted to speak to him, I realised suddenly.
I wanted to see him, to say goodbye.
But I couldn’t. My dad would never allow it, and now Ahmed would never allo
w it, either. I lay there, feeling like a clockwork toy whose handle has been wound, but it’s being held down on a surface to stop it moving.
Then I thought of something.
— Dad, I said. Are you awake?
— Yes.
— Would you come to my room with me?
— What? Why?
— Well, I want to go to my room, but I guess that you’ll worry about me, and so I’m saying come with me.
— Why do you want to go to your room now, though? he asked.
— You’ll see, I said.
— What about the guards? said Dad.
— They won’t care. It’s the last night. And anyway, they still owe me.
— That’s true, said Dad.
And sure enough, when we opened the door of the cinema room, it was Ahmed standing there. When we said we wanted to get something from my room, he just waved us past casually.
In my room, Dad sat down on the bed, while I went to the wardrobe. I took the Mulberry case on wheels and I unzipped it, took out my clothes.
I lifted out my violin case.
— Can we go outside? I asked Dad.
He held my eyes for a moment.
— OK, Amy-bear, he said.
Outside, the air was cool. Unconsciously, I led Dad to the rear deck, and I realised it was because I didn’t want to be seeing Mohammed’s invisible body, lying there on the front deck. Maybe, I thought, that’s one meaning of the word ghost. Mohammed might not be there any more, his blood and brains might not be there, but if I went out on that wooden floor, I would see them, I knew it.
Up above, the sky was scattered with stars. I could see the Camel and the Pleiades, the dusty streak of the Milky Way.
The sunlounger, when I sat down, was damp. I felt the dew seeping into my trousers.
I took my violin out of its case, felt its wooden smoothness in my hands. It was warm, almost like it was alive, which I know is a super-stupid thing to think, but I thought it anyway. The bow almost jumped into my hand, wanting to be held, but I made myself put the bow down and apply some rosin to the strings, because the violin hadn’t been played for a long time and I didn’t want to hurt it.