Just My Luck Read online

  “Too late for that,” he bites back.

  “No, I didn’t mean we needed cover,” I mutter impatiently. “Of course not, but my point is if it’s a business, then...” I quickly add a few more words to the search engine. “Look here!” Jake swiftly walks over to where I’m sitting and bends over me to read the screen. For a moment I feel it again, the old intimacy between us. I feel shored up, hopeful. Perhaps I can lean on him. Perhaps we can make it through this. But then Jennifer and Fred crowd around the screen, too, and the intimacy is loosened, lost. I push on. “There are companies that say their aim at all times is the safe return of a kidnap victim, that they can help with that.”

  Yes, there are specialists. I should know that by now. There are specialists for everything: accountants, lawyers, florists, image consultants, party planners. Whilst planning the party I learned there are people who make a living out of being hummus specialists, balloon sculptors and adding edible glitter to jelly. Of course there are people who specialize in safely returning your kidnapped child. It’s just a matter of money. And we have money. “We should get in touch with these people.” I click on the link, but again Jake stops me.

  “Just wait. Don’t do anything rash. We have to research these sites. How do we know we can trust these people? They might be scam artists.”

  “We don’t know if we can trust them, but as our daughter is currently bound and gagged God knows where, we have to do something.”

  “Let me do some reading,” offers Jennifer. It’s an eminently sensible suggestion under normal circumstances—due diligence and research before employing someone is a good plan. I want to stab her. We’re so far from normal circumstances. She is close at my side, her hand hovering over the mouse. I realize she’s expecting me to relinquish my control of the laptop. I’m not sure I can. So much seems outside of my control, I need to cling to this. Jake puts his hands on both my shoulders, gently helps me to my feet and leads me away from the laptop back to the kitchen table. He guides me into a chair, and when I resist, the pressure exerted increases fractionally. I flop into the chair and he releases me. The moment he does I leap to my feet. “I can’t just sit here.” I rush into the hall. All eyes are on me. They look concerned and a bit exasperated. They are looking at me as though I’m a crazy woman, but they are the crazy ones, just sitting here, accepting this, waiting.

  “Where are you going?” demands Jake.

  “I don’t know, I need to be out there. To comb over the party site again. I need to find her.”

  “I’ll come with you,” says Fred. I nod, grateful, willing to enter another truce with him even though he collaborated in the seizure of my phone. People are not queuing up to help me, and I’ll take what I can get. I am aware that it should have been Jake offering. Jake who wants to be with me, hunting for his daughter.

  Instead, he says, “I can’t imagine it will do any good, though. If we are dealing with professionals, which I think we are, they are hardly going to have left a big arrow pointing to where they’ve gone.”

  “We have to do something!” I scream.

  At that moment my phone buzzes. We all rush back to the table. I’m the most determined. An animal, I snatch at it first and answer. “Hello.”

  “Have you called the police?” The voice is not recognizable. Whoever is speaking sounds like a robot. I remember from some spy film or other that you can get apps and devices that can be attached to your phone that disguise your voice. I could be talking to a man or a woman, someone with a posh London accent or someone speaking in a second language—it’s impossible to tell. I curse the person with the mind dark and clever enough to invent this app.

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “Don’t, or else.” The mechanical way the threat is delivered in no way diminishes its power. I don’t need to know what the “or else” is. I can imagine it, but still—in order to underline the point—I hear my daughter yell out in pain. Her voice is not disguised. I don’t know what caused her to yell. Did they hit her, kick her, pull her to her feet by her hair? Worse? I start to cry. Jake impatiently gestures to me that I should hand over the phone, but I just move farther away from him, glad the table is between us and he can’t snatch it from me again.

  “We want ten million pounds.” The robot again.

  “Okay.” It doesn’t cross my mind to argue the point. I’d give them every penny I won and every penny I had before the win. I would.

  “Bank transfer. We’ll send details. When we have the money, we’ll tell you where she is.”

  “Okay.”

  The line goes dead.

  CHAPTER 38

  Emily

  I don’t know how long I have been here. I’m too terrified and disorientated to be able to keep track. I wish I could sleep, let some time pass without this horrendous, impossible to describe fear, but I can’t sleep. I am trying, really trying, to stay calm. That’s what Mum and Dad would want. If they were here, they’d tell me it was going to be okay. They’d tell me I am brave and strong and that it will all be over soon. Mum would be the one to say, Don’t think about the pain, Emily, don’t anticipate it, you make it worse. Try to think about something else. That’s what they said when I had to go to the doctor for injections or had to visit the dentist. It’s almost laughable that I was once scared of those things. Now I see that those things are nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all. I also see nothing is laughable and that maybe it’s not all going to be okay.

  I wish my mum and dad were here.

  Where are they? They will be coming for me. I know that. I cling to that. They will come for me soon. They will have called the police and there will be a massive search for me already underway. Mum will be insisting that helicopters with big beaming lights scan the dark night, Dad will be walking through fields searching for me with gangs of other people, too, everyone who came to the party will be looking for me. We have friends, we have resources, they will find me. I listen hopefully for the sound of a helicopter engine or my dad calling my name. Nothing.

  I think we are in a barn or farm building of some sort. The ground is uneven and doesn’t feel tiled or wooden, it feels like earth, but I can’t be sure because I’m too woozy—shock, drink, dehydration, plain old-fashioned terror. All this combined has left me confused, unsteady. I’m sitting on a hard plastic chair, my arms tied to it behind my back and my legs splayed, tied to each front leg. The rope is thick and hurts my wrists. I am freezing cold and my feet have gone numb. I’m parched. When they tied me to the chair, they took off the tape from my mouth.

  “Don’t scream. No one hear you. I hit you if you scream. I hurt you. Understand.”

  I nodded. I understood. Totally. Still, I thought as soon as they take the tape off, I’ll scream, but ripping off the tape was so painful I didn’t scream, I was too shocked. Stunned. Then there was a moment where a plastic bottle of water was put to my lips. I chose the water over yelling. It wasn’t really a matter of choice. It was about survival. Instinctually, I gulped it down, a lot of it running down my chin and neck. Before I’d had enough, the bottle was snatched away. “Make a message for your mother,” one man instructs in a heavy Eastern European accent. “Mum, Mum, please. Do what they say. I’m frightened, Mum, please.” I didn’t get chance to say any more before they gagged me again, this time with a scarf. The thin fabric of the scarf means I can breathe a bit better than I could through the tape, but it holds my mouth open unnaturally, cuts into the edges of my lips. I think my mouth is bleeding.

  No one has interacted with me since then. Maybe an hour ago, maybe four or five. I don’t know. I can’t tell. From time to time, I can hear the three men talk between themselves. They don’t say much. I think they are waiting for something. I gather at least one of them is playing a game on his phone because intermittently he throws up a small cheer and the other men laugh at him.

  They are playing games. I am shaking, bruised
, bound.

  I try not to panic or, you know, despair. I think I finally understand that word as I fight it. I used to use it a lot with Megan when we were about thirteen. “Megan, I despair of you!” I’d say if she, like, mucked up her eyeliner or something and we’d both laugh so hard. Now I know what despair might mean. What if my parents can’t find me? What if these men are going to rape and kill me? That’s like, what men do, right? I feel my body tremble so violently I make the chair rattle. I don’t know if it’s cold or fear. Both are ripping through my body, squeezing every internal organ. The rope on my wrists and ankles rubs painfully.

  No. Stop. I can’t think that way.

  They play games, that makes them human, right?

  Or maybe just psychopaths. Maybe they play games and then rape and kill.

  I think that most likely I have been kidnapped for money. If these men were going to rape me, they would have done so by now. But they are waiting for something. A message from a boss, word of a drop-off. I allow myself a moment of hope. They won’t hurt me if they want money for me. Then I hear movement. They are coming closer. All three at once. They are untying my feet, my hands. I should run, fight, kick, but pins and needles, numbness—something—stops me. I collapse like a sack of potatoes. I hate my body for not being as strong as my mind. I don’t want to give in, but I have no ability to fight. One man picks me up. I start to cry. No, no, no. He throws me, like I’m a doll, and I land on a mattress, on the floor. The mattress is thin and cheap and as I land, I feel the impact of the ground underneath. No. No. Please no.

  One of them takes my right hand and ties it to something solid. I pull, but there’s no give. I can’t sit up. I can only lie down on the mattress. I scramble about, thrashing, wriggling, trying to dodge them, but I don’t know how, I don’t know where they are. They are not touching me yet. Just watching me I suppose. Checking I’m secure and can’t escape. I realize I am wetting myself. I try to clench and stop, but it just comes, I feel it on my thigh. A warm gush. The smell of ammonia.

  “Piss, piss,” yells one of the men. I can hear his disgust. Neither of the other two responds. I am crying, but the tears can’t escape, the tape on my eyes is so tight. I think I am going to go blind. I think I am going to suffocate. I am going to die rolling around in my own wee and maybe that’s the best I can hope for, dying now.

  Someone kicks me in the stomach. I scream and pull up my legs to protect my baby.

  CHAPTER 39

  Lexi

  Terror is leaking in, a drop at a time. Drip, drip. The clock ticktocks and the hours pass. Now there is enough terror that we can drown in it. No one suggests we change into our pajamas, clean our teeth, get some sleep. I’m glad, because doing something so automatic and familiar and ordinary would be a betrayal. Ridley, Jennifer and Fred all nap for periods of time on chairs and the sofa in the kitchen. Every time they wake with a start, they look guilty, embarrassed that their frail bodies have overwhelmed them with the need to sleep. They rub their eyes, mumble, “Any news?” As there is none, they fall back to sleep. I can’t blame them. Their being awake doesn’t help anything. I’m glad that Jennifer in particular isn’t hovering around Jake, looking concerned, patting his shoulder, squeezing his arm. I’m under such extreme pressure I don’t know how long I can continue to turn a blind eye to the way she searches for a connection with him, tries to assert her special place with him. Has she always been that way? How have I missed it for so long?

  Neither Jake nor I get a wink. I can’t stand the idea of sleep, the passing of the night and a fresh day because I want to halt time. Turn it back, ideally. I want her home now. But it doesn’t matter what I want. Some things can’t be changed. Time trundles on, insisting that now is later and later, further and further away from when I last saw her.

  Then and now. An unbridgeable chasm. Then, when she was in my care, when I had choices and chances. Now, this fresh hell. Jake and I stay upright on the kitchen chairs. A personal penance for being the sort of parents who lose their child at a party. We stare at the ceiling, the table, the walls—we can’t look at each other. If I did look at him, what would I see? I wonder. Fear, undoubtedly, but what else? Regret? Accusation? Jake aggressively rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm, as though he wants to scrape them out. The silence sits about us like a storm cloud, dense and heavy. Menacing. Foreboding.

  Eventually I force myself to break the impasse. Maybe I want to hear the thunder. “I wish I’d never won the lottery.”

  “Well, we did.”

  “But look where it’s brought us.”

  “It will be okay.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Jake stands up and walks over to me with real purpose. For a crazy moment I think he’s going to hit me. This makes no sense as he’s never hurt me physically. It makes much more sense that he puts his arm around me and pulls me close to him. Him doing so doesn’t offer the comfort I imagine he hopes it would. It just underlines the fact he hasn’t touched me since we discovered she’d been kidnapped. I breathe in the smell of his sweat and fear. The smell of human frailty. I could nuzzle into his neck, feel the warmth of him, be eased, but I think of Emily. Wherever she is, she has no one to console or support her. Allowing myself the luxury of being soothed by Jake is a betrayal. I break away.

  We sit in silence. Unable to think of a single thing to say to one another. Eventually, I say, “I’m going to check on Logan.”

  I nip upstairs and pop my head around Logan’s bedroom door to reassure myself that he, at least, is in his bed, sleeping like the proverbial baby. He is. Then I look into her bedroom. It’s crazy, but as I edge into the room, a tiny part of me imagines she’s going to be there, curled up, under her brand-new White Company duvet, waiting for me to talk about the party, to discuss costumes—whose was the best, whose was the worst? To gossip—who had too much to drink, who danced with whom? Although of course I don’t know the answers to most of these questions because I was at Toma’s party. I was not where I was supposed to be. I was not looking after my family. A wave of shame threatens to knock me over as my eyes scan the teenage girl debris that litters her room: abandoned clothes, glossy magazines, makeup, the cables of her hair dryer and curlers are tangled. The room is chaos even though she’s only lived in it a few days. I nagged her about it this morning. That thought nearly kills me. I can smell her hair spray, body spray and perfumes dawdling in the air. Ghostly.

  “I need to tell you something, Lexi.”

  “Jesus, Ridley, you scared me half to death.” I jump and turn to him. Actually, he looks scared half to death himself. His face is so pale it is translucent, and I can almost see the wall behind him. Normally, he’s one of those teens who is forever flush with a dewy tan that shouts hale health and happiness. There are dark clouds under his eyes, which are bloodshot with lack of sleep and crying.

  “Do you think Emily is okay?” he mumbles.

  “Well, she’s been kidnapped, Ridley,” I snap. “So not exactly, no.”

  He looks stricken. “I know. I just meant—”

  I soften. “I know what you meant. Do I think she’s okay under the circumstances?”

  “That’s it. That’s what I meant. Well, do you?” He stares at me hopefully. He wants me to reassure him, fix things. Take away some of his guilt and torment. I wish I could. I remember when he was a small boy, he was the last of the trio to give up his belief in Father Christmas. How they teased him. He asked me if Santa did indeed exist, or if the others were right. I remember his wide, bright eyes shining up at me and I told him he was right, the others were mistaken, they’d get coal for Christmas. I couldn’t resist his innocence, his need to believe. Now I find I can.

  “No, Emily is not okay. You saw the photo, Ridley. She’s terrified and in danger.” I know I’m punishing him for standing by when Megan beat her. For abandoning her. “We just have to hope we can get her home soon.”

/>   Ridley nods. Looks at the floor. “We did talk tonight. I wasn’t, I wasn’t—” He breaks off.

  “What weren’t you?” I ask, although I think I know the answer.

  He wasn’t very nice to her. He didn’t want her. “I wasn’t very supportive. Or brave.”

  “Brave?”

  He has color in his cheeks now; he’s flushing, embarrassed, stammering, nervous. “She told me something. She wanted my help, but I didn’t help her.”

  “What did she tell you? Had she been threatened? Did she tell you something that might be to do with this kidnapping, Ridley?” I’ve grabbed hold of his elbows. I don’t mean to, but I’m shaking him as though I’m trying to spill information out of him, like seasoning from a pepper pot.

  “No, nothing to do with that. She told me she’s pregnant.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Emily

  The men don’t rape me. They don’t touch me at all. Maybe because when I wet myself it disgusted them or maybe all they were going to do was move me from the chair to the mattress.

  I don’t know, but I lie still on the soiled, thin mattress and thank God I’m being left alone. Even though I’m hungry and thirsty, hideously uncomfortable, it’s better when I am left alone. I literally thank God. I pray. Something I’ve never done since junior school, and I beg and I bargain. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I want my old life back. The life before the lottery win, when I didn’t have designer clothes, or a cool house or holidays, but I did have a boyfriend, a best friend and no one wanted to beat me up or kidnap me. My life is so fucked up. It might get worse. It might even end. I don’t want to die. I’m too young. I have too much I want to do, and see, and feel, and be. I want my mum. Where are my mum and dad? Why aren’t they here yet? Will they come? I don’t want to die. The thought ping-pongs around my head, sending me mental with fear.