‘The water would be very cold.’
‘You don’t want to escape because the water might be cold?’
‘I’m not sure. This is quite fun, don’t you think?’
‘No. Come on, Paul. We can’t stay here forever.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I thought you liked making things,’ she says.
‘So?’
‘You could make the boat.’
‘I’ll make the navigation system,’ he offers. ‘But I don’t do woodwork.’
‘No,’ she sighs. ‘I suppose you probably don’t.’
‘Why are you so desperate to escape?’ he asks her.
‘Why?’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Why?’
‘You ask the weirdest questions.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Paul says. ‘What’s weird about it?’
‘Well, we’ve been kidnapped. Why wouldn’t we try to escape?’
He smiles. ‘That’s what I’m asking you.’
‘No, you’re asking why we would try to escape.’
‘Well?’
Thea frowns. ‘I think it’s the logical thing to do. Anyone who’s trapped tries to escape. It’s a natural reaction.’
‘What have you got to go back to?’ he asks.
Thea thinks about the old people’s home: the banana purée, Countdown and diarrhoea. Then she thinks about the sweaty, smelly arcade and the elderly out-of-season tourists sitting at the one-armed bandits all day, waiting until it’s their turn to go in an old people’s home just like the one she works in, but not even near the seaside. She thinks of the arcade game she’s just completed, and the one she was planning to start. She thinks of some friends she rarely sees, and the local film club she hasn’t attended for over six months. She thinks of the aerobics class she went to only once, and the boyfriend who dumped her three months ago. She thinks of evenings alone with freezer food that she has to eat on the day she buys it because she has no freezer. She thinks about her favourite TV programmes, less cool than the others’: Newsnight ; Modern Times; Late Review. She thinks of her foster mother, dying of cancer, and her real mother who she hasn’t spoken to in ten years.
‘Loads,’ she says defensively.
She can hear voices through the pipes. Everyone’s talking about university.
‘Shall we go through?’ Paul asks.
‘Sure. I’ll just put some food together for the others.’
‘OK. I’ll see you in there,’ he says.
Thea decides that a salad would be good; all this fresh stuff’s going to go off soon. She boils some rice while she sets out a plate of cold meat. Then she makes a salad from the stuff in the fridge. It turns out well: spinach, lettuce, green beans, olives, little bits of celery, radishes, tomatoes, cucumber and onion. In a separate bowl, she mixes tuna, sweetcorn, onion, cucumber, diced tinned tomatoes and the rice. Then she butters the last of the fresh, crusty bread and arranges all this on a tray. Then she finds six plates and six forks.
All the while she’s been listening to the conversation through the pipes. The others seem to be talking about some pretty sensible stuff now. The education thing has taken off as a topic. Now they’re talking about their degrees. And it’s funny, but from what they’re saying, it seems that they all got Firsts. Thea finds the candles, then picks up the tray and takes it through to the sitting room. They’re still talking.
‘Cool,’ says Bryn, seeing all the food.
‘Yum,’ says Emily. ‘Cheers for doing this, Thea.’
‘That’s fine,’ Thea replies. ‘Help yourselves.’
They all do. She lights the candles herself, then switches off the light.
‘I got a First as well,’ she says.
‘What was yours in?’ asks Emily.
‘Film Studies,’ says Thea. ‘What about everyone else?’
‘Maths,’ says Jamie. ‘But you all knew that already.’
‘Art,’ says Emily.
‘Art,’ says Paul.
‘English and Philosophy,’ says Anne.
‘What about you, Bryn?’ asks Jamie.
He looks uncomfortable. ‘Chemistry,’ he says.
Thea can’t imagine that this is true, or that he got a First, but she says nothing. Maybe it is true, but he certainly never mentioned it to her. In fact, from what he said to her, the highest educational qualification he’s got is a BTEC.
‘So we all got Firsts,’ muses Thea. ‘Any MAs?’
‘Yeah,’ says Paul.
‘You’ve got an MA?’
‘MSc actually,’ he corrects.
‘What in?’
‘Computer Programming,’ he says. ‘Why?’
She doesn’t say anything, but she can see a pattern emerging. She wonders why Jamie didn’t spot this connection in his research earlier on.
‘No one else with an MA?’ Thea asks.
No one says anything.
‘Why do you think it matters?’ asks Jamie.
‘We really are bright young things,’ says Paul.
‘Yeah,’ agrees Thea. ‘We are exactly what our kidnapper advertised for.’
‘Which means?’ says Bryn, through a mouthful of tuna salad.
‘Maybe we weren’t chosen for the reason we thought,’ says Thea.
‘What, revenge?’ asks Emily.
‘Or whatever,’ says Anne.
‘Mmm,’ says Jamie. ‘Interesting.’
‘Are there any clues in the house as to why we’re here?’ asks Emily.
Everyone looks uncertain.
‘All the survival food has to mean something,’ says Anne.
‘Yeah,’ says Emily. ‘It’s like someone else’s desert island fantasy.’
‘All that Spam,’ says Paul.
‘Yuck,’ says Thea.
‘All that horrible lemonade,’ says Anne.
‘It could be worse,’ says Jamie. ‘There could be no food or drink.’
‘At least there’s lots of wine,’ says Emily.
‘It’s as if the person who brought us here wants us to have a nice time,’ says Paul.
‘Yeah, maybe we won a holiday and didn’t realise,’ says Bryn sarcastically.
‘Maybe we’re in space,’ suggests Anne.
‘Nothing bad’s happened yet,’ says Emily, ignoring Anne. ‘Not really bad.’
‘Merely keeping us alive isn’t like giving us a holiday,’ Thea points out.
‘There are all the challenges,’ says Paul.
‘What challenges?’ asks Thea.
‘The electricity, the logs, all that stuff,’ he replies.
‘That’s true,’ says Emily.
‘Maybe the biggest challenge is how to escape,’ says Jamie.
‘Maybe someone wants to see how fast we do it,’ says Paul.
‘Yeah,’ says Anne really slowly. ‘Like a game.’
Something happens in the room. The word game suddenly doesn’t seem fun; it seems scary. It’s like when you have children singing in horror film soundtracks.
‘We still need clues,’ says Jamie.
‘Yeah, Scooby,’ laughs Paul.
Jamie gives him a look.
‘Are there any really obvious things we haven’t noticed?’ asks Emily.
Everyone thinks.
‘I can think of something,’ says Paul.
‘What?’ says Jamie.
‘Well, not something we haven’t noticed, but something we haven’t investigated.’
‘What?’ prompts Emily.
‘That little attic room,’ he says.
‘It was locked, though,’ says Thea.
‘Well, we’ll unlock it then,’ says Paul.
‘Let’s go,’ says Jamie.
Everyone gets up.
‘God, we are so the Red Hand Gang,’ says Emily.
Chapter Sixteen
It’s a bit easier to see everything now the lights work, although the one at the top of the house isn’t very bright.
‘It’s well dingy up here,’ says Bryn.
; ‘Scary,’ adds Emily.
There’s some giggling going on up above them.
Everyone’s going up the thin attic staircase in single file. Bryn deliberately stayed back, and it looks as if Emily’s done the same. The others seem excited.
Bryn’s never been that thrilled by this sort of thing. He’d be interested only if it was something that mattered, like breaking and entering for real. It’s not that he’s not interested in sussing out why they’re really here, but he just doesn’t feel like one of the gang. He still feels like they’re all little kids playing together, and he’s from the only DSS family in the neighbourhood.
Just as he’s thinking this, Emily tickles him and makes some sort of ghost noise.
‘You’re quiet,’ she whispers to him.
‘Mmm.’
‘Are you scared?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
Jamie’s leading the expedition party, and they’ve already reached the top.
‘How are we going to get in?’ asks Thea.
‘Got any plastic explosives?’ asks Paul.
‘Don’t start,’ says Thea. ‘Seriously. Any ideas?’
‘We could kick it in,’ suggests Jamie.
Someone laughs.
‘I could pick it,’ offers Bryn. ‘I’m good with locks.’
‘Really?’ says Jamie.
‘Cool,’ says Paul.
‘Up you go, then,’ says Emily.
As Bryn walks to the top of the stairs, he tries to remember if he has actually picked a real lock before. He thinks not. But regardless of this lack of knowledge, he’s still offered to do it. He’s an expert, right? No. But the reason he has claimed to be an expert lock-picker is because as far as the crew in Southend is concerned, he is an expert lock-picker. And it’s just out of habit that he’s opened his big mouth here.
The first time Bryn picked a lock, the door was actually unlocked at the time. No one knew this, not even Bryn. It was him, Tank, Gilbert and some bloke from Manchester called Craig, and they were trying to get into Gilbert’s house after he’d locked himself out one Friday night. They hadn’t even tried the door handle; Gilbert had been moaning all night that he’d lost his keys, so they’d just assumed it would be locked. Bryn had seen something on TV the night before in which someone picked a lock, and it was so cool that he fantasised that with a hairpin, or possibly a safety pin, and a bit of a wiggle, he could get in anywhere. And that night at Gilbert’s was his chance to prove it.
It’s hard to describe what goes through your mind when you actually believe you can do something you in fact can’t do. Bryn’s experienced the feeling several times, particularly when attempting any martial arts moves (too many Cynthia Rothrock and Bruce Lee films), intravenous drug use (Trainspotting) and tightrope walking (the circus on TV at Christmas). Each of these miscalculated attempts has left Bryn with a scar somewhere on his body, and put together have resulted in four hospital admissions, thirty-one stitches and a broken leg.
The problem is that the people who are actually experts always make whatever it is look so easy, and so you feel that all you have to do is attempt what they have done with the same I’ve-done-this-a-million-times-before attitude, the same smug expression and an identical air of expertise. That night at Gilbert’s, Bryn had assumed exactly the right look and attitude, cool as a cucumber, and claimed he’d need something like a hairpin to do the job properly. Tank and Gilbert were both gobsmacked that Bryn had any idea how to do this, and they both helpfully scanned the alley next to the house for something similar. They managed to find a grubby yellow pipe-cleaner, which Bryn examined for a good minute and a half before proclaiming that, ‘This might just do the trick.’ After a few seconds of wiggling it around in the lock, he thought he heard a click. He tried the door handle, and the fucking thing opened! Gilbert was really grateful, and Tank thought it was the coolest thing ever. He told Bryn he hadn’t known that he had those sorts of skills, and that some of his mates would be able to make use of them in some little plans they had brewing.
It was at that moment that Bryn realised he’d dropped the pipe-cleaner before he even started trying to pick the lock, and he was just so fucked (on about ten New Yorkers) that he hadn’t realised he wasn’t actually picking the lock at all. Gilbert and Tank never found out, of course, and after that it didn’t take long for everyone in the pub to hear about Bryn’s new skill. He got invited along on a couple of break and enters, the theory being that there’d be no actual breaking involved if Bryn picked the lock of whatever warehouse, factory or house whoever it was wanted to enter.
He felt like the fucking girl in Rumplestiltskin, required to keep turning straw into gold when he hadn’t even done it for real in the first place. And there was no funny little bloke in a funny little hat to help him. He just had to blag it.
The first couple of times he made something up about the lock being the wrong type, and threw in a bit of made-up technical jargon to explain why. Then, before the biggest break-in, when one of the blokes had helpfully got the spec on the kind of lock used on the door, Bryn deliberately cut his hand on a broken pint glass so he could claim that the relevant tendon wasn’t working properly. Each time he didn’t pick a lock, his crew (or whichever crew he was supposedly helping out) would find an alternative way of getting in, usually by smashing a window. But because Bryn’s descriptions of unpickable locks and strange security deterrents were so convincing, he ended up with even more of a reputation for being an expert lock-picker, without ever having picked any locks.
So that’s why he’s offered his services now. It’s just habit. Trouble is, no one here is on drugs, and when he fucks it up, it’ll be really obvious that he’s fucked it up. At least when there are drugs involved, you can improvise a bit. And there’s no way he can blag any technical bullshit with this lot. They’re all boffins. It would be all right if it was just Emily here with him, he reckons. She’s not really a boffin like the others. Of course, he’d most like to be here alone with Thea, although she’s not talking to him any more. He’d probably tell her the truth about not being able to pick the lock. Or maybe not. Anyway, it’s not very relaxing having all of them standing here looking at him like this. With all this pressure on him, and sweat starting to trickle down the back of his neck, he makes his way up to the door.
The first thing he does is fiddle with the handle.
Then he gets on his knees and puts his eye to the keyhole.
‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘Difficult one, this.’
‘What is it?’ asks Jamie, bending down to help examine the lock.
‘Has anyone got a hairpin?’ asks Bryn.
This is something he’s learnt. No one ever has a hairpin. And when no one has a hairpin, you can just tell them that it’s a shame, but this type of lock really requires the precision of a hairpin.
‘I’ve got one,’ says Anne, pulling one out of her hair.
Bryn takes it from her and immediately drops it.
‘Bollocks,’ he says. ‘I’ve lost it.’
Everyone looks at him.
‘I can’t do it without one,’ he says.
‘Here, then,’ says Anne. ‘Have another one.’
As she reaches up to her hair, he notices for the first time that she’s wearing them in little criss-crosses. The first hairpin came from the first criss-cross; the second is also coming from the first criss-cross, which now isn’t strictly a criss-cross any more. Bryn panics when he realises that since she’s got one whole criss-cross left on the other side of her head, and one hairpin in her hand, he’s got three more hairpins to lose. Reluctantly he takes the one she offers him, examines it for a few moments and then gets on his knees in front of the lock.
‘Can you really do this?’ asks Thea.
‘Should be able to,’ he says. ‘Unless the lock’s too stiff.’
‘Too stiff?’ says Paul.
‘Yeah. If it’s too stiff, the hairpin won’t be strong enough.’
‘I s
ee,’ says Paul. There’s a laugh in his voice somewhere.
Bryn wiggles the hairpin around for about three or four minutes.
‘Is it working?’ asks Anne.
‘Shhh,’ says Emily. ‘You’ll put him off.’
Eventually, Bryn gets up. His legs hurt from kneeling.
‘This is going to take a while,’ he says. ‘Shall I let you know when I’ve done it?’
There’s a noise from inside the room. It’s a tapping sound.
‘Hello?’ calls Jamie. ‘Is there anyone in there?’
Emily laughs nervously. ‘Like there’d be anyone in there, dummy.’
Bryn looks through the key-hole and sees nothing. There are no more sounds.
‘It was probably a bat,’ says Paul. ‘You get bats in attics.’
‘Euuugh,’ says Thea. ‘Can we go now?’
‘It might have been birds on the roof,’ suggests Anne. ‘You know, if there’s a nest.’
‘Whatever,’ says Thea. ‘Shall we go back down?’
Bryn’s pleased he doesn’t have to pretend to pick the lock any more.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Truth or Dare,’ says Emily, once everyone’s back in the sitting room.
No one seems to feel adventurous anymore.
‘You what?’ says Bryn.
‘Is that the game where you have to tell the truth?’ asks Thea.
‘Yeah,’ says Emily. ‘Or take a dare.’
Emily’s getting excited. Truth or Dare is her favourite game. It reminds her of teenage sleepovers, storms, new relationships, group holidays.
Jamie and Bryn have come via the kitchen store, so now there’s coal on the fire. It’s going to get very hot. There’s wine, cigarettes, glasses, ashtrays (well, saucers) in the room. Everything’s sorted. Emily’s back on the sofa with Bryn, facing Thea and Jamie on the other sofa. Paul and Anne are both sitting on the floor; Anne’s right in front of the fire, warming her hands, and Paul’s sprawled next to Emily’s sofa, propped up on one elbow, looking as if he might fall asleep.
‘How do you play it?’ asks Thea.
‘Haven’t you played before?’ asks Emily.
‘No. Well, maybe when I was in Isreal. I can’t remember.’
‘You went to Israel?’ asks Bryn.