Hostage to Fortune
Carolyn McCrae
Copyright © 2017 Carolyn McCrae
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador
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Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: 0116 279 2299
Email: [email protected]
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ISBN 978 1788033 770
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Thanks are due, as ever, to my husband Colin
for living with people he has never met.
Also to Jane Martin of Cabo Roig, Spain.
Without our visit to Jane and her husband Ian,
and without her comments and enthusiasm,
this would not be the book it is.
Also by
CAROLYN McCRAE
The Last Dance: Iniquities Trilogy 1
(Winner 2007 David St John Thomas Prize for Fiction)
Walking Alone: Iniquities Trilogy 2
Runaways: Iniquities Trilogy 3
Highly Unsuitable Girl
A Set of Lies
Her Parents’ Daughter
Second Strand
Contents
Chapter 1: Ryan O’Donnell
Chapter 2: Ryan Leaves Home
Chapter 3: Guy Cliffe
Chapter 4: Guy Leaves Home
Chapter 5: Guy Plans
Chapter 6: Guy’s Plans Progress
Chapter 7: Arjun Patel
Chapter 8: Arjun Leaves Home
Chapter 9: Skye and Fergal Shepherd
Chapter 10: Skye and Fergal Investigate
Chapter 11: Skye and Fergal Make Progress
Chapter 12: Diane Hammill
Chapter 13: Skye and Fergal Investigate Further
Chapter 14: Pat Bush
Chapter 15: Stratford Eden
Chapter 16: Barford Eden
Chapter 17: Diane Plans
Chapter 18: Stratford and Federico
Chapter 19: Guy’s Plans Change
Chapter 20: Wave and Jenna Freece
Chapter 21: Diane and Pat
Chapter 22: Skye and Fergal Research
Chapter 23: Pat Remembers
Chapter 24: Luis Jiménez Martinez
Chapter 25: Pat Confesses
Chapter 26: Fergal and Skye Research More
Chapter 27: Jenna Runs
Chapter 28: Guy Reviews His Plans
Chapter 29: Guy and Jenna
Chapter 30: Guy Lies
Chapter 31: Skye and Fergal Back Off
Chapter 32: Guy’s Endgame Begins
Chapter 33: Guy’s Endgame Concludes
Chapter 34: Gordon
Chapter 1: Ryan O’Donnell
The argument that Ryan O’Donnell picked with his father three days after his eighteenth birthday was not one of their regular, everyday, bickering rows where Ryan lashed out after being told to do something he had not done or being admonished for doing something he had.
This row did not end, as all the others did, with Ryan slamming doors and storming out of the house only to return a few hours later when he knew the row, if not entirely forgotten, would not be mentioned.
This argument was different from the many others as the words that were spoken by both men would not be forgotten as they set in motion a chain of events which could not be reversed.
That afternoon John could no longer avoid telling Ryan what he should, perhaps, have told his wife nineteen years earlier.
John had never set out deliberately to keep secrets from his wife, Chris, it was just that he had told her nothing about his life before they met because she had told him, on their second date, that what or who he had been before they got together was unimportant to her. Since she never knew he had been to university she could never ask why he had not finished his degree; and since they had never talked about any relationships they had had before they met she had never known whether any of them had been important to him.
As the years passed, and their son grew older and more inquisitive, John continued to say nothing about his past. Even when Ryan had asked him direct questions he did not answer truthfully because he did not want to lose what respect the boy might have had for him.
When Chris told her husband to have a word with their son John had an uncomfortable feeling any conversation would not end well.
“You have to find out what his plans are,” Chris said.
“Plans? Whose plans?” John looked away from the cricket he had been watching on the television, taking a few moments to focus on his wife’s request.
“Our son’s,” Chris answered with forced patience. “He’s just left school. He’ll be getting his results in a few weeks and we know he’ll have done well.”
“He’s a clever boy.”
“We need to know what he plans to do.”
“He’ll be going on to college, won’t he?”
“We’re assuming that, but we don’t know, he’s not said a word about his plans. Talk to him, find out what he’s thinking.”
“You do it. He’ll talk more to you than me.”
“It’s a father’s job.”
John shook his head. Any conversation about what Ryan should do would inevitably turn to questions about his own student days and there was so much he did not want to admit about those years. If he told Ryan about his past Chris would inevitably learn the truth and it would not only be Ryan who lost all respect for him. He was afraid what Chris would do once she discovered the lie he had been living for twenty years.
“John?” Chris prompted when she got no reply.
“You do it. He’ll talk to you,” John repeated.
“But if he’s got some stupid idea in his head then you’ll be the best person to tell him how wrong he is.”
“Stupid idea?”
“I’m worried he doesn’t want to carry on with his education. You have to make him realise how important it is.”
John tried not to think that Chris was criticising him but he knew she was. “You mean I’ve got to say how much of a failure I am? Is that what you want me to say? Don’t be like your dad, get on in life? Is that what you want me to say?”
Chris shook her head, though that was exactly what she meant. “Talk to him. He’s out in the garden. Just ask him what he has planned.”
Reluctantly John went outside and sat down opposite his son.
“A word?” he began.
Ryan lifted his eyes from the book he was reading and shrugged.
“Your mother wants to know—”
“Then why doesn’t she ask me?” Ryan interrupted with no attempt to hide his annoyance at being disturbed.
It was obvious to John that Ryan was not in a good mood. Now was not the time to
have this conversation but he could see Chris in the kitchen, looking out of the window, checking he was doing what he had been told to do.
“She asked me to have a word with you. About your future.”
“My future?”
“She wants… we both want… we’d like to know what you were planning to do, now you’ve finished with school.”
“I was wondering when you were going to check up on me.”
“We’re not checking up on you, we just want to know. So we can help. Where are you going to go?”
“Go?”
“Which university? You’ll get the grades you need, we all know that, so which of the three who offered you a place are you going to accept?”
“None of them,” Ryan replied quietly.
“None?”
“I’m not going to any of them. Which part of ‘none’ don’t you understand?”
“Of course you’ll go to one of them.” The ferocity in John’s voice surprised them both.
“No, I won’t.”
“You will.”
John swallowed hard. This was the moment he had dreaded. It seemed that the only way he was going to be able to persuade his son not to make such a big mistake was to admit to what he himself had done when he had been Ryan’s age.
“You can’t make me do anything.”
“That’s very true but you do need to have some idea of what you want to do instead. You’ll have to get a job and what sort of job would that be with no proper qualification?”
“At least I wouldn’t have mountains of debt in three years’ time.”
John was determined to push as hard as he could without going into details of his own experience.
“And in three years’ time what prospects will you have if you’ve spent the time flipping hamburgers or delivering pizzas? You are too clever to waste your chances. You must get a proper education and that means a degree.”
Ryan, whose friends always considered him placid and easy-going, was beginning to lose his temper; his father always wound him up. His mood was made worse by the fact that he knew he was on weak ground. His dad was right; he hadn’t thought things through. He was very certain about what he did not want to do but that was all; he had no idea what, if anything, he did want to do with his life.
“I’m not going to waste three years doing some useless stupid degree that will cost me a bomb in a subject I’m not interested in that won’t get me a job at the end of it all anyway.”
“Three years is not so long a time.”
“It is to me.”
“Three years will give you time to decide on what is important to you; give you time to find out what you really want to do with your life. You might even find you enjoy it, making new friends, doing new things.”
“University didn’t do you much good, did it?”
The one thing Ryan knew about his father was that he had gone to university. It was the one thing his Uncle Patrick had told him when he had asked him what he should do. “You went and it didn’t get you very far, did it? Look at you! Bumbling about in that stupid useless dead end factory job—”
John’s voice rose as he knew the moment was very close when he would have to tell his son things he had always hoped to keep secret. “Enough! That stupid useless job pays the bills, provides you with a roof over your head, don’t you think otherwise.”
“Your proper university education did you a fat load of good, didn’t it! And look at Uncle Patrick! He never went to uni—”
“You’re right. I wasted my opportunities,” John interrupted so quietly that Ryan barely heard him. “I will not let you do the same.”
“It’s my life. I’ll do what I want with it.” Ryan was giving no ground.
“And what would that be? As far as you’ve managed to tell your mother and me you have no plans. If you stay in this house you start paying your way and if you left where would you go? What could you do? You might find life a little more complicated than you think.”
John knew he was being unnecessarily harsh on his son but he was anxious, knowing he was soon going to have to give so much away about himself.
“I could join the army, like Uncle Patrick.”
“Your Uncle Patrick had no choice! Unlike you he was no good at school. He was always getting himself into trouble. He had no choice. If he hadn’t gone into the army he would have ended up in jail. But you have choices. You can make something of yourself.”
“He hasn’t done too badly.”
Ryan knew his father hated comparisons with his brother. Patrick had his own business, he lived in a large house with his wife and two daughters, and none of them ever wanted for anything, while John, the older and always the cleverer of the two, lived in a rented semi-detached house which didn’t even have a garage.
“I don’t know how he did it,” John shrugged. “He was two years younger than you are now when he joined up and then only twenty when he was sent to Iraq. He had nothing at all until he came back. Then it was like he had gold dust in his fingers. Every bloody thing he touched went right for him.”
“You’ve always been jealous of him, haven’t you? Why couldn’t you have made something of your life like he did? He nearly died for his country. How long did it take for him to get over those injuries? Four years? But he did get over them, didn’t he? He’s rich, successful, he has a big house and great cars. Why couldn’t you have done something like that?”
Forced onto the defensive, John gave his son the answers he had given himself over the years. “He had to have had help to set up and run that business, either rich friends or perhaps he looted stuff in the Gulf. I heard that some ex-soldiers kept hoards of guns and sold them off to criminals. That’s how he must have got his start. There’s no other way he could have got started.” They were the explanations John imagined because he had never felt he could ask his brother the question.
“You’re saying he’s a thief? A crook? You’re just jealous. You were never as good as him so you have to slag him off. I’m going out. I don’t have to stay here and listen to you.”
John grimaced.
He knew that ever since Ryan had been old enough to understand something of the world he had respected and looked up to his uncle far more than to him. It was a fact of life John recognised but the injustice of it had become increasingly hard to bear when, in every argument, Ryan contrasted Patrick’s success with his father’s failure. Now, John accepted, was the time to explain.
“Sit down Ryan! Sit down and shut up. And put down that ruddy phone and listen carefully. I have to tell you something about the real world.”
John watched as Ryan decided whether to leave or to sit back down and listen.
Neither could know how much, for both of them, hinged on his decision.
It was a full ten seconds before Ryan’s shoulders slouched and, in a way that reminded John heartbreakingly of his son when he had been three years old, slumped back down on the wooden seat. Reluctantly, when his father nodded towards the phone still in his hands, Ryan placed his mobile on the table.
“Now listen. And don’t you dare interrupt.”
As Ryan shrugged John could see his son had controlled his temper and would listen so he began.
“In Freshers Week, yes, we had them even then,” he added quickly when he saw Ryan’s eyebrows raised, “I joined a society that called itself WR, World Rescue. I read the posters and imagined it to be concerned with studying global warming, the population explosion and things like urban sprawl.”
He paused, waiting for Ryan to say something about not believing his dad had ever cared about things like that but Ryan said nothing. If anything, John thought, his son looked almost interested, so he gained confidence, continuing his story with something approaching eloquence.
“But this was 1984. The hated Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. WR
turned out to be a loose organisation of protestors who raged against anything and everything the government did. Slowly, through my first term, I became more involved, spending more and more time with them, taking part in demonstrations, sit-ins and protest marches. We campaigned against anything and everything from nuclear war to trees being cut down to build roads and most of all we supported anyone who happened to be on strike. In that year I barely went to a tutorial or a lecture and then didn’t turn up for my first year exams. It would have been a waste of time.”
This was not the lecture Ryan had expected to hear. “What did your mum and dad say?” he asked quietly, all signs of belligerence gone.
“I didn’t tell them.”
“How the hell did you get away with that?”
“For a while I simply lied. It was easy really; they were worried about Patrick in the army, about to go to war. They weren’t particularly fussed what I was up to.”
“And then?”
“I left.”
Despite himself Ryan was interested.
This was a side of his father he had never imagined. He had always seen his father as a conformer, a wet blanket, someone with no convictions who had never held an opinion of his own.
“Where did you go?”
“Through that first year I had spent days, sometimes weeks, with a group of people I suppose you’d call New Age travellers. So when I left home I just went to be with them all the time.”
“You?” Ryan made his disbelief very clear.
“Yes, Ryan, me. Sometimes I’ve wondered whether you see me as someone who was never young, but I was, and they were exciting times.”
Ryan said nothing, simply nodding his acknowledgement that that was true, as his father continued.
“I had only been with them a couple of days when I had my first run-in with the police—”
“The police?” Ryan had to interrupt. This was so far from the father he had thought he had known.
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