by Nick Lake
But there’s the Obsessive part, too – the part that made her afraid of bad luck and contamination. The part that made her wash her hands any time someone shook hands with her, and throw away food if someone else touched it, refuse food if someone else handed it to her.
I saw my mom on her hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the floor with wire wool until her fingers bled. I’ve seen her with a chopping knife, carving great big slashes in her arm because I’d been naughty and she’d said something mean about me to a friend and she thought god would take me away from her as punishment. I had to call an ambulance that time, and years later she still had silvery scars all over her forearm.
I saw her screaming, I mean really screaming, pulling out her hair, because we had to go to a family party and she didn’t know what to wear.
I saw her lie in bed for three days in a row, crying.
I saw her tell Dad she would kill him, she would gut him in his sleep, because he wouldn’t turn the car around, three hours from home, so she could check the dials on the oven.
I saw all those things, so I’ve always been happy to just be me quietly, to not be quirky. I’m also one of those people who prefers hanging out with other people to doing stuff on my own, who would rather go out clubbing than listen to music on my own. Not that going clubbing worked out particularly well, which is another reason the head teacher had reached the end of her tether with me. Looking back, I had too many late nights in the East End, with bass-heavy dance music making the floors shake, the sonic boom plugging me straight into the speakers.
On the yacht, there was no escape from myself, and it wasn’t like there were any distractions. I was just stuck there with my own ordinariness, like a prisoner in my own skin, wondering, all the time, if Farouz might have feelings for me.
Never wondering what it might mean if he did. How I might pay, like in a cautionary fairytale, to get what I wished for.
Every second day, the pirates let us have showers. I was glad when it came round the next time because I was feeling really sweaty and horrible. I went first, then the stepmother went after me and said not to expect to see her for an hour or maybe more. I thought it would be less than that – the heating came from solar panels, and it didn’t last that long.
As she washed, I went out on to the rear deck. I was surprised to see Dad there, sitting on the diving platform so that his feet were in the water, a glass of something dark in his hand, with grainy bits floating in it.
Normally, I avoided my dad, but I guess I was feeling a bit guilty about last night and Farouz, even though nothing had happened, so I walked up to him. My shadow fell over him.
— Is that what I think it is? I asked.
— What do you think it is?
— The coffee, I said, that the pirates make. Half coffee, half sugar. Lukewarm water.
For some reason, something softened in Dad’s face, tension slackening from muscles.
— Yep, he said. When in Rome. He raised the glass to Ahmed, who was strolling above us, gun in hand, and Ahmed saluted back.
The way my dad makes friends, it’s weird, I’m telling you. But I didn’t say that.
All I said was:
— Ugh, Dad, gross.
I sat down beside him, kicking off my sandals as I did so. He was wearing shorts, and I could see his legs disappearing into the clear warm water – or, rather, not disappearing, but starting again at a certain point on his calves, at a slightly different angle, so that by immersing his legs partly in the water it looked like they were very slightly broken, dog-legged around the joint of the sea’s surface.
I put my feet in the water, and they, too, jagged off from me at an angle. I was startled by the silkiness of the water, the coolness of it. Funny, how simple your desires become sometimes, like when there’s stifling hot air wrapping you up, restricting you.
Heat Cold. That’s all your body wants, and it’s enough.
— This is good, I said. Refreshing.
— Yes, said Dad.
I closed my eyes. The pirates had the engine going to power the computer or something. It made a kind of counterpoint with the sound of the waves, the tone similar but the rhythm different, like baroque music. I stopped that thought before it led me to my violin.
That was when I caught a whiff from Dad’s drink.
— Oh my god, Dad, I said.
— What?
— That’s not just coffee.
Dad looked at the glass in his hand as if someone else had just put it there.
— No, he said. I don’t suppose it is.
— But you hate drinking!
— Do I?
— When Mom drank, when I drink . . .
— I hate my daughter drinking. You’re seventeen.
— Nearly eighteen!
Dad sighed.
— I don’t want to discuss it, Amy, he said in his and-that’s-final voice.
— No way, no. You don’t get out of this that easily –
— I lost my job, Amy-bear.
I turned to him so fast I nearly made him spill the drink. There was more coldness in me now, more than the water was giving me. I looked at him. Still handsome. Silver hair. Crow’s feet, but still those green eyes: sharp, clever eyes, always moving. Which goes to show what you can’t always see from people’s eyes, because Mom’s grey eyes were always still, and her mind never was.
— You’re kidding, right? I said.
— Absolutely not.
— But . . . I said. Why?
He took a breath.
— The financial system is in trouble, he said. It’s been in the news a bit. But it’s going to get much worse. Our bank . . . we took some risks. And I was . . . I guess you could say I was the one who took most of them.
I watched the shifting sea, digesting this.
— What kind of risks? I asked. Are you . . . I mean, would the police –
— No! said Dad hurriedly. Nothing like that. It was only stuff other banks were doing, too. Mortgage derivatives, essentially. Collateralised Debt Obligations, they’re called. We bought them and sold them. Now they’ve gone bad.
— Derivatives like in calculus? I asked.
I knew about those from school. The derivative of x2 + 4x = 2x + 4.
— No, said Dad. Something else. Derivatives are financial products based on mortgages. The wrong ones, as it turns out. He met my eyes. We fucked up, basically.
— So the bank is going to, what, go bankrupt?
— Probably not. They’ll sell it to someone else. But some of us . . . Decisions were made, Amy. Now they’re cleaning house.
— What do you mean, they? You’re . . . whoever you are. Managing Director of Investment, or whatever. You’re in charge.
— Not any more.
— Oh, I said.
This was a new calculus, it seemed: the derivative of mortgages = losing your job.
Part of me wanted to reach out, to hold his hand, but I didn’t. He’d never once been there for me after Mom died. He was always working. Now he’d been fired, was I supposed to be there for him?
— You said the company was insuring the yacht, I said. That’s how come Tony is here.
— They are, Amy. It’s complicated. I have share options, you see. They’ve made me redundant, but they can’t afford for me to die.
— Right, I said. Cheery.
— Hmm, said Dad. So that’s my secret. Anyway, what about you? Your A levels, will you retake them?
— We’re being held hostage, Dad. In case you haven’t noticed.
— I know that, said Dad. But we have to stay positive.
— Do we? Who says?
— I don’t know. Me.
— Oh, well, in that case . . .
Dad stretched his back, frustrated.
— Look, just answer the question, he said. About your A levels.
— No, I said.
— Well, that’s really mature –
— No, I won’t retake them, I said. I
was thinking of getting a job. In a bar, maybe.
Dad sighed.
— What, that’s not good enough for you? I said. I felt anger kindle inside me, just like a fire sparking in my chest.
— No, I’m just not sure that –
— That you want your daughter doing a menial job, like a poor person?
Dad took a long breath.
— My parents were upholsterers, Amy.
— Exactly. And now you’re rich, and you have rich, famous friends. How embarrassing it would be for you if your daughter was just a barmaid!
— I don’t care what other people think, said Dad. I’m thinking about you. About your fulfilment. What about five years down the line, if you’re still behind a bar? You have a talent, Amy. For the violin. You should use it. You could still enter the Menuhin as a senior.
— Don’t tell me what to do.
— I’m just saying. Look at me. I spent half my life in that bank. And now I wonder what I did all that time. That’s why I wanted to get away, to buy the yacht, to see new places.
— So that’s what this was about, then? I said, that spark inside me flaring now, like a gas stove being lit. If I could have put my hand down my throat and into my lungs at that moment, it would have come out on fire.
— Amy.
— So this has nothing to do with fucking spending time as a family, I said, talking over him. You just got canned by the bank and needed something to do.
Dad physically recoiled. Something lizard-like happened with his eyes; they went all hooded and guilty.
— No, he said. It’s not like that.
— Anyway, what did you do, really? I said. What does it mean, a mortgage derivative? Did you steal people’s money? Their houses?
— No! We took some risks. We bought some mortgages from another company who actually lent the money to the homeowners. Then we packaged them up in a great big pool of money, and we sold them to other people as an investment. That’s all. In retrospect, it wasn’t very intelligent, because now the homeowners have stopped repaying their mortgages, so we can’t pay the interest. And we bought them in the first place with money that wasn’t . . . that wasn’t absolutely, in the final analysis, necessarily ours.
— Jesus, I said. You’re a pirate. No wonder you’re such good buddies with Ahmed.
— Amy. I’m a managing director of a very respected, multinational –
— Were a managing director.
— Sorry?
— Were. A managing director. You were.
— Yes.
Silence. And I stood up, slid my sandals back on, slimy with seawater.
— Enjoy your vodka, I said. Or whatever that is.
Dad watched the sea. He didn’t look up as I walked away. Just then, the stepmother came out, with a sun hat on.
— Hot water bloody ran out, she said. Couldn’t even do my conditioner.
Damian was standing in the corridor when I walked back from the toilet the next evening.
— You want to watch yourself, he said.
— I’m sorry?
— You and that boy. It’ll end in tears.
— I don’t see what –
— It has to do with me?
God, I hated it when Damian finished my sentences – it was something he was always doing.
— Yeah, I said – a bit lamely.
— Of course you don’t. Because you’re a teenage girl.
I wanted to say, it didn’t stop you ogling my bikini. But I didn’t because there was already a weird tension in the air.
I just said:
— And you’re a bloody sailor. You don’t get to tell me what to do.
He rolled his eyes. I mean, he actually rolled his eyes in kind of an exaggerated way; I’d never seen anyone do that before.
— It’s not just you who’ll get hurt if something goes wrong, he said.
— Nothing’s going to go wrong because nothing’s happening, I said. And as I said it, I wondered if it was true.
— Good, he said, and walked away.
That really pissed me off because it gave him the last word, which made it seem like he had won.
I went down to the front deck again, secretly hoping that Farouz might be there.
And you know what?
He was.
— Farouz, I said, and then instantly blushed, because the way your mouth shapes his name when you speak it means that the second syllable comes out long and slow – Farooooouz – like a sigh.
Try it now.
See?
His name, it has longing built into it.
— Hostage Three, Farouz said, returning my greeting, not seeming to notice my embarrassment. He was smoking, obviously, his gun dangling from his trousers – only these were new trousers: Armani jeans, Dad’s. Most of our electrical goods, the blatantly valuable stuff, had been given back by now, but the pirates were still dressed in our clothes.
I took a deep breath. If I was going to get killed, I wanted at least one of the people who killed me to know my name.
— Amy, I said. Not Hostage Three. Amy.
Farouz was silent for a long time. Then he said:
— Amy. That is pretty.
Letting out my breath, I sat down on a sunlounger. It was the first time, I think, that I felt any hope that I might survive this. He knew my name. Surely that would make him hesitate before pulling the trigger?
— So, Amy, he said. What is it like to be rich? There was an edge in his voice I hadn’t heard before. He blew out smoke, and it curled around the horns of Capricorn.
— It’s . . . I don’t know.
I had to be careful what I said because of Tony claiming that the bank owned the yacht. But still, it had to be obvious we were well off – I guess the pirates assumed we were paying passengers or something. And in the back of my mind, I was wondering: are we still rich?
But I was sure we were. I knew enough about how corporate finance worked to know that Dad wouldn’t have left without a massive golden parachute, or whatever they were called.
— I think it’s not money that makes people happy, I said. It’s not the most important thing, not like family, friends, that kind of stuff. Birthday parties. Sometimes I think I would rather swap my life with someone who had nothing but a farm, some chickens to look after, a view of the sea . . . That sounds sappy, I said. I should shut up.
I shut up.
We were both facing the sea, which was black, but glimmered with starlight, so we weren’t really looking at each other. That was sort of disconcerting and liberating at the same time.
— Money is important in Somalia, he said slowly. When you have no medicine, no food, no water, money is important.
— Of course, I –
— We cannot swap our lives with anyone. Half of what you said, I do not even understand. Do you see? You, you can think: oh, my life might be better if this, or if that. It is not even possible to think this in Somalia, because there is nothing that is better.
His voice was cold, older than him. I didn’t know how old he was at the time – seventeen? eighteen? – but his voice was a hundred years old.
And you know what? I thought I did understand him, at least a bit.
I also felt stupid and clumsy, like I had woken up and accidentally put on a body that was too big for me, like wearing someone else’s clothes, a body that was heavy and awkward around my bones.
— I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t mean . . . I just mean, bad things happen to rich people, too.
— And what has happened to you that is bad? he asked. There was a challenge in his voice.
— Give me one of those, I said, pointing to his cigarette.
He raised his eyebrows, but handed me one. He gave his own, for me to light it from. When I did, the tobacco fizzing and popping as it caught, I drew the smoke down deep into my lungs, and it was as if it were spreading through me, making me into smoke, my body made of air and particles now, instead of solid flesh.
I breathed out, sending myself, my particles, into the night air.
Then, weirdly, I told him.
But when I started, I faltered immediately.
— I – I began. Then I broke off. I mean . . . I – ah.
— It’s OK, said Farouz. I was being . . . nosy?
— Yes, nosy, I said.
— Sorry.
— No. Well, I mean, yes, the word is nosy. But you weren’t being nosy.
— Oh.
I took a breath.
— My mother . . . she . . .
He was looking right into my eyes, and it didn’t feel odd that he was doing that.
— Your mother, she is not on the yacht, he said gently.
— No, I said.
— That woman, with the red fingernails. She is your stepmother.
— Yes.
— I understand, said Farouz.
— No, you don’t, I said. Because there were things I hadn’t told anyone. Things I hadn’t even told my father.
Farouz held the railing, looking down at the sea. He didn’t press me.
— One day Mom called me when I was meant to be in class, I said. This was in London, in Surbiton, where I went to school. I wasn’t meant to answer my cell, but it was a free lesson and I was hanging out in the common room, so I did. At the time, Mom was happy. She was on some new antidepressants, which were working quite well, and a new antipsychotic that seemed to make her finally believe that god wasn’t out to punish her for being a bad person.
— I’m sorry? said Farouz.
— It doesn’t matter, I said. It’s not important.
— OK, said Farouz. He didn’t say anything more, he just kept looking at me, like he knew the story wasn’t over.
