Hostage Three Read Free Page A

rising to it. This time he’s bought a yacht. By the way, there are bagels keeping warm in the oven. And I bought that cream cheese with chives that you like.
    â€” Thanks, I mumbled.
    â€” Go on, she said. Have one. They’re good.
    This was the worst thing about the stepmother. I could basically do anything – swear at teachers, take drugs, insult her, go to parties and not come back till the next day – and she would act like nothing had happened. It just made me feel even more awful, which I think was probably her cunning plan all along.
    I went and got a bagel from the oven, put it on a plate.
    â€” I don’t understand, I said. We’re talking about the yacht? The one that was on the web for, like, thirty million pounds?
    â€” That’s the one, said the stepmother. It’s dry-docked at Southampton. We’re going to leave as soon as we find a captain and crew. I mean, if you want to, that is.
    â€” Leave? For where?
    â€” Everywhere.
    â€” Sorry, what are you talking about?
    â€” A trip. Your dad has always wanted to do a round-the-world trip, so that’s what we’re going to do. Starting in a couple of weeks.
    I stared at her. I wanted to think she was joking, but deep down I knew she wasn’t. Dad was always mad for boats, though he didn’t know how to sail them himself. And way before the Event, too, he was talking about taking me out of school for a year to do some kind of epic trip. Mom always said it was a silly idea, that it would never happen, but then a lot of things Mom said didn’t come true. Anyway, I guess after the piercings and the smoking in the gym and all that stuff, he must have got even more into the idea. The stepmother had mentioned therapy, but Dad hated that kind of thing after what happened with Mom, so I think the yacht was his alternative, his idea of a better kind of treatment.
    I looked down at the maps. Someone – Dad, I guess – had drawn little dotted lines on them that went all around the world, across the Atlantic and the Pacific, down to Australia, along the coast of India, the Caribbean. Yes – everywhere.
    â€” Why? I said.
    â€” Why? For a change of scene. You know, a new beginning.
    â€” Are you going to spend the whole day speaking in clichés? I asked.
    â€” Oh, Amy, she said. We thought you’d be excited.
    â€” We? I said. Dad can’t even be bothered to be here to tell me himself.
    â€” He wanted to, he just –
    â€” Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I’m not leaving here or leaving my friends to get on a stupid yacht.
    â€” You’re not eighteen yet, Amy, said the stepmother. You don’t really have a choice.
    I held my breath in case it came out in fumes, like a dragon breathing.
    â€” I’ll be eighteen in October, I said. Where will we be then? India? Japan? I’ll just get off the boat and fly home.
    â€” If that’s what you want, said the stepmother blandly.
    I took a breath.
    â€” It doesn’t matter anyway, I said. Because this is totally not going to happen. Dad will pull out of the trip. You haven’t known him long enough to see that. It’ll be just like the holiday to Hawaii. And Goa. And the Northern Lights. Just like going to see Santa Claus when I was eight. Oh, no, wait, you weren’t around then, were you? And those things never happened. Just like this will NEVER HAPPEN.
    The stepmother pursed her lipsticked lips and put her hands on the table. She drew in a long breath.
    â€” I’ll make coffee, she said.
    The thing is, though, I was right. Dad literally did nothing but work. We never even went to the beach house in North Fork any more, like we used to when we lived in New York. I couldn’t count the number of trips he had bailed on, like when Mom and I went to Mexico without him, and saw the turtles laying their eggs.
    Dad was very high up in a bank that had its logo on every street in London and New York, too, and he was