Free Hostage Three by Nick Lake Page B

to. I’d been thinking vaguely of Robinson Crusoe, I realised, picturing us swimming away in the night, finding ourselves under palm trees, eating coconuts.
    Somalia was not neutral. Somalia was home territory for the pirates. We could swim away, maybe, but not far enough away.
    It seemed from the radar like there was a ship coming to rescue us – that was the irony – but we were leaving. Leaving to go to Somalia.

Like I said, the first time the stepmother came home with Dad was after an office party. I have a feeling they thought they had hidden it from me, but I heard them, the giggling under their voices, after the taxi dropped them off at 3 a.m. This was, I don’t know, months After. Way too soon, anyway.
    The next morning, I watched out of the window as she sneaked out, then walked across Ham Common to the 65 bus stop. She was wearing purple high heels, a dark blue dress, and she was pretty. I remember being annoyed that she was pretty.
    It wasn’t long after that that my dad brought her home for dinner, so I could meet her. He’d mentioned her name a few times already, just casually – stuff she’d said or done at work. She must have been fairly high up, I suppose, for him to be spending time with her, but I never really asked what she did.
    When she came, she brought me a CD and some expensive make-up. She stood on the porch and held them out. I didn’t even have a CD player, just an iPod. She had blonde hair, and eyes so incredibly pale blue that it was as if you could see right through her head to the sky behind.
    â€” I hope we can be friends, Amy-bear, she said.
    I thought, don’t use my name like that. I didn’t even reach out for the presents until Dad dug his elbow into my ribs and I had to. A CD! It was a joke. She must have thought we were going to be best friends – it was like she got her idea of teenagers out of a magazine.
    The whole time over dinner, she kept talking about bands, and TV, and male actors and stuff – to bond with me, I guess. It was just excruciating. And she kept putting her hand on Dad’s arm when he made jokes, smiling at him. Like I couldn’t see what she was doing – coming into our house, which was basically a mansion, getting her feet inside the door.
    In the weeks that followed, Dad started taking down some of the photos of Mom.
    And then came the day of the polo.
    They weren’t married at this point, so she wasn’t the stepmother. She was just Dad’s girlfriend, Sarah. She was, I don’t know, thirty at the most. She phoned up one Saturday, and asked Dad, did he know that there was polo on at Ham Polo Club the next day, and had he ever been?
    No, we had never been.
    So, on Sunday, she turned up, wearing a big wide-brimmed blue hat with a kind of pouffe thing on it, like she was going to Ascot or something. And we all walked down the path that led from Ham Common to the polo field. I didn’t want to go – I couldn’t think of anything worse – but Dad made me. To get him back, I was wearing a torn vintage dress and Doc Martens.
    Much as I hate to admit it, though, the start wasn’t too bad. It was a sunny day, late April, the poppies and daisies out in the verges. We sat on a rug on the grass, on the far side from the stands, because Sarah said that was more like a picnic. I had no idea what was going on in the polo, but it was exciting, watching the horses galloping up and down, the men leaning over as they rode, almost to where you thought they would fall off, to hit the ball. We had a hamper, with all sorts of incredible food that Dad had ordered from the deli, and champagne – which Sarah insisted on pouring me a glass of, even though Dad objected. It reminded me of Mom, but in a good way.
    I almost liked her in that moment.
    But then one of the horses fell. It belonged to the orange and black team, whoever they were. There was no dramatic reason – it was turning, and