I had to hang on to that.
But it was hard—hard when the only light was a dim bulb that flickered and dipped every so often, and the air seemed to be running out with every breath. Oh God, it was so hard.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the looming walls and the claustrophobic warping light, and pulled the thin cover over myself. I tried to focus on something. The feel of the flat, limp pillow beneath my cheek. The sound of my own breathing.
But the image I kept coming back to was that of the girl, standing nonchalantly outside my door in the corridor, her hand on her hip, and then the swing of her gait as she walked towards the staff door.
How. How?
Had she been hiding on the boat all along? In this room, maybe? But I knew, even without opening my eyes to look around, that no one had been living here. It had no sense of being inhabited, there were no stains on the carpet, no coffee marks on the plastic shelf, no fading scent of food and sweat and human breath. Even that spider curled in the sink spoke of disuse. There was no way that girl, full of snapping life and vivacity, could have been in this room without leaving some impression. Wherever she’d been staying, it wasn’t here.
This place felt like a tomb. Maybe it was already mine.
- CHAPTER 23 -
I was not sure when I fell asleep, but I must have, exhausted by the ache in my head and the roar of the ship’s motor, because I awoke, to the sound of a click.
I sat up sharply, cracking my scalp against the bunk above, and then fell back, groaning and clutching my head as the blood pounded in my ears, a shrill ringing in the back of my skull.
I lay there, my eyes squeezed tightly shut against the pain, but at last it receded enough for me to roll onto my side and open my eyes again, squinting against the dim fluorescent light.
There was a plate on the floor, and a glass of something—juice, I thought. I picked it up and sniffed it. It looked and smelled like orange juice, but I couldn’t bring myself to drink it. Instead, I got painfully to my feet and opened the door to the little en suite, where I emptied the juice down the sink and refilled the glass with water from the tap. The water was warm and stale, but I was so thirsty now that I would have drunk worse. I gulped down the glass, refilled, and began to sip the next more slowly as I made my way back from the sink and onto the bunk.
My head ached powerfully, and I wished I had some painkillers, but more than that I felt awful—shivery and weak, as if I were coming down with the flu. It was probably hunger—it was hours since I’d eaten and my blood sugar must be at rock bottom.
Part of me wanted to lie down and rest my throbbing head, but my stomach growled, and I made myself examine the plate of food that was on the floor. It looked completely normal—meatballs in some kind of sauce, mashed potato and peas, and a bread roll on the side. I knew I should eat—but the same gut revulsion that had made me pour away the juice was kicking in. It just felt so wrong—eating food provided by someone who’d locked me into an underwater dungeon. There could be anything in there. Rat poison. Sleeping pills. Worse. And I’d have no choice but to eat it.
Suddenly, the thought of putting even a spoonful of that sauce in my mouth made me feel panicked and ill, and I felt like flushing the whole lot down the loo along with the juice, but even as I half stood, ready to pick up the plate, I realized something, and I sat back down again on slow, shaky legs.
They didn’t need to poison me. Why would they? If they wanted to kill me they could just starve me.
I tried to think clearly.
If whoever had brought me here had wanted to kill me, they’d have done it. Right?
Right. They could have hit me again, harder, or put a pillow over my face when I was passed out, or a plastic bag around my neck. And they hadn’t. They’d dragged me here at some inconvenience to themselves.
So they didn’t want me dead. Not right now, at any rate.
One pea. You couldn’t die from one poisoned pea, surely?
I picked it up on the end of a fork, looking at it. It looked completely normal. No trace of any powder. No odd color.
I put it in my mouth and rolled it slowly round, trying to detect any strange taste. There was none.
I swallowed.
Nothing much happened. Not that I’d expected it to—I didn’t know much about poison, but I imagined that the ones that killed you within seconds were few and far between, and not easy to obtain.
But something did happen. And that was that I started to feel hungry.
I scooped up a few more peas and ate them, cautiously at first, and then picking up speed as the food made me feel better. I skewered a meatball with my fork. It smelled and tasted completely normal—with that slightly institutional air of food prepared for a large number of people.
At last the plate was empty and I sat and waited for someone to come and collect it.
And waited.
And waited.