Stitch-Up

  For Christopher

  Contents

  The Skin I Live In

  Reality Bites

  The Nighter

  Bombing the Train

  Below the Radar

  Snakes and Ladders

  ‘Fessing Up

  Eyes Everywhere

  Breathless

  Crunch Town

  Blood Diamonds

  Media Circus

  Identity Theft

  The Real Deal

  As Good As Dead

  Tooled Up

  Maxine Taylor

  Lights, Camera, Action

  Alley Cats

  Tracker

  Ghosts in the Machine

  State of Emergency

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Skin I Live In

  THE railway tracks flashed like surgical knives in the sunlight. I drummed my fingernails against the train’s tinted, bulletproof window. I was getting that locked-in feeling again. The Easter holidays stretched before me. I pinched the skin on the back of my hand, counting the seconds it took to sink down. Since the revelation, I had become obsessed with skin – not any old skin.

  I was obsessed with saving my skin.

  My skin covers about two square metres, weighs around three kilograms and contains seventeen kilometres of blood vessels. I shed 30,000 dead cells a minute, 600,000 an hour, and grow a brand-new skin every twenty-eight days – that’s about 1,000 new skins in a lifetime, which, in case you were wondering, doesn’t make me a freak. It’s completely normal. The freakish part, or the bit that was freaking me out big time, was my parents’ plan for it. I puffed out my cheeks – exhaled slowly. It was just plain wrong. I mean, it’s my skin and I live in it.

  BANG!

  A rush of air slammed against the Star Academy’s chartered train. I jumped. A civilian train raced alongside, its windows blanked out by speed. Watching the grey squares spool past, like empty frames from a film, I found myself slotting images and headlines into the blank spaces, cutting together a trailer for the next tragic episode of my life. COMING SOON: TEENAGE GIRL METAMORPHOSES INTO BEAUTIFUL ZOMBIE DOLL! The images showed surgeons working on a girl in a high-tech operating theatre, followed by post-op shots of my bruised and battered face, eyes weeping blood. In the final shot I smiled to camera, my face smooth as a mask. STAY TUNED! Moments later, the civilian train was gone.

  The carriage was a muss of chatter. Coco and her sparkly crew, the List – so-called because your parents had to be on the Rich List before Coco would consider you worthy of membership – were huddled over tablets, buying clothes for their holidays and acing each other’s plans. Samantha, daughter of a retail magnate (Rich List number eighteen), said she would be chilling at the family villa in the Caribbean. Coco, heir to a candy empire (Rich List number fourteen) trumped her with holidaying on the family super-yacht. Anushka, daughter of an oligarch (Rich List number twenty-one) had a royal flush as she was doing both. I zoned out when they started arguing about the size of their parents’ Learjets. I could outdo them all, if I cared. My dad was a media mogul and the king of the cosmetic surgery industry (Rich List number eight). But I wasn’t into lists, especially Coco’s. Her List ruled our class at the Star Academy, and their starry rules sucked. They were all sparkle and no heart.

  WHOOSH! The train sped into a tunnel, sealing us into a darkly mirrored bubble. In unison, the girls swivelled to check their reflections in the blacked-out windows, pouting, primping and spiffing their hair. I scowled. The List were such fakes; all they cared about was how they looked.

  The plasma screen in the corner of the carriage was showing footage of burned-out police cars, a double-decker bus in flames, and hoodies looting a high street somewhere in the Edgelands way over east. The news was rolling soundlessly. The ticker tape on the bottom of the screen read: Broken Britain. Hood-Rats Run Riot. The girls’ eyes flicked up to the screen and then back to their reflections. The Edgelands were a world away. Nobody gave a damn. Next up, my mother’s perfectly-sculpted face filled the screen. Blab, blab, blab went her trout pout as she introduced the lead item on her prime-time show. My brow knitted into a frown. No escape! With my mother presenting daily shows on GoldRush TV, I often had the eerie feeling that her eyes were on me, spying on me from plasma screens, controlling me by remote. Despite the sound being turned down, I could guess Mum’s angle. She’d be banging on about outcasts, hood-rats and bad civilian parenting, as if she were auditioning for the Mother of the Year award. As if…

  I caught Big Stevie’s eye in the window. My frown deepened. He was standing with the other minders, monitoring my every move. Most girls had their personal bodyguards on board, even though the Bullet Train Company employed security guards as part of the company’s bespoke service. This was because our security guards doubled as spies for our parents. Every weekend our parents chartered a Bullet Train to ferry us from the Star Academy to London and back again. At fifty grand a pop, the Bullet offered a secure solution for super-rich parents as a precaution against the kidnap crews. My dad described it as the Hogwarts Express with guns.

  Big Stevie was telling the other minders a joke; obviously I’d heard it a million times before. I rolled my eyes. It was weird to think that he’d been guarding me for more than ten years – over half my life. He’d outlasted every boyfriend and most friends, too. Even weirder, he knew more about my habits than anyone else in the world, including my parents. He shadowed me twenty-four/seven, and I hated him.

  Suddenly laughter filled the carriage. Coco and the List turned towards me in a confection of she-wolf smiles, shimmery lipgloss and capped white teeth. Coco – the Fake in Chief – jumped up. Her blonde hair was immaculately styled and her bright pink nails clacked like lobster claws against her tablet as she walked over, shadowed by her tittering crew.

  I mentally manned up.

  “Oh my God, you’ve been papped,” Coco smirked, as she held up a photo of yours truly attending a premiere with my parents. I was getting out of a silver Mercedes in a lacy black dress. “Totes inappropes. Totes tragic. The corpse bride look is so over, Dasha. So last century.”

  “It’s called unique style,” I replied, without missing a beat. “Not that you’d know anything about that.” I let my eyes travel slowly across their uniformity.

  The List crowded round her tablet.

  “Nope. I still don’t get it.” Coco’s eyes lasered the photo. “You have shed-loads of stylists and you still look like trash. Now that’s what I call an achievement.”

  Her glittery crew burst out laughing.

  “Go fake yourself!” I kept my eyes glued to the plasma, wishing for an ejector seat –preferably one that would shoot me into a parallel universe.

  But Coco shoved her face up close and hissed, “If your dad’s so famous for fixing everyone’s image, how come he sooo forgot about yours? I’d call that child neglect!” The List tittered. Her eyes flicked up to my mother’s image on screen. “And your mum’s cougar-chic is tragic, too.”

  “You’re just jealous,” I snapped.

  “Like how?” But she was backing off.

  I fixed her with a chilly stare as she retreated.

  Anushka and Samantha hovered. Anushka nudged Sam. Sam giggled and nudged her back. Immediately I knew they must have heard the rumours. Sam drew closer. “Where are you going for Easter, Dasha?” she asked.

  “One of the islands,” I said coolly.

  I saw Coco’s face cloud over. She tried to catch Sam’s eye.

  But Sam’s desire for gossip made her break rank, and she continued in a hushed voice. “Is your dad giving you a makeover for your seventeenth birthday, Dasha?”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t have told them even if I’d wanted to – which I d
idn’t – because my parents had made me sign a confidentiality agreement. That’s the kind of brand, I mean family we were – close… But there was no harm in playing them. “Dad’s got plans.” A smile twitched the corner of my mouth. Although Coco tried to play it cool, envy glinted in her eyes. And in that moment I knew that she would do anything to swap places with me.

  “Chilling in the Caribbean mainly,” I blagged some more. “So be afraid, be very afraid. I’ll be coming back tanned and gorgeous.” I waited a beat. “A new person.” I flashed a dazzling smile, although on the inside I wanted to scream. But I couldn’t give Coco the pleasure of seeing how terrified I really was.

  Her face shifted with fury as they walked away.

  Coco hated the fact that my parents owned one of the most powerful media corporations in the world, as well as a multi-million-pound cosmetic surgery business. Last year they had merged the two companies to form GoldRush Image Inc, which was the most influential image-making machine in the world. Coco was jealous as hell, but she didn’t know the half of it. In two weeks’ time, on my seventeenth birthday, I was going to become the brand-new face of GoldRush Image Inc. That was the reason Dad was whisking me off to one of his islands. Once there, GoldRush Image surgeons were going to give me a radical makeover. As I pinched the skin on the back of my hand again, I found myself once more dreaming of being propelled into a parallel universe.

  The situation was freaking me out. It was totally intense, and there was no escape. I was twenty-four hours away from having my identity stolen, but this was identity theft with a twist, of course, because my parents were involved. This wasn’t about cracking a password, stealing bank details or personal data. My parents were physically changing my appearance for ever for their own crazy purposes.

  My phone rang. I sucked in a breath. It was Dad.

  “Precious?”

  “Hi, Dad,” I said without enthusiasm.

  “How are you feeling? Excited?”

  “Like a freak show,” I said, chewing at my thumbnail.

  “Excellent.” He carried on, pretending he hadn’t heard. “Everything is in place for your launch, Dash. We’ve had teams on it night and day. The good news is I’m now turning my focus on the star attraction. Which means you have my undivided attention, precious.”

  “Lucky me!” I snapped. “And I wish you’d stop talking about my launch, Dad. I’m not a perfume.”

  He laughed. “Okay. Okay. Your rebirth begins tomorrow. So how does it feel to be weeks away from perfection?”

  I rolled my eyes. Rebirth was just the creepy kind of word my father loved to use.

  “I’m not going to be born again, Dad. I hate your cult talk.”

  “The cult of Dasha Gold. We can channel that. The brand’s new goddess.”

  “Yeah. Whatever. Get to the point, Dad.” I was totally sick of his sticky sales pitch.

  “A limo is waiting to take you to City Airport. Big Stevie knows the drill. Our jet is scheduled to leave at nine-thirty sharp.”

  “Great,” I said, giving my bodyguard the evils. When he smirked back I got up and left the carriage, only half-listening to Dad as he talked me through ‘the procedures’ – another of his smarmy words – for about the millionth time. Then, realising this really was the last-chance saloon, I quickly gathered my thoughts and gave it one final shot: “Dad, I don’t know about this. It’s just not me…”

  “Fine. See you at nine.” He hung up.

  Typical, I thought angrily, staring down at the smartphone’s blank screen.

  Big Stevie entered the empty carriage, as if an invisible cord attached us. I pretended not to notice him. Moments later, a cheesy ringtone jived from his Puffa jacket. He answered with a grin. “Mr Gold. Yeah. I’ve got my eye on her.” He gave me a sly wink. “We’ll be there. City Airport for nine.” When he spoke, he rubbed his huge hand back and forth across his shiny head, like he was trying to warm up his brain. A barbed-wire tattoo, which circled his thick wrist, flashed from beneath his sleeve. This marked him out as one of Dad’s elite security detail – the Golden Knights.

  “Yeah. I heard her. The same old baloney. No worries. I’ll see to it.” His mafia routine was seriously toe-curling.

  “Fraud,” I said when he hung up. Anger was bubbling up again, pushing against my skin. I had been guarded all my life.

  “Boss wants me to keep you on side, Dasha. And at the end of the day, you’ve gotta do what the boss says, innit?” He couldn’t resist the football clichés.

  “Whatever!” I zoned out.

  Suburbia. London sprawl. Grim-faced houses, abandoned trampolines and cheap-looking conservatories slid past. I imagined living in one of the nondescript little homes backing onto the railway tracks, leading a civilian life, going to the local academy, hanging out with the cool kids. Doing normal things – trips to supermarkets, shopping malls and cinemas, eating burgers. Not living in billion-pound penthouses in the sky. Not attending an elite finishing school. Not going to premieres, parties and VIP everything…

  The train passed an advertisement featuring my dad’s goddaughter. Someone had scrawled pretty vacant across her forehead. Although I’d seen the poster a million times before, a shiver ran down my spine when I read the graffiti. That would be me soon, I thought. Operated on. Stitched up into Dad’s ideal of beauty. Face zeroed. I screwed up my face, enjoying the sensation of my skin crinkling up around my eyes. Soon I wouldn’t even be able to do that. My parents were seriously messing with me. No, they were trying to control me in every way.

  I checked my watch. The charms on my bracelet clattered – one for each of my sixteen birthdays. In a matter of hours, I would be on my parents’ jet heading for our private Caribbean island with its state-of-the-art operating theatre and recuperating suites. Once there, GoldRush Image Inc’s most qualified cosmetic surgeons were going to use groundbreaking technology to transform me beyond recognition – or, to use another of Dad’s dodgy phrases, ‘turn me into a living logo’.

  I pressed my fingers to my temples. My head was throbbing. All ‘the procedures’ sounded so sci-fi, so unreal. In six months’ time I would be… what? I pushed my temples more forcefully. A complete fake? A freak? A prototype? Dad’s ideal version of me!

  I pictured my therapist talking me through the surgical procedures. He had spent hours trying to bring me round to Dad’s way of thinking. But when he started regurgitating all Dad’s slimy expressions – ‘picture perfect’, ‘aesthetic archetype’ and ‘living logo’ – I’d switch off and begin cloudspotting, shaping animals, fish and butterflies from the cotton-wool air. His therapy kingdom was situated on the fiftieth floor so there were always plenty of clouds. I imagined these cloud creatures had fluid, ever-changing identities, and in the stories I dreamed up, they always escaped.

  A scream was building up deep inside my stomach. I closed my eyes and gripped the armrests of my seat, as if this might stop me hurtling towards my future.

  Suddenly a terrible cacophony engulfed the train. Brakes shrieked. Metal screeched. Then my world was spinning and, as I hit the floor in a tangle of limbs, I saw Big Stevie was airborne, too, and rocketing straight towards me like a heat-seeking missile. I scrambled out of range moments before he crashed down, his arms splayed out like a fighter-bomber plane.

  The train shuddered to a halt. An eerie silence followed. A heartbeat later, the screams started. Terrifying questions crammed my head. Was it a bomb? A kidnap crew? A collision? I shook Big Stevie by the shoulders; he was out cold. Placing two fingers on his wrist directly below the longest spike of his barbed-wire tattoo, I checked his pulse and counted the beats out loud, because that action stopped the dark thoughts crowding back in.

  Then a voice was booming over the intercom, instructing us to disembark for our own safety. The doors zizzed open. The television crackled static. The announcer’s voice was rough around the edges – unofficial somehow. Grabbing my Dior bag, I crept towards the door and peered out.

  All along the B
ullet Train, shell-shocked girls from the Star Academy were spilling out and regrouping in hysterical huddles. Some were hugging each other and crying while the more media-savvy were filming the scene on their smartphones – their eyes, as ever, on the main chance. A minder, who was carrying a girl with a gash on her head, was shouting for help to get the injured to safety.

  I jumped down. There was no sign of a bomb, no toppled carriages, no mangled metal. The train, although tilting, was still on the track. The Bullet Company’s cheesy advertising jingle popped into my head – ‘Bullet Trains save lives’.

  The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire sounded from the front of the train.

  Then I saw them, working in pairs. Men in masks were running down the tracks, checking carriages. The girls started screaming and scrambling up the sidings while the armed security guards rushed towards the advancing snatch squads.

  Oh, no, a kidnap crew, I thought in a panic, chasing after the girls from my class, my bag banging against my hip. These guys were hardcore. They were desperate enough to risk everything to kidnap the super-rich for massive ransom payouts. They didn’t mess around.

  The girls from my class stumbled and tottered in their high-heeled shoes as their minders shepherded them up the sidings. I was still running after them when an idea took hold. I slowed to a walk. Stevie was still out cold in the carriage. This was my chance!

  I had exactly sixty seconds to change my life.

  Peeling away from the rest of the group, I headed off in the opposite direction. About fifty metres down the track, I started climbing up the sidings, breaking a fingernail as I grabbed hold of clumps of weeds and grass to help me up, heels sinking deep into the claggy mix of mud and gravel. Reaching the top, I crouched down behind a bush and surveyed the scene. A freshly felled tree lay across the tracks. The front two carriages of the train were slanting precariously to the right. The girls from my class had vanished. Their minders stood guard.

  Gunfire rang out again.

  My heart was in my mouth.

  Girls were screaming again.

  More gunshots, closer this time.