Stitch-Up Page 2

  I stood up slowly, edged along the fence until I found a gap and climbed through, skidding down an embankment into a grubby suburban street.

  Reality Bites

  AN hour later, the Thames snaked before me, glittering in the last rays of the sun as it swept London’s secrets out to sea. Splashes of gold spangled the murky water, then for a moment the wind dropped, plating the surface, as if all the gold bars stashed away in the Bank of England’s vaults had melted into the river. The breeze got up again, rippling the water, sending jagged gold lines shooting back and forth, like the hands of traders on the stockmarket floor. Ragged pink clouds stretched across the darkening sky. The city’s skyscrapers flashed like gangsters’ jewellery.

  I glanced over my shoulder. No sign of Big Stevie. That was a first. He was probably still out cold on the train. It felt strange but good. Freedom buzzed and shimmered all around me. Everything was louder, brighter, more intense, as if I were experiencing life in high definition for the very first time. I walked over to the river, and standing there, soaking up the scene, all I could think was, This is the real world, the freaking real world.

  London.

  As I’d never seen it before.

  Alone.

  Without Big Stevie shadowing me.

  “Free,” I whispered, trying the word out for size. “Free,” I said the word a little louder. I liked the way it pushed my lips into a broad, beaming smile.

  I took a deep breath. The river smelled salty. It made me think of Elizabethan adventurers gliding down the Thames in ships with big, billowing sails, off to discover the New World.

  London pulsed beneath my feet. My New World. Pressing the tips of my middle and index fingers to my lips, I kissed them and crossed myself before touching them to the pavement, like a superstitious footballer heading onto the pitch.

  Straightening up again, my excitement ebbed away. GoldRush Image Inc – my parents’ headquarters – loomed on the other side of the river. The network’s news helicopters were zipping off helipads, hunting down breaking news, their blades glinting in the day’s last light.

  Before long my parents would know that I was missing, if they didn’t already.

  I sat down on a bench to catch my breath. An inscription on the back read: Everyone needs time to think.

  Understatement of the year, I thought, trying to gather myself. I tilted my head back and looked up at the sky; the last rays of the sun warmed my face. The gulls swooped and wheeled over the Thames, riding the breeze, bellies stained pink in the evening sunlight. I was running. But from what? I took a deep breath. In. Out. Slowly my thoughts settled. The kidnappers had saved my skin for the time being. But I needed to crack on.

  I stood up, hoping to walk myself into some kind of plan. An arrow of light shot across the Thames straight towards me, as if singling me out. I smiled. I still couldn’t quite believe that I had dodged the knife.

  As I set off in the direction of the Houses of Parliament, the civilian world rushed towards me in a riot of sound and vision: chattering families strolled past, giggling girls sashayed by in high-street fashions, a crew of skateboarders slalomed between squawking hen parties, while beered-up boys in whack shirts whistled at girls with spray-on tans. Asian women out with their families caught my eye as their saris sparkled in the sunshine. Weaving through the crowds, I felt as if I’d wandered onto the set of a West End musical. Every millimetre of the seventy-two kilometres of nerves in my skin was supercharged. Electric pulses were racing round my body, as if it were a Formula One track. I was hyped to the max.

  Down by the London Eye, a carousel whirled. Out of nowhere, a clown started shadowing me – invading my space, mirroring my every gesture and playing it for the crowds. I walked faster, but my fancy-dress stalker kept on mimicking me. His cheap joke spooked me. Even eerier, Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader and Michael Jackson laughed as I scooted past. I did a double take. They were shabby human statues. Totally freaked out now, I sprinted up the steps to Westminster Bridge, taking them two at a time. From below, laughter reached me, followed by the tinkle of change dropping into the clown’s hat.

  I stopped on the bridge, heart rocketing. It was as if the creepy clown had tripped a switch in my head and, boom, the rush of excitement had changed into something dark. I leaned against the bridge as I caught my breath.

  In the gathering darkness GoldRush Image Inc dazzled. It dominated the skyline, hogging the limelight, making the House of Commons, Whitehall and all the other government buildings look gloomy and irrelevant, like fusty old fossils. Dad’s headquarters were a DNA-inspired design, two towers that twisted a full ninety degrees as they rose up into the clouds, resembling a double helix. One tower housed his media empire; the other his cosmetic kingdom. Dad used to be a cosmetic surgeon – one of the best. He was the go-to guy for the rich and famous. That was how he made his money. With this wealth he had built up his media empire. Dad was ahead of the game; he’d sussed out the power of the image decades ago.

  Clips from my parents’ TV shows flickered and flashed on the massive LED screens that encased GoldRush Image HQ in a glittering force field. An A to Z of celebrity guests winked and smiled. World leaders gave the thumbs up. Royalty waved. Superstars blew kisses. On the largest screen, footage of Dad interviewing the prime minister was playing on a loop – a twenty-metre-high love-in, a bromance special. This supersized image gave the impression that the two of them governed the country from right there on the sofa. A chill crept up my spine.

  Across London, lights were flicking on. People were hunkering down for the night, cooking supper, putting the kids to bed and switching on the TV. Soon they would be turning on the news and watching the train crash story.

  I steadied myself against the side of Westminster Bridge. London stretched for miles in every direction. Its lights marked out a strange, parallel world to the one I knew.

  The civilian world.

  Although technically I lived in London, I didn’t really. I didn’t walk around the streets, take the bus or hang out in its parks. I never shopped on the high streets or in department stores. I couldn’t grab a coffee, chill out in civilian bars or walk the dog. I was a global, or, in other words, stinking rich – because my parents were part of the global financial elite, the one-percenters. So it was simply too dangerous. Globals inhabited secure corporate spaces – VIP retail theatres, bars and clubs. We lived in the Gates, secure gated apartment blocks, the Billionaires’ quarter and the Fortress district, as well as swanky penthouses. Bubbled by security twenty-four/seven, we were chauffeured around in bulletproof limos or helicopters from one safe corporate space to the next. We were protected from the world. In fact, my feet rarely touched the pavement unless it was covered by red carpet.

  I never walked around by myself. Not like this.

  Pointing my finger at London’s skyline, I joined the dots of my life: Mum and Dad’s HQ, our billion-pound apartment as well as my favourite clubs, restaurants and bars – constructing a twinkling spider’s web of my regular haunts.

  Coco and the List would probably be out tonight, despite the crash. They were going to The Glitz to celebrate the beginning of the Easter break. Nothing – not even a train crash – would stop those girls from partying. Think of the gossip! The press would be scrumming the place, desperate to hear their stories. They would be media stars. What better way to start the holidays? I usually met my London friends at SkyLab on a Friday. Its neon sign pulsed seductively. And for a moment I thought about giving up and walking over to GoldRush HQ, going straight back into the lion’s den, but I pushed the idea from my head. I could be on a jet, heading off for the mother of all makeovers. But that wasn’t okay for me right now. My anger bubbled up again, hot and furious. My parents didn’t own my body, not yet.

  A siren wailed in the distance. Instantly memories of the night my whole life was turned upside down flooded back.

  All it took was a screech of a siren, a full moon or a blast of my favourite getting-ready-to-go-out
tune, which at that time was a vintage hit from a few years back, and in a flash I was back there, reliving that night, still half-believing it was a dream. Not that I needed triggers because the events of that night were with me twenty-four/seven, like a screensaver of snapshots continuously looping round, ambushing me whenever my mind wasn’t occupied. Even though it had been almost a month, the memory remained raw, bright and dramatic, like blood gushing from a fresh wound. Sometimes I felt as if the memory had seeped into my bloodstream and, like grit in a shoe, it worried me constantly.

  On the night in question, it had been business as usual – more or less. I’d been warring with my stylists about which outfit I was going to wear for a film premiere. I’d picked out an Alexander McQueen black mini dress with a death’s-head hawkmoth design across the front, and had teamed it with silver trainers, while my stylists had been proposing something more appropriate for the GoldRush brand. When, suddenly, a bone-chilling screech rang out. The security alarm’s wail invaded every corner of the house. It vibrated my stomach, turned my organs to jelly, taking over my body like some kind of sound-shifter. Then a robotic voice was ordering us to make our way to the panic room.

  I rushed out into the corridor. Stevie was belting towards me. He was shouting something, but his words were lost in the siren’s wail. His arms folded around me, and then he was charging up to the next floor where the panic room was situated.

  When we reached the safe room, Stevie punched in the code, threw open the door and dumped me inside. It was state of the art. Space age.

  “What’s up?” My voice boomed in the silence of the soundproofed room.

  “Intruders. A Crunch Town gang. We’re dealing with it,” he said, before speaking into his walkie-talkie. “Yes, sir. Dasha’s secure.” Then, as he turned to leave, he said, “You know the drill. Stay here until the all-clear sounds.”

  “Where are Mum and Dad?” I asked nervously, never in a million years imagining that I would be shut up in the safe room all alone. In previous drills, Mum and Dad had always been there to reassure me.

  “They’re okay,” he said. “They’ll be up soon.” Next minute he had lurched from the safe room and was rocketing back down the corridor.

  As I went to shut the door, I hesitated. The panic room with its white padded walls, its graveyard silence and its minimalist furniture gave me the creeps; it was like an antechamber to death. I half-expected someone to arrive with my last supper, a little something to cheer me up before my lethal injection. On impulse, I crept into the corridor.

  Nobody. The staff had vanished into the vibrating air. Realising the siren would drown out my footsteps, I sprinted down the corridors until I reached the stretch of landing overlooking the hallway. Then, crouching behind the banisters, I peered down into the grand entrance to my parents’ mansion. It was empty.

  As suddenly as it had started, the siren stopped, plunging the house into an eerie silence – not a sound, not even the soft-shoe shuffle of the maids as they went about their business. Through the vast stained-glass window above the front door, I saw the security lights snap on, revealing two of Dad’s security guards approaching the house. I ducked down behind a Henry Moore sculpture, moulding my shape to its curves. The guards took up position on either side of the front door. I’d left it too late to head downstairs.

  The silence deepened.

  The full moon looked like a blood orange through the stained-glass window.

  Noticing my crouching figure reflected in the supersized red heart hanging from the ceiling, I inched back behind the sculpture. My father had given Mum the heart for their last wedding anniversary. It was a Jeff Koons. Dad had paid over thirty million pounds for it. The truck-sized chandelier stippled the shiny, metallic heart with a million pinpricks of light. Banks of gilt mirrors were reflecting the light back, too.

  My heartbeat was booming so loudly, it would have easily filled the massive heart.

  Footsteps. They were coming from the corridor leading to Dad’s study. From the sound of it, seven, maybe eight people were approaching. It was hard to tell because they were marching in time like troops on parade. I edged forwards again.

  A phalanx of security strode into the entrance hall. At its centre, a pale-faced woman was struggling to free herself from the guards’ grip. She was wearing a classic Burberry trench and a salmon-pink scarf at her throat, a shining pearl in the ugly shell of security.

  The woman turned around to speak to someone out of sight.

  She had dark hair. A flash of green eyes. Porcelain skin.

  Heartstop. Even in the blur of movement, there was no mistaking our likeness. A jolt of electricity zapped through me. I edged out some more.

  As she tussled with the guards, she shouted: “I want to see my daughter.”

  Her words rang out, clear and sweet as birdsong, swooping up and round the domed ceiling.

  They were like an adrenalin shot to my heart.

  Security clamped her shoulders more firmly, closing in around her as they propelled her towards the door. Now the woman’s shouts were muffled – absorbed by the guards’ expensive cashmere suits. Still I caught every word.

  “You’d have to be blind not to see the likeness. You know it’s the truth. I’m no blackmailer, no imposter. Mr Gold, she’s my child, admit it. She’s baby 9614. I can feel it with every cell of my body.”

  My mouth gaped open.

  Next minute the goons had hustled the woman out into the night. Two police cars were waiting outside the security gates, their flashing lights bathed the neighbouring white mansions in a shimmer of blue strobe.

  The door slammed shut. A gust of wind stirred the air.

  My parents were standing directly below me, out of sight. I heard the click of a cigarette lighter, a sucking sound as they lit up, and then they stepped into the hallway, throwing Halloween-scary shadows up onto the hanging heart.

  My father spoke first. “That’s her dealt with for now. But we need to make sure it remains dealt with.” He cracked his knuckles one by one, a sure sign he was feeling stressed out. “Damn it! Dasha is my life’s work. The lynchpin. She’s the brand’s future. I won’t let that woman come swanning in here and foul up our plans. Dasha is ours. We chose her. Bought her, for Chrissakes. Things must be managed carefully. I’ll speak to the police chief tomorrow. We need to make sure that woman remains silenced.”

  “How the hell did it happen?” My mother dragged nervously on her cigarette. “Do you think she got our names from FuturePerfect?”

  “Not a chance. We signed up with them precisely so this wouldn’t happen.” He stabbed his cigarette into the air to emphasise his point. “Their confidentiality clause was watertight.”

  “Must be female intuition. Motherly love.” My own mother laughed nastily. “I can’t believe how similar they look. It’s uncanny. No wonder she made the connection.”

  “Financial necessity, more like,” my father snapped.

  His knuckle-crunching echoed off the walls like rifle shots.

  “What if she goes to a rival organisation?” My mother took another long drag on her cigarette. “Stirs it up.”

  “Like she’s going to do that. We are the media, for Chrissakes. It’s our word against hers. It’s easy to paint her as a blackmailer, an imposter and a money-grubbing piece of trash. It happens all the time – people turning up, posing as missing children, relatives or long-lost ancestors, and demanding money. She wouldn’t come out of it well.”

  As they spoke, I watched the blue lights of the police cars disappear into the distance. Dad must have been watching too because he added, “The police will take care of it. They are going to caution her for blackmail, leaving her in no doubt about how serious an offence it is. The threat of jail should stop her blabbing. We need this to remain sorted.”

  “Dasha must never know.” My mother’s voice sounded strained.

  Every millimetre of my skin prickled with anger.

  Dad snapped his fingers. “Stevie, ch
eck on Dasha. Tell her it was a false alarm if she asks.”

  I retraced my footsteps at speed. On reaching the panic room, I zapped in the code. The door shut with a snap behind me, the sound of a prison door closing. Totally wired, I paced back and forth, the deep-space silence buzzing in my ears as I ran through the sequence of events.

  What the hell was going on?

  Was that woman really my mother? For real?

  She certainly looked like me. No, she looked just like me.

  Barely breathing, I pressed my palms against the white padded walls to steady myself while my brain slowly assimilated the information.

  So, the happy family schtick had been a pretence – another lie to add to all the others which had been stacking up recently. But this was deception on a grand scale. I slowly slid down the wall, crouching on my haunches, hands clasped around my head like a crash helmet, as if this gesture might protect me from the lies. Snakes alive! One minute I was Dasha Gold, daughter of the Golds. The next minute I was… what exactly? Adopted? Nothing made sense any more. All I had were negatives.

  I was NOT a Gold.

  The Golds were NOT my parents.

  I was NOT their daughter.

  Each revelation detonated a massive scream inside my head.

  I felt as if I had stepped on a landmine. Boom! All my knowns had become unknowns. Stunned, I sat there staring into space, waiting for the fragments of my life to fall back down to earth again, only to find when they did, and I tried to piece them back together, essential parts of the jigsaw were missing.

  What really hurt was the way Dad had spoken about me, like some kind of product. It chimed with the recent bad stuff, reinforcing my fears. As I rocked back and forwards, head cradled in my hands, his words, dark as a witch’s curse, filled my head – trolling me, making me feel small, insecure and unloved.

  “I bought her.”

  “Chose her.”

  “She’s my life’s work.”

  “The brand’s future.”

  His words were so cold and businesslike – so unemotional. They weren’t going to win him a top-dad tribute anytime soon. I couldn’t kid myself, the crazed control-freak was speaking more like a CEO of a global corporation than a doting father. What the hell was a lynchpin, anyway?