Trapped (26 page)

Tass and Lulu were out on the landing bay, Tass trying hard
to explain himself to the nearest guard, Lulu glaring viciously over towards Cate.

‘The animals!' Cate started to wade towards the submarine.

‘All OK,' shouted one of the soldiers, poking his head out of the submarine hatch. ‘Alive and well, although rather smelly.'

‘Speaking of which, Cate . . .' Marcus was looking at her with a strange expression on his face. ‘I don't mean to be offensive but, well, you could really do with a good, long shower.'

‘It's not fair, really, it is
such
a downer.' Nancy was sitting at the far end of the long wooden table, moaning to Monique who had had the misfortune to be placed next to her by an expansive and beaming Pierre.

‘I've lost my captain, my PA
and
my boyfriend,' she said, lighting up yet another cigarette. ‘All in the same afternoon. I mean it's just outrageous. I feel like going to the papers about it. They're always writing about what a wonderful easy life I have flitting from party to yacht to premiere. If they knew how much I've just been through —'

‘No!' Marcus, who had been doing his best to ignore Nancy for most of the meal, couldn't help himself. ‘Nancy! We've talked about this. Henri debriefed you, Cate's dad has spoken to you, we all have. The events of the last week didn't happen, remember? You didn't have a captain called Bill and your PA
has suddenly taken up another job with an oligarch in the Ukraine. And as for Tass, well romances come and go.' He grinned. ‘If you speak about this to anyone, we'll have to kill you.'

Nancy gasped in horror before she realised that Marcus was joking.

‘Seriously, Nancy, forget this ever happened. Think of it like . . . like that tummy tuck and breast enhancement operation you had done last summer in Harley Street. Gone, forgotten, never spoken of again. Pouf.' He snapped his fingers and took a swig of wine.

‘How did you know about that?' Nancy was outraged. ‘No one knows about that.'

Marcus grinned happily. ‘And so it shall remain. Unless of course . . .'

Nancy subsided into a sulky silence but soon cheered up when Monique kindly began asking her about her modelling. Cate looked around the table happily. Her dad had finally finished lecturing Henri about putting his daughter in danger and was now chatting to Wendy about cricket, his face animated as they discussed the merits of the last Ashes tour of the UK. He had already given Cate and Arthur the biggest telling off of their lives, although Cate could tell that secretly he was rather proud of his offspring. To her left, Piot was entertaining Arthur with tales of his computer genius and Arthur was doing his best to keep a straight face.

Every so often, Arthur's hand would creep sideways to give Cate's arm an affectionate squeeze, and it was all she could do
not to give her brother a bear hug every time she looked at him.

‘You know that Arthur is the real hero in all this,' Cate had told everyone at least five times as they flew on Nancy's pink helicopter from Antibes to St Tropez for a celebratory lunch.

And now, along the table lay the remnants of what had been one of the best meals of Cate's life. Someone must have told Pierre it was a special occasion, and even by Le Ricochet's high standards it had been historic, Pierre and his waiters bringing an endless series of exquisite tapas – deep red chorizo baked in Spanish rioja, glistening lemon and garlic chicken, seared pork brochettes topped with emerald parsley and silvery-grey marinated sardines crammed into their dish.

‘You're not leaving us as well, are you?' Wendy asked Cate, dipping some bread into the sardine dish. ‘We've got a new captain coming tomorrow and Nancy is throwing a party on Friday. That lead singer everyone's talking about is coming. She's definitely got her eye on the drummer. I heard her telling Jules all about it. Look's like it's business as usual.'

‘I wouldn't dream of going back to England yet,' said Cate. ‘I'm looking forward to a summer having fun with you guys. I think we've earned it, don't you?'

The older girl smiled and nodded. She was still sad, Cate knew, at finding out the truth about Bill. Wendy stood up and wandered down to the beach with Nancy to play with the children.

‘What will happen to them – to Tass and Bill and Lulu?' Cate leant over to talk to Henri as he carefully pulled a prawn apart and popped the meat into his mouth.

‘The thing is, Cate,' he sighed, his hard face softening, ‘in our line of work, justice isn't always that straightforward. We can't just put them on trial, well, not the sort of trial you would imagine, because we simply can't have everyone knowing about us, about you, about what Tass and Lulu were up to.' He shrugged. ‘Sometimes you have to keep things quiet. Imagine if people knew that there was something that could technically bring an end to ageing. Without careful planning, the consequences could be horrendous.'

‘Where are they now?' Even as she asked, Cate didn't really want to know. Actually she wanted to forget all about the last few days and simply enjoy the sensation of being alive in such a beautiful place with all her favourite people around her. But she had to ask, otherwise she knew she would never get any peace.

‘Right now Tass and Lulu are in a holding jail, sitting in an island off the coast of Africa,' said Henri. ‘Even Tass couldn't buy his way out of there.'

‘And then?' Cate asked anxiously. She couldn't work out why she was so worried about such vile people, but she was.

‘Cate, whatever you do, don't feel sorry for them,' he said grimly. ‘A few hours more and you would have been lost forever. Most likely they would have killed you without compunction, without mercy.'

Or experimented on me
, thought Cate, shuddering, suddenly cold in the warm sunshine.

Her father looked up, eyeing her anxiously from across the table, trying to decipher what Henri was saying to his daughter.

‘Tass's father is a very powerful man with contacts around the world.' Henri was choosing his words carefully. ‘He has been on to the French President and we believe he has already been lobbying the White House. Cate, we have to expect that Tass will be released sooner rather than later. But from what I hear, his father will have him under such close control that he will never be able to cause any mischief again. Lulu, though, has no powerful relatives and Tass will have no choice but to do what his father wants. He won't be able to help her. She won't see freedom until she is too old to remember how to spell the word.'

Cate sat quietly for a minute. ‘So he gets off scot-free and she pays the price,' Cate said. ‘How is that fair?'

‘It's sort of fair. Lulu was the one in charge,' Henri said. ‘She was the brains behind this. She set up Nancy and enlisted Bill and corrupted the professor with talk of power and respect and, of course, money. Without Lulu, none of this would have happened.'

Cate thought back to the darkened rooms, the cages and the horror of the damaged beaten creatures. ‘How are the animals?' She hardly dared ask.

‘Don't worry, they're doing well,' Henri replied. ‘They will be looked after for the rest of their lives.'

‘Will they grow old?' Cate asked.

‘Who knows?' Henri said quietly. ‘Maybe the effect will be short-lived, and nature will find a way of fighting back.
Either way, you saved countless other animals from a dreadful fate.'

‘And Bill?' Cate asked quietly. This time her father spoke.

‘I'll tell her Henri,' he said, casting a warning glance in the chief's direction. ‘Cate, Bill didn't make it off the boat.' Her father was talking to her gently, watching her face for signs of distress. ‘He died in a final shoot out. He and Mikey and Ahmed. They didn't want to surrender.'

‘Oh,' said Cate, swallowing hard. ‘I'm sorry. Did you ever find out who he really was?'

‘Henri is still trying to unravel his story,' her father explained. ‘We know that Bill had been using his cover as a yacht captain to work for all sorts of dangerous people. We're trying to locate a family to tell them that he is dead, but perhaps we never will. Perhaps he didn't have a family.'

Cate was silent. She looked at her father and Arthur, at Monique who had come up to her end of the table and was crouched down by her side holding her hands comfortingly.

‘It's OK,' she said finally, touched by their worried expressions. ‘It's OK. I know how lucky I am.'

Her mobile rang. She looked at the screen and Cate's heart leapt. ‘Michel,' she said, answering it. She got up from the table and wandered off to the far end of the garden. ‘Michel, I am so, so sorry about the other night. I was kind of . . . busy.'

There was a pause. Cate held her breath.

‘It's OK,' he said. ‘It does me good to be stood up by a beautiful girl now and again. But don't make a habit of it, OK?'

Cate smiled. ‘I promise I won't,' she said. Her heart soared. So there was going to be a next time.

‘Was it anything important?' asked Michel curiously.

Cate looked back at her friends and family sitting around the table in the warm French sunshine, the sea sparkling behind them, the promise of a long fun-filled summer ahead of her.

‘It was,' Cate said happily, ‘but it isn't any more.'

A massive thank you to everyone who helped with this book.

To Brenda Gardner at Piccadilly for believing in Cate Carlisle enough to sign her up, Ruth Williams, who kindly held my hand through the edit and my agent Elly James for being brave enough to take me on in the first place.

My friends – both young and just a little bit older – aka the ‘focus group', sadly too numerous to mention, who read, advised and cheered me on. Your support has been incredible.

A special, huge thanks to my wonderful sons George, Conrad and Lucas, my keenest, yet kindest critics and a constant source of inspiration and fun.

And finally and most importantly, to my husband Graeme, whose love, endless encouragement and patience has gone way beyond anything I could reasonably have expected of him. Thank you doesn't even begin to cover it.