Jilly Cooper - Bella

She had realized it must be nearly morning when someone turned on the wireless. It was the six o’clock news. She waited breathlessly.

Mrs Thatcher had taken Mr Wilson to task during a late night sitting in the House. Australia had devalued the dollar. A leopard had escaped from the Zoo. A Royal Princess had announced her engagement. The weather would be hot and sunny, although thundery showers were expected towards evening.

Bella slumped back in her seat in despair. No-one would ever find her.

They were driving fast now, presumably to reach their destination before too many people were about, storming along straight roads, squealing round corners. It was getting hotter. She was desperate to go to the loo.

Finally, the car stopped, and they took her out. She felt a warm breeze on her arms and legs, and a distant smell of salt and the sound of the waves pounding.

Suddenly she was panicking that they were high up, near the sea, and they were going to push her over a cliff.

She was shaking uncontrollably. She started to cry again. Quickly someone put a hand over her mouth.

‘Keep quiet,’ snarled a voice, and she felt something cold and metallic jabbed in her back.

Then they sat down on the grass and took the ropes off her ankles, so she could walk. They must have moved her then a couple of miles. She felt people round her all the time, moving, walking and whispering. She could hear cows mooing, birds singing, and the hum of cars in the distance.

Now her feet were on gravel, crunching up a path. She could feel the relief of those around her, a lightening of tension.

She was stumbling over the threshold, a door slammed, a lock clicked. There was a smell of musty, unwashed house that took her straight back to her childhood in the slums. She felt the sweat pouring off her. Next moment someone ran downstairs and, taking her arm, dragged her upstairs and pushed her into a room.

Someone undid her hands. She felt her blindfold; it seemed to be held down with masking tape. The next moment someone had ripped it off, catching some of her hair. Her head was so tender, she screamed.

‘Don’t hurt her,’ said the voice with the thick foreign accent.

She blinked in the half light. Two men stood in front of her. Both were masked. But she realized neither was Steve. One was very stocky with black hair, a black beard sticking out from under his mask, and massive shoulders.

The other was taller and slimmer, with thinning dark hair.

‘Listen, baby,’ he said. He also had a Spanish accent, but less strong than the other one. ‘You’re going to be here a long time. Don’t do anything silly. If you want anything, we’ll try and get it for you.’

‘I must go to the loo,’ said Bella desperately.

The taller one laughed. ‘There’s a bucket in the corner.’

She was flaming well going to wait till they’d gone.

‘Where’s Steve?’ she said. ‘Is he here?’

The taller one shook his head and showed her his gun.

‘I repeat, don’t try anything silly like escaping. There are five of us here guarding you.’

Suddenly Bella was terrified they’d taken off her blindfold, because she knew if one of them forgot their masks or if it slipped off they’d have to kill her.

They left her after that, and she had time to examine the room. It was very small, about ten feet by ten feet, and lit by a twenty watt bulb. A heavy wooden shutter was nailed over the window, the wallpaper was stained dirty brown, and thick dusty cobwebs hung from the smoke-grimed ceiling. The only furniture was a broken chair and the bucket in the corner.

She tried the bars on the window, but they were firmly nailed down. There were no weaknesses in the walls. Anyway, she’d bitten her nails so far down in the last few days they’d be no good for burrowing a hole.

A few minutes later another man came into the room to clean up the wound on the back of her head. He had long, blondish hair, was very thin, and had a quiet, soft voice with the same accent as the other two.

She found herself ridiculously grateful for the gentle way he handled her, warning her that the antiseptic was going to sting. She sensed he felt sorry for her. She noticed that he wore trousers that were too short, rather flashy yellow socks on his thin ankles and ill-fitting basket-weave shoes.

Afterwards she lay down and tried to make herself as comfortable as possible. Outside, she could hear them speaking to one another in Spanish. They must be Juan’s boys.

Sometime in the afternoon the thin blond boy brought her in a cup of tea and baked beans on a piece of bread on a greasy tin plate. Starving, she wolfed the lot, then, two minutes later, threw it all up, only just reaching the bucket in time.

Her head seemed to be splitting open. Clutching it, she crouched on the floor, sobbing. She must get out, she was going mad. Then she remembered reading somewhere that if you could survive the first forty-eight hours of a kidnapping, you could survive anything. She must get a grip on herself.

Our Father which art in Heaven, she began.

She noticed they hadn’t risked giving her a knife and fork with her food. She examined her face in the spoon. Her eyes were huge, her face pale and streaked with blood.

She decided to try and recite the whole of Othello — anything to keep her sane; but as she got to the third act, as Othello’s jealousy is slowly awakened by Iago, her mind kept straying to Lazlo, reliving the moments they’d spent together, the fights they’d had, the weekend in the country when he’d held her in his arms after the nightmare. What was it he’d said? That she was funny, talented and beautiful.

She looked at her reflection in the spoon again. He wouldn’t think she was beautiful now. She felt a black churning hatred against Steve.

At last, out of sheer exhaustion, she fell into an uneasy sleep.

She was woken by crunching on the gravel outside. Light was no longer filtering through a crack in the shutters. She heard three knocks, then the front door being opened quickly and quietly, and then shut again, then whispered voices and a slight laugh and someone coming up the stairs past her door.

She still felt sick, but the pain in her head was receding a bit. She struggled to her feet, feeling stiff and dizzy. Her mouth tasted awful. She could feel a film of dirt when she ran her tongue over her teeth.

No Colgate ring of confidence for you, she thought, licking her fingers and trying to rub away the bloodstains on her cheeks.

Logic told her that if the kidnappers liked her and thought she was pretty they would be less likely to do her in.

She wondered who the latest arrival was, but she didn’t have long to wait. Next minute the door opened and two men in masks came in, carrying guns. One was the stocky, bearded one; the other, whom she hadn’t seen before, was taller, wearing very tight trousers over slightly overweight hips, and a dark blue shirt. He had a very large torso. She could see patches of hairy chest between each button.

‘Come on, beauty,’ he said, tying her hands up, in an oily, lisping voice that made Bella shiver. ‘It’s time for a little chat.’

They led her down the passage to a brightly lit room. In it were several chairs and a table covered with bottles, glasses and tins of food.

A man lounged on an old sofa. He was also masked, but Bella noticed he was wearing an expensive, if slightly too flashy, blue suit, expensive gold cuff-links and watch, a pale blue silk shirt and he smelt strongly of aftershave.

‘Hi, Bella baby,’ he said. ‘What’ll you drink?’

He had a nice voice, deep, slow and soft, with slight American overtones.

‘We’ll have her hands untied, too, Carlos,’ he said to the stocky, bearded gunman.