I came to alone, lying on a bunk with a thin blanket over me. The pain in my head was agonizing, throbbing with a low pulse that made the dim lights in the room warp and shimmer, with a strange halo effect around them. There was a curtain on the wall opposite and with trembling limbs I slithered off the bed and half stumbled, half crawled across the floor towards it. But when I dragged myself upright, using the top bunk for support, and pulled back the thin orange cloth, there was no window there—just a blank wall of creamy plastic, lightly patterned as if in imitation of textured wallpaper.

The walls seemed to close in, the room narrowing around me, and I felt my breath come faster. One. Two. Three. Breathe in.

Shit. I felt the sobs rising up inside me, threatening to choke me from the inside.

Four. Five. Six. Breathe out.

I was trapped. Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .

One. Two. Three. Breathe in.

Propping myself against the wall with one hand, I made my way unsteadily back towards the door, but I knew before I tried it that it was useless. It was locked.

Refusing to think about what that meant, I tried the other door, set into the wall at an angle, but it opened into a minuscule en suite, empty except for a single dead spider curled in the washbasin.

I stumbled back to the first door and tried again, pulling harder this time, straining every muscle, rattling the door in its frame, yanking so hard at the handle that the effort left me panting, stars exploding in my vision as I slumped to the floor. No. No, this was not possible—was I really trapped?

I got to my feet and looked around me for something to lever into the door, but there was nothing, everything in the room was bolted or screwed down, or made of fabric. I tried forcing the handle again, trying not to think about the fact that I was in a windowless cell maybe four foot by six, and well below sea level, a thousand tons of water just inches away behind a skin of steel. But the door didn’t move, the only thing that changed was the pain in my head, jabbing with neon intensity until at last I stumbled back to the bunk and crawled onto it, trying not to think about the weight of water pressing in on me, focusing instead on my aching skull. It was pounding now so much that I could feel my pulse in my temples. Oh God, I had been so stupid, running out of that room straight into the trap. . . .

I tried to think. I had to stay calm, had to keep my head above the rising tide of fear. Stay logical. Stay in control. Think. I had to. What day was it? It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. My limbs felt stiff, as if I’d been lying in that position on the bunk for a while, but although I was thirsty I wasn’t completely parched. If I’d been unconscious for more than a few hours I would have woken up seriously dehydrated. Which meant it was probably still Tuesday, the twenty-second.

In which case . . . Ben knew that I’d been intending to go ashore at Trondheim. He would come looking for me—wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t let the boat leave without me.

But then I realized that the engine was running and I could feel the rise and fall of waves beneath the hull. Either we hadn’t stopped at all, or else we’d already left the port.

Oh God. We were heading out to sea—and everyone would assume I was still in Trondheim. If they looked for me at all, it would be in completely the wrong place.

If only my head didn’t hurt and my thoughts didn’t keep stumbling over each other . . . if only the walls weren’t closing in on me like a coffin, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.

Passports. I didn’t know how big Trondheim port was, but they must have some kind of customs check, or passport control. And there would be someone from the ship on duty at the gangway, surely, checking passengers in and out. They couldn’t risk leaving without someone. Somewhere, there would be a record of the fact that I hadn’t left the boat. Someone would realize I was still here.

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.