No Escape: The most addictive, gripping thriller with a shocking twist

He hesitated for a moment and then shrugged, saying, ‘Sure, why not?’

He introduced himself as Denny, and when Kitty went to the bar he told Lana he was from New Zealand. He had an even, golden tan, which set off the pale blue of his eyes, and his hair – a bed of tight sandy curls – seemed to grow upwards. She imagined that if she reached out a hand it would feel springy to the touch.

He unhooked the headphones from around his neck and set them on the table beside her sketchbook. ‘You draw?’

‘A little,’ she replied.

‘What type of thing?’

‘Oh, anything really. Whatever captures me.’

‘And what captures you?’ he said, looking at her with interest.

She thought for a moment. In the month she and Kitty had been travelling in the Philippines, she’d already filled two sketchbooks with illustrations. She pictured her most recent sketches – a group of boys sitting on a crumbling wall, legs swinging; a goat tethered in the shade chewing the cud; a doorway shrouded by a sun-bleached yellow sheet; a lone shoe discarded at the roadside. ‘I like to sketch ordinary things that pinpoint a moment.’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Something that has a story.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly it.’

Kitty returned with three beers sweating on a bamboo tray, slices of lime sticking out of each bottle neck. She passed them around, then handed Lana a bundle of napkins and a glass of ice. ‘Best they could do in the first-aid department.’

Lana wrapped the ice cubes in a napkin and placed them against her ankle, wincing at the cold.

Kitty used a finger to push the lime into the belly of her beer bottle, then they all clinked bottles.

Behind them there was a crash of wood, followed by the sound of laughter, and Lana turned to see a giant Jenga tower had collapsed. Its builders were collecting the blocks, rebuking each other in Italian. Kitty turned back to the table and said, ‘Great bar. Didn’t even know it was here.’

‘Real nice couple run it,’ Denny said. ‘They’ve definitely picked the right location.’ He glanced out across the water to where the sun was getting lower, painting the water rose-gold. As he turned back, his gaze moved to the entrance. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Here they are.’

Two men in their late twenties strolled across the bar, a younger blonde woman with bare feet walking between them. Denny waved them over and made the introductions.

Aaron, another Kiwi, who was square-jawed and thick-necked, stood with his hands gripped over the back of a chair. ‘I picked up the part,’ he told Denny, ‘but I had to go to the mechanic’s cousin’s brother’s shop.’

Denny rolled his eyes. ‘What did they charge you?’

‘Six thousand pesos.’

‘Pretty good.’

Aaron nodded.

‘No Joseph?’

Aaron raised an eyebrow, communicating something that Lana didn’t understand. ‘Right, I’ll get the beers in.’

Heinrich, a German with even white teeth and a sensible haircut, pulled up a chair for the blonde girl, Shell, and set his next to it.

‘What happened?’ Shell asked, looking at the ice pressed to Lana’s ankle.

‘I got in the path of a runaway cockerel,’ Lana said, lifting the napkin to reveal the swelling skin.

‘Bloody kamikaze cockerels,’ Kitty added.

Shell leant forward and pressed the backs of her fingers very gently against Lana’s skin, a flock of slim silver bangles jangling on her wrist. She drew her fingers lightly around the edges of the swelling. ‘Looks like a sprain. Keep topping up the ice tonight.’

Lana liked Shell immediately, sensing warmth in the wideness of her smile. She tried to decide whether Shell and Heinrich were a couple, but couldn’t tell if their easy manner with one another was familiarity or intimacy.

Aaron returned with the drinks and conversation began to flow. Kitty was entertaining the table with a story of a love tryst she’d witnessed earlier between a slight Filipino woman and an ageing American. Lana was content to sit back and listen, trying to place the accents and dynamics of the friends who explained that they’d travelled through South-East Asia together.

A heady blend of beers and rum on a warm evening meant conversation flowed easily from one topic to another. Lana forgot the pain in her ankle and grinned at the colourful details she learnt about the others: Denny would only fall asleep in a Spider-Man outfit until he was nine years old; Heinrich was so competitive that he used to beg his brother to score him on how long he peed for; Shell’s parents owned a cattle-feed store in Ontario and she used to go sledging on the wide plastic sacks the feed was delivered in; Aaron had once got lost in a rainforest on Réunion island and taken a badly aimed crap on an ants’ nest.

Several more rounds of drinks were bought and drunk. Candles were lit and streams of white fairy lights began to twinkle around the bar as night arrived. When it was Kitty’s round she ordered more beers, with a tray of chasers, and the noise around the table rose even louder.

‘So what made you decide to travel? Why the Philippines?’ Shell asked Lana, the group’s attention turning to her.

Lana glanced down at her drink, her mouth turning dry as she thought about what led to her decision to leave England. She remembered her father’s expression when he’d found her kneeling on the threadbare carpet of his bedroom with a Manila envelope in her hands: his features seemed to slide downwards, as if weighted by guilt.

Later the same night, she’d waited on Kitty’s doorstep, rain dripping down the collar of her coat, her shoulders hunched against the biting wind. At her centre was a hollow, raw feeling, as if her insides had been carved out. Kitty had opened the door, taken one look at Lana and tugged her indoors, saying, ‘Jesus! What the fuck’s happened?’

At the time, Kitty had been renting a poky studio-flat in Ealing above a florist, and she’d led Lana into the cluttered main room where a double bed heaved with cushions and crochet throws. Kitty’s clothes hung on two rails at the side of the room and her shoes were thrown in a trunk at the end of the bed. Her dressing table was covered with make-up, body lotions and bottles of perfume, and the whole place had the feel of a costume department.

Kitty plucked a fleecy dressing gown from the back of the door and wrapped it around Lana, who was trembling all over. She squeezed Lana’s red hands. ‘You’re freezing. What’s happened? Are you okay?’

‘Can I stay?’ Lana asked, her voice edged with tears.

‘Of course! What’s going on? Sorry it’s so cold in here. Pissing landlord hasn’t fixed the heating,’ Kitty said, moving a hand to the plug-in radiator where two thongs and a tea towel were drying. ‘I’ll do us a hot-water bottle. And tea.’

A few minutes later they were sitting in bed with the covers pulled up, a hot-water bottle tucked between their feet. Lana cupped a mug of steaming tea to her chest, feeling her heart pounding against it. A tension headache pulsed at her temples as she began to talk. She told Kitty everything – about discovering the envelope hidden in her father’s room, about the truth it contained, about how her father had no words to deny what he’d done.

Kitty listened with her eyes fixed on Lana’s, her lips pressed together. Neither of them drank their tea.

By the time Lana finished talking, her face was streaked with tears. ‘I’ll never forgive him.’

‘No!’ Kitty had said suddenly, sitting forward. ‘Don’t say that. He made a mistake. A terrible mistake. But you mustn’t hate him. You mustn’t!’ She spoke with such vehemence that her hands shook, a dribble of cold tea spilling onto the duvet.

Lana pushed the memory away now. She couldn’t think about that day. Not out here. When she looked up, she realized everyone was watching her, still waiting for an answer.

‘Spin of a globe,’ Kitty said, coming to Lana’s rescue. ‘That’s how we chose the Philippines, wasn’t it?’

Lana nodded.

‘I spun it – and Lana closed her eyes and pointed.’

Heinrich laughed. ‘Really? That’s brilliant.’

It was true – at least in part. It might not have been why they’d left, but it was how they’d chosen to come here. Lana had been sitting cross-legged on Kitty’s bed with the globe in front of her. She’d closed her eyes and felt the lightest breath of air move against her fingertips as the globe spun. Then, as it slowed, she pressed her forefinger against its cool surface.

When she opened her eyes, her fingertip was placed in the centre of a mass of islands near the equator. She lifted her hand and read the name aloud: ‘The Philippines.’

*

‘More drinks?’ the waitress asked, a tray propped against her hip.

The bar was crammed now, voices clamouring to be heard above the thudding music.

Aaron glanced at the watch on his thick wrist, then pushed back his chair and stood. ‘I think we’re done here, thank you.’

When the waitress left, Aaron turned to Lana and Kitty and said, ‘We’ve got some rum back at ours that needs drinking. Gonna join us?’

*

Lana and Kitty wove behind the others with their arms linked, Lana trying to put little weight on her injured ankle. She’d tugged her hairband free, and her hair fell loose over one shoulder in thick waves of amber.

Ahead of them the group came to a stop by the shoreline. Lana could feel the effect of the beers she’d drunk – had it been five, or perhaps six? In the darkness she watched as Aaron untied a rope from a wooden post. The other end was attached to a small metal dinghy with an outboard engine, which he walked out into the shallows.

‘What are you doing?’ Kitty asked, a light slur to her question.

‘Preparing your taxi.’

Shell, Heinrich and Denny kicked off their flip-flops and waded into the harbour. They climbed into the dinghy, which rocked from side to side, sending small waves rippling to shore.

‘Where are we going?’ Kitty asked, a grin spreading across her face.

‘Back to our place,’ Aaron told her.

‘Your place is … a boat?’

In the moonlight, Lana caught Aaron’s smile.

‘Come on,’ Denny called from the dinghy. ‘You’ll like it, we promise.’

Lana shrugged, then slipped off her sandals. The seabed was slimy beneath her soles and she tried not to think about what could be lurking in the dark, silent water.

It was a squeeze on board and Lana sat on a damp plank of wood, squashed between Shell and Kitty with her satchel and sketchbook on her lap.

Aaron yanked at the start cord and the motor spluttered to life.

The smell of diesel and fish rose from the harbour as they motored forward, clouds of cooler air brushing their skin. With the weight of them all, the dinghy sank close to the waterline, and Lana thought that if she reached a hand over the side she’d be able to trail her fingers across the surface.

The night was still and quiet as they passed fishing bangkas, which looked like colourful dugout canoes, drifting on their anchors. The others talked amongst themselves in an easy rhythm, but Lana and Kitty said nothing. They stared ahead as, through layers of darkness, the shadow of a yacht began to emerge, moonlight illuminating the curve of a dark-blue hull.

Lana widened her gaze to absorb it more fully. The yacht was elegant and long, with two masts standing guard. In the moonlight the name of the yacht, painted in a curling white script, came into focus. The Blue.

Lana turned those two words over on her tongue and, as she did so, a surge of something she couldn’t quite define – excitement, anticipation, fear – pushed through her heart.

*

They were sitting towards the back of the yacht – the cockpit, someone called it, which had made Kitty giggle – drinking tall glasses of rum and Coke. Lana held a joint between her fingers that she couldn’t remember being passed, and music played from a speaker somewhere on deck. The yacht rocked gently, like a lullaby from the sea, and Lana felt her body relaxing into its rhythm.

Shell had given them a tour below deck, showing them the main living area, which she called the saloon, and the narrow galley kitchen that was neatly kept except for a stack of empty beer bottles on the side. There were three cramped cabins at the front of the yacht, which contained bunks, and then two slightly larger cabins at the rear with double beds where Aaron and Denny slept.

Lana liked the simplicity of their living quarters, where everything smelt of warm wood and varnish. She’d never set foot on a yacht before and kept pausing, noticing details she wanted to sketch: the row of salt-curled paperbacks squashed together on a shelf in the saloon, bookended by a sturdy copy of The Encyclopaedia of Cruising; the two small hammocks attached to the galley ceiling filled with fruit; a pile of charts spread out on a table with a beautiful conch shell set on top as a paperweight.

Kitty finished her drink, then set down the glass, saying, ‘I still can’t believe you all live on a boat. Whose is it?’

‘I’m the skipper,’ Aaron said, who was sitting with his feet wide apart, a drink held easily in his large hands. That made sense; Lana had noticed the way he’d run his palm carefully over the wheel when they came aboard, his gaze moving across the deck – as if checking that everything was as it should be.

‘So you just sail around from place to place, deciding where you want to stop?’ Kitty asked.

He nodded. ‘Pretty much.’

From what Lana could tell there were five crew: Aaron, Denny, Heinrich, Shell and then a fifth member, Joseph, who’d been smoking alone at the bow when they’d arrived. Denny had asked if he wanted to join them, but Joseph had waved a hand in the air as he sloped by, saying in a lilting French accent that sleep was calling.

As the night wore on, more rum was poured – and then more still. Lana let the conversations wash around her, hearing bursts of Kitty’s laughter, which had taken on a loose, almost liquid sound. As the yacht turned lazily on its anchor, she watched the lights from the town flickering in the distance across the inky water. She had no idea that this was only the beginning.

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