Page 70 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
“Pelham.”
With that, Althea began to crystallise for Percy. He saw the teenage girl she might be at home, with none of the short and trimmed nails she wore now. He imagined they would be long and harshly painted. Perhaps even diamante tipped. He thought her unlikely to keep her hair scraped back into the harsh ponytail it was in today, the yellowish ends telling of bright colour, long since washed away. There was no world in which she would choose the dowdy collared shirt she seemed uncomfortable in even now, and he immediately resolved to get her something more appropriate at the earliest opportunity. “So how does an Indonesian teenager from South London end up prisoner to an evil princess in Libya?”
“She’s evil now, is she?” Joe sniped.
All boyfriends should be jealous, Percy considered. His boyfriends, at least. He hadn’t expected quite so much of it in Joe, but it was a very sexy trait, and he looked forward to teasing even more out of him. “She was always very nice to me.”
Joe’s eyes flashed, but thankfully, Althea cut in. “She is evil. And she’s insane, too.”
“Start at the beginning,” Joe said as gently as his mood would allow, wrenching his gaze away from Percy’s irritating grin.
Althea shifted in her seat towards Joe, and took a deep breath. “It was very simple and very sudden. I needed some money over the summer holidays, so I decided to take a job as a nanny.”
Percy shook his head sadly. “It’s always the nannies.”
Althea scrunched up her face at the comment, but pushed forward. “The employment agency set up an interview with her. We met, she offered me the job, and it sounded perfect. She paid for me to fly to her house, so I did. One of her houses.”
“Which house?” asked Percy.
“In Scotland.”
“Near Lerwick?”
“How do you know?”
“Yeah, howdoyou know?” asked Joe.
“It’s… No reason. Carry on, Althea.”
Joe huffed mightily, but Althea did as told, becoming more animated as she warmed to her story. “So I get there, the middle of nowhere, no other houses for miles, and it’s this huge, dark, scary mansion. And of course, when I arrived, my passport was taken and there were no kids. She kept saying the kids were real, they would be home for the holidays soon, but they never came. And so I worked as a housekeeper while Iwaited for the kids to turn up. But then my pay never came either. So I asked to leave, but she said it wasn’t safe to go outside in winter, which it probably wasn’t, because even from the tower I couldn’t see another building. And the whole thing is surrounded by that huge scary wall, you know?”
Percy nodded his understanding, Joe tightened his lips, and Althea continued, “And there was security preventing me from leaving, anyway. So I realised the obvious pretty quickly. This is labor trafficking.”
“Horrible,” said Joe.
“It gets worse.” Joe gave a silent nod, Percy shifted his lips to the side involuntarily, and Althea said, “I’m not an idiot, I know these things happen, so I had to plan what to do. I had no access to a phone. There was always someone around, watching me, so I decided to play the game. To wait for my opportunity to escape, because I know what happens when you don’t play the game. But then… things got weird.”
“That’s already pretty weird,” Joe said.
“No. Weirder.”
“Weirder how?” asked Percy.
“She’s…” Althea assessed them both to make sure she had their full attention. “So it turns out she didn’t just want me for the housework. She kept me there for a while, always fed me really well and gave me time to exercise in the garden, as cold as it was. If I’d had my freedom, it would have been a pretty good deal. For a while. But then she started locking me in my room. I was only allowed out when someone came and opened the door. And then there were other girls. Girls like me, my age, though we weren’t allowed out at the same time, so I could never talk to them. But I saw them through my window. This one girl, she saw me once and smiled at me, and I was so lonely, I took a kind of liking to her, I suppose. I got used to her routine, and I looked forward to it, just a smile or a wave here and there, thinking maybe one day I could slip her a note or use a sign or something to communicate. But then I began to see her less and less, and then she… She got paler. Sickly. Thinner. And then one day… she was just gone.”
“Disappeared?” asked Joe.
Althea gave a small nod. “And not just her. I watched more carefully after that. And it happened to other girls too.”
“No.” Both sets of eyes were drawn on Percy’s pronouncement, one surprised, one lightly irritated, so he added, “She’s a villain, granted, but what you’re suggesting… No. She wouldn’t do that.”
Althea narrowed her eyes at Percy. “You don’t believe me?”
Percy gave a non-committal half shrug. “I’m not saying that. It’s just not like Cleo.”
“I believe you,” said Joe.
“Well, Joe has issues with Cleo,” Percy suggested.
