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“I’ll carry that myself, please.”
With care, he reaches up, retrieves it, and respectfully hands it to me. “Me mum’s got her favorite big bowl as well. Fed the lot of us out of it just about every night.”
“My mother taught me to bake with this bowl,” I offer.
He takes my arm, more gently now, and guides me to the front door. I take my messenger-style patchwork quilted bag, which I sewed myself, hoisting the strap over my shoulder as we go.
As I climb into the black van, I take a moment to stare at the brick-style ranch that has always been my home.
Will I ever be back here again?
Having no idea where I’m going or who I’m to meet, I try to be brave as I settle back in my seat. The bald man who has made himself my bodyguard sits beside me. We hit a bump, and I tighten my hold around Mam’s big blue bowl on my lap.
I fondly remember baking beside my mother, using her wooden spoon, and stirring up sticky dough for dumplings and buttery cookies. Just looking at the bowl where it sat on top of the fridge made me feel close to her. Now, with the weight of its thick glass resting against me, I dig down, gathering her strength.
A deep ache tears at my belly. I quickly swipe away the incoming tear. She would never have let this happen.
“May I ask,” I say casually, forcing myself to eye each man surrounding me in the cargo van, “where we are going?”
As I expect, no one answers me. I pinch my quilted purse tighter against my body with my elbow, hold my bowl in my hands, and wait.
The most pressing question of all—why am I involved? What do I have to do with my father’s business payments?
What value am I to anyone?
A shy bookworm whose friends have all moved on to city life after school. I only have two friends left that stayed behind on our island: my best friend from primary school, Carol Ann, and newlywed Kitt, who is currently on an extended honeymoon, traveling the world with the love of her life.
Here I am, a hopeless virgin. No boyfriend. With a degree in ecology. A part-time job researching fish. And I care for my father.
My skills are in homemaking. And saving the island’s dwindling codfish population. I have nothing to offer someone in payment. I’m sure it’s Dad’s gambling debts again. He promised me he’d stopped, but I can’t watch him every moment. I have to work, and I have to sleep. I think of the worst, and my stomach turns.
Who is the boss?
Have I been sold to a people-trafficking ring? Last year, there was talk of such things, about men who call themselves the Hoax, who would kidnap young women, take them to the city of Glasgow, then sell them into slavery. Using them for… I can’t even think about it. I had no idea such things existed in this world. Heat rushes from my belly to my cheeks, causing a blush I know the men can see spreading across my face. It’s unthinkable. I’ll break, falling into heavy sobs if I think like this.
Everyone on the island knows my strengths. A maid. That’s it. I’m being taken somewhere to cook, clean, and work off my father’s debts—a modern-day indentured servant.
I settle back in my seat, my nerves calming as I dive deeper into the idea. Yes. That makes sense. Hopefully, I’m going to a family. A lovely family, maybe even with a few sweet children I can tend to. Maybe the Stewart family. The one that recently moved into the greenhouse by the cliffs. The one with the twins.
I’ll care for the home, mind the children, and be home in a jiff. My abduction will finally teach my father the lesson he needs. And all will be well…
“We’re here.”
So entrenched in my thoughts, I’ve not been watching out the window. Glancing up, my breath catches in my throat. “No,” I gasp. “It can’t be.”
The ferry boat sits at the dock.
My heart lurches in my chest. I clutch Mam’s blue bowl tighter in my lap. I am twenty-three years old, and I don’t travel much other than going to the nearest town to go clothes shopping, or to visit the movie theater, or my favorite memory of when Carol Ann and I went to the airport last summer to pick up Kitt, a fellow intern from America. We were shocked by her normal appearance, expecting her to look like the LA Real Housewives from our late-night reality television binges.
I know we’ll be going to none of those places today.
Dread hangs heavy in my stomach. I stare out the window, the grassy green hills rolling into the vastness of the sea. “We’re leaving the island.”
I think of the Hoax, the people-trafficking ring based out of the city.
“We’re going to Glasgow. Aren’t we?”
The large bald man who hasn’t yet found it necessary to tell me his name but who is slowly becoming a fixture at my side grunts, confirming that our destination is, in fact, Glasgow.
