by Fiona Barton
He’d said he was thinking about joining a turtle conservancy project in Phuket and there’d been an almighty row.
I’d raged at him that he was ruining his life, and we were barely speaking when he left for Thailand.
We didn’t hear from him for the first month, and Steve had blamed me. “He thinks you are still angry,” he’d said.
“I am still angry,” I’d snapped back.
“You need to be careful, Kate, or you’ll lose him.”
I’d wanted to shout: “How do you lose a son? He’s been part of me for twenty-two years. I will always be his mother.” But I kept it to myself. I hid the hurt and pretended to be indifferent to his silence. But fear had taken root inside me, creating lurid images of him dying in a motorbike crash or being brutally mugged.
Being a reporter means I know that these things happen to people like us.
FIVE
The Reporter
FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2014
It’s been five minutes and no e-mail. I sit fidgeting with my phone, trying to decide whether to ring Bob Sparkes back and ask when he’s going to push the send button. He’ll hate that, but he said he’d do it immediately. I put the phone down. I’ll have a look myself. Everything’s on the net. And when I type in the names, the missing girls are there.
Bingo. But a blog. I hate blogs.
“Blah blah blah dressed up as journalism,” I’d told Joe once, my guard down.
“God, you sound like my mum,” he’d said. His mother, a recently “retired” editor, had been widely mocked among the wicked press as a Fleet Street dinosaur. That’d shut me up. I wasn’t about to be kicked into the long grass with her.
The blogger is another backpacker sounding the alarm and urging Alex and Rosie to get in touch with their families.
I wonder how many of the thousands of teenagers who set off for a gap year go missing. Must be fewer now everyone has a smartphone and Wi-Fi. But still.
I stare at the screen. My heartbeat feels like it is bruising my ribs. My child is missing, too. At home, we all pretend that it’s all fine; he’s an adult, living his own life, making his own choices. But we don’t even know which country he’s in, really. I’ve googled the price of plane tickets for Thailand so many times. Just looking, I tell myself. And I’ve secretly e-mailed dozens of conservation projects in Phuket over the last two years, asking for him, but Jake hasn’t registered with any of them. He could be anywhere, but I’ve kept it to myself. No point worrying Steve. Sometimes I wonder if he’s done the same thing and is keeping it secret from me.
I write Jake an e-mail straightaway.
Hi, Just wondering where you are and what you are doing. Thanks for ringing the other night—it was lovely to hear your voice. We miss you. Freddie finally passed his driving test!!! Let me know when you pick this up, mx
I don’t know when he’ll get it but it’s out there when he next logs in.
“Kate,” Joe’s saying, “Kate! I asked where you found this cutting. Please, Terry’s about to call the meeting.”
“What? Can’t you look online? Think it was one of the Sunday magazines. Is it on shiny paper? Oh, say the Sunday Express. No one ever reads it.”
“Are you coming in?”
“What time is it in Bangkok, Joe?”
“Er, afternoon or evening, I think. They’re ahead of us, aren’t they? Why?”
But I’m already dialing the Post’s Southeast Asia correspondent and waving Joe away.
“I’ll be in in a minute. Just need to check something.”
* * *
• • •
Don Richards answers on the first ring.
“Yes,” he barks, daring the caller to carry on disturbing him.
“Don? It’s Kate Waters. On the Post.”
The voice softens to gruff. “Ah, the lovely Kate. How are you? Christ, when did I last see you? Must be ten years ago, when you came to cover the tsunami. That was a hell of a story, wasn’t it? Paid for my new bungalow.”
I grit my teeth. Don’s sensitivity button was disabled a long time ago—“Living out here does it to you,” he’d confessed back then, when we were both drunk and exhausted after weeks of horrifying sights and testimonies.
“It blunts you. I’ve become some terrible old colonial cliché.” I’d bought us another beer and steered him back to his glory days.
* * *
• • •
“God, is it ten years, already?” I say. “We must be getting old, Don. Look, I know you’re busy, so I’ll keep it short. I wondered if you were working on two missing British girls, Alex O’Connor and Rosie Shaw?”
“Well, the backpack network is talking about them. But this happens all the time—the embassy here gets one or two reported every day. Bloody thoughtless teenagers. The families have been trying to make contact for a week, apparently, but kids drift through. They meet someone in a bar, hear about a new place, and go. These girls are probably shacked up with some boys and having too good a time to tell anyone. Anyway, why are you asking? Are you being sent on it?”
I smile. Don can smell the money.
“Can’t see them sending me this early, but I’m going to talk to Terry about it—could be a good story. Every parent’s nightmare with kids all heading off on their gap years at the moment. And there’s nothing else happening here.”
“I’ll send you some copy. You will put me down for a credit, won’t you?”
The cry of the lesser spotted freelance: “Giss’a credit.”
“’Course, Don. Send over what you’ve got and I’ll put a payment through. Have you spoken to the families? I’m going to give them a call.”
“Only via Facebook posts. The O’Connors from Winchester are making the most noise.”
Terry’s head appears round the door of the meeting room.
“Get your arse in here, Kate. You’re the chief reporter. Set an example, for goodness’ sake.”
BANGKOK DAY 1
(SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014)
https://www.facebook.com/alexoconnor.333
Alex O’Connor
July 27 at 0830
. . . is staying in the penthouse of Bates Motel. YOLO
She and Rosie had fallen out of the 551 bus in the city center at a vast roundabout straddling what looked like the M3. The girls from the plane, who knew what they were doing, had somehow got off before them without Alex noticing. It was the driver who’d told them they’d reached their stop.
“Democracy Monument,” he’d said. “Khao San Road.”
Standing beside four lanes of traffic, Alex felt any remnant of elation die in her stomach. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She’d seen pictures of the old town and this wasn’t it. Where were the narrow streets and alleys? Rosie was looking at her expectantly.
“Where’s our hotel?” she’d said.
“Hostel,” Alex had corrected, looking at page one of the itinerary on her phone. “It’s the Green Paradise and it is only fifteen minutes’ walk from here, according to this.”
“But which way?”
She hadn’t been sure and was too tired to think sensibly. She’d planned to find the way on her phone, but she’d forgotten to buy a Thai SIM card at the airport. She’d headed off, trying to look as if she knew what she was doing, and her friend followed.
“This way,” she’d said, muttering, “I think,” as insurance.
It wasn’t. And no one seemed to understand when she asked and showed them the hostel name.
“This is a nightmare,” Rosie had said, and Alex had quickened her pace to get out of earshot.
* * *
• • •
When they finally fell upon Khao San Road, shop fronts were opening down alleyways; pans of water were coming to the boil on wood fires and gas stoves; child-size green and red plastic stools we
re scattered outside, ready for the first sitting of the day. But there was still no sign of their hostel.
Rosie’s sulk was turning to loud despair when Alex spotted Mama’s Paradise Bar and Guesthouse down a side road.
“This was on my list as well,” she lied. Well, it’s got “Paradise” in the name. “Let’s forget the other one and ask here.”
“Right,” Rosie said.
“It looks okay,” Alex said as they peered into the gloom beyond the bar front.
* * *
• • •
She and Rosie had been given a room on the top floor.
An astonishing figure in a flowing caftan and platinum blond wig had towered over them with a wide smile. “I am Mama,” she said. “This is my place. I will put you in private room on second floor.” It sounded as if it was the royal suite.
It wasn’t. It was like a flophouse. Not that she’d ever been in one, but Alex had read Down and Out in Paris and London for A Level and imagined the room would fit Orwell’s brief.
They’d trudged with their backpacks up dark concrete stairs, Alex first, clutching the key like a lucky charm while faces appeared and disappeared above them in the stairwell. The room number had been painted on the wall in black paint, and when she opened the door the vinegary stench of old trainers pushed past them into the corridor.
“Seriously?” Rosie had said.
“It’s cheap,” Alex had snapped, too tired for the row brewing. “It’s a hundred and fifty baht a night. Three quid. We can’t expect much more. And we’re not staying long.”
“I guess not.”
“It’ll be an experience,” Alex had said.
“Yes.”
“And someone must have recommended it online for me to put it on my list.”
“Who? Someone with a sense of humor? And no sense of smell . . .”
“It’s not that bad,” Alex had said weakly, taking in the full horror. “And we won’t be spending much time in it.”
“That’s lucky,” Rosie had muttered, looking pointedly at the cream-colored walls, smeared with squashed mosquitoes. Alex went to close the thin curtains at the window looking out onto the corridor. They gaped. There weren’t enough hooks.
It was certainly no-frills. Their room contained a fan, a single plastic chair, and a small double bed. The sheet bore the marks of generations of sweating tourists, the central dip in the mattress darker than the rest of the material.
“Love the pillows,” Rosie had said, still not moving from the doorway. Ghostly imprints of cartoon kittens stared out, their giant, once-appealing eyes barely visible after hundreds of washes.
“Come on,” Alex had muttered. “Which side do you want?” She hadn’t counted on sharing a bed and knew from the plane that Rosie snored.
“The side furthest from the mosquito graveyard,” Rosie had said, her voice sullen. “I hope you don’t snore . . .”
She’d plonked her bag down and sat heavily on the bed. Alex had done the same. At that moment, she’d wanted more than anything to go home.
“I’m going to have a shower.” She’d fought the tremor in her voice and begun rummaging in her things for a toothbrush and soap.
Rosie had widened her eyes. “God knows what that will be like. Cockroach city.”
“I’ve never seen a cockroach,” Alex had said. “Another first.”
They’d suddenly realized two Thai women were in the corridor outside, peeping through the gap in the curtains, watching their every move.
“The shower?” Alex had opened the door and mimed rain over her head.
They’d pointed wordlessly down the corridor.
The girls had edged past them and inspected a tiny room with a tiled floor, a drain hole, and a sputtering head. Limp, faded towels hung on a hook. “Okay, I’m going in,” Alex had said in a comedy American accent. “If I’m not back in five minutes, call a plumber.”
And Rosie had laughed.
Thank God for that, Alex had thought.
* * *
• • •
Later, when they were sitting at the guesthouse bar with their hair still wet, Mama emerged from the gloom at the back. Rosie nudged Alex.
“She could play for the England rugby team.”
Mama gave them a look and Alex worried that she’d heard, but she carried on sweeping up the rubbish in front of her property.
“Dirty people,” she hissed at a passerby who spat out his chewing gum, and her lipstick left a red slick on her teeth.
It was probably still early for the traveler crowd, only just midday, and hangovers of every shade of gray showed on the faces of those who’d made it out of bed. A boy their age walked past wearing just a pair of shorts. Thin, thin. Greenish skin and old eyes, dragging on a cigarette as if it were his last breath.
Alex was about to say how ill he looked, but Rosie chirped up.
“Looks like people are having a good time.”
SIX
The Reporter
FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2014
It hasn’t taken much persuading for Terry to buy into the story. The news list is cigarette-paper thin—“I see you’ve decided to create a wish list this morning, Mr. News Editor. I can’t see an actual story on this,” the Editor, Simon Pearson, had shouted from his office door, waving the offending document in his hand. Terry had grinned as if it were a joke. But we all knew he’d get a kicking when the door closed.
He puts a brave face on it when he emerges, but his news list is screwed up in a ball in one fist.
“We’re splashing on the missing girls,” he says as if it were his idea.
“It’s a bit soft for the front, Terry,” I say. It is. “Girls Fail to E-mail Parents While on Holiday” is hardly a headline.
“Then give it a kick up the arse, Kate. It’s the only story I’ve got today.”
I watch as he barricades himself in his cubicle and sits, staring into space. I wonder how long he’ll go on, taking the flak twelve hours a day. He always says he loves it—loves the buzz, the being at the center of things—but he looks more like a victim of domestic violence every day.
I’d better make the story work.
* * *
• • •
Malcolm O’Connor answers on the first ring.
He must be sitting beside the phone.
“Hello, Mr. O’Connor? I am so sorry to disturb you but I’m ringing about your daughter, Alex. I’m a reporter for the Daily Post and I want to help you find her.”
I try to picture the man on the other end of the line. Middle-aged, thinning hair? Desperate, anyway. I’d hoped to get the mother. Women are so much easier to talk to about grief, emotions, loss. Blokes, even fathers, struggle to find the words. And putting on a brave face sounds so cold in print.
There is silence on the line.
“Mr. O’Connor?”
“Sorry, yes. I think you’d better talk to my wife.”
There’s the sound of voices in another room and the rustle of movement before the phone is picked up.
“Hello, who is this?”
“Kate Waters, Mrs. O’Connor. I was just telling your husband that I work for the Daily Post and I want to help you find Alex.”
“The Post? It’s not the one we read but . . . have you heard anything? What have you been told? You must know more than us. You’re a reporter.”
“I probably know as much as you, Mrs. O’Connor. Less, if I’m honest. I’m talking to Hampshire Police and our correspondent in Bangkok but there isn’t much information yet. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve heard?”
“Just that they’ve notified Interpol and we’ve spoken to the embassy in Bangkok. They all say we have to wait. I don’t know how much longer we can do that.” Her voice is slipping and I know she’s about to break down.
“Using Fa
cebook is a great idea,” I say, steering her away from tears. I need her to talk, not cry. “You must be reaching thousands of backpackers and tourists over there.”
“So my son, Dan, tells me,” she says wearily. “I only signed up for Facebook when Alex went off. She said there’d be photos for me to look at. We’d be able to see what she was up to. But there’s been nothing for a week now. Nobody has heard from her. Nobody knows anything. We waited. We thought she’d probably gone on a trip for a couple of days, but we’d arranged for her to ring yesterday for her results. Her A Levels. She was desperate to know if she’d got into university. And if she didn’t have the right grades, she knew she’d have to ring round to find another place.”
“Yes, I remember that,” I say. Jake had sailed into his first choice, but there’d been a day of agonizing telephone calls for Freddie, me standing beside him in the school hall, willing him on with smiles and nods to bear the humiliation of rejection. In the end he took the offer of a media studies course in Birmingham. It wouldn’t have been my choice—three years pretending to be a journalist and building up a huge debt—but I was too exhausted by the process to fight about it. He’s enjoying it, he says.
“What about Rosie?” I ask.
“No, nothing from her either. But it was usually Alex who did the messages. Rosie was a bit less . . . you know.”
“Yes, I’ve got one like that. Look, could I come and see you, Lesley? Is it okay if I call you Lesley? To talk to you properly. It’s hard on the phone, isn’t it? I could drive down now if you like.”