The Postcard

by Zoë Folbigg

  Home.

  Home seems so far away. Maya looks at James, feeling bad that she feels homesick, that she’s envious of Dee and Lenny going back to the bosom of their families. She strokes his almost-black hair to the side of his forehead and forces a happy smile.

  I wanted this.

  ‘It’s been fun,’ says James, always rendered a bit awkward by a public display of affection from Maya; awkward as only an Englishman can be in goodbye situations like these.

  ‘Come here, fella,’ says Lenny, pulling him in for a bear hug. He pulls Maya in too.

  ‘Hey!’ protests Dee, before she bundles in.

  Maya inhales the sweet smell of coconut oil in Dee’s soft curly hair and it galvanises her for the Equator, the tropics and the Pacific ahead. She breathes in the comfort.

  ‘It’s been so cool travelling with you guys, we’ll miss you. And we’re definitely coming to Dublin. That’s if we ever leave Hazelworth again after this trip.’

  ‘There’s always a bed for yous two in Dublin,’ says Dee.

  James pulls out and realigns his backpack.

  ‘Enjoy those chicken wings, buddy.’

  Lenny’s eyes light up. ‘Oh, the chicken wings. We’re having chicken wings for dinner tomorrow night, aren’t we, Dee?’

  Dee doesn’t answer but leans in to give Maya another, more sisterly, hug of their own.

  ‘It was a pleasure meetin’ ya, Maya.’

  ‘You too, Dee,’ she squeezes back.

  Hugging Dee makes Maya realise how much she misses Nena. How much she misses the girls at FASH. How much she misses Clara, and all of her sisterly support network; how it would be quite handy to talk to them at the moment. She squeezes Dee one last time before releasing her into the wilds of Bangkok Airport Duty Free.

  ‘Right, come on, Len,’ Dee says bossily. ‘Let’s put a ring on it.’

  *

  At the shiny metal internet terminal in the large and airy departures lounge at Bangkok airport, Maya leans into the lens and concentrates on what her editor is saying – it’s hard to hear with the bustle around her; the announcements on the tannoy; the whoosh of aircraft taking off and landing.

  ‘The snake restaurant was funny, it went down well – apart from with our vegan readership, who were pretty vocal… But we’re still not getting much on the relationship element, Maya. Do you know what I mean?’

  Amy Appleyard ends a lot of sentences with, ‘Do you know what I mean?’ It’s a clever way of taking the shit sandwich and launching it right back at Maya to catch.

  The trouble is, Maya knows exactly what Amy means. She knows deep down that in writing columns about crazy dining experiences or her capsule clothing wardrobe, she’s evaded all of the relationship niggles between her and James. All of the woes she’s felt in the past four months. She’s dodged tension and honesty. She didn’t even really mention bumping into Jon. Twice. Only that she had bumped into an old friend. And bumping into Jon has been a gift for a juicy plotline and rising tension.

  Hang on, did Amy engineer that?

  Maya looks around the busy departures lounge, wondering if Jon might be here now…

  Of course she didn’t engineer it. He’s shooting a glossy TV spy drama. With Damian Lewis.

  Amy continues. Maya can tell she’s looking at herself on her desktop Mac, not at the box with Maya’s face in it. She has the air of someone glancing in the mirror to check her hair while she talks, and she keeps giving her head a little shake. ‘We had the baby tension, and the cringe of Poo Camp, which were great glimpses and I hoped for so much more. But really, Maya, what’s going on beneath the surface? Esprit readers want to know the nitty-gritty. Do you two never fall out? About anything?’

  Maya thinks of the stress in the coffin on the night bus. She thinks of James’ sad face when he wanted to leave Poo Camp. She thinks of all the times she’s wanted James to put his hand up and say he wants a baby too, even if it’s not now. She thinks of her old friend Velma – and knows she can’t really sustain this column if she’s not being true to herself.

  I’ve been here before.

  ‘Do you want to call it a day, Amy?’ Maya surprises herself by asking the question, by saying it out loud. ‘I totally understand if you do. I’m not sure I can bring enough drama to the column. Not the kind of drama you want.’

  I can’t sell James down the river.

  Amy clicks her Montblanc pen rapidly and looks out of the window over Tower Bridge, then back to the screen.

  And I’m not willing to make things up.

  ‘No, I’m not giving up, not yet anyway. To be totally transparent, I am having a few conversations with some other writers, a few test columns.’

  A man lingers over Maya’s shoulder, hoping she’ll finish her session so he can sit down and check the scores.

  Maya feels the blow and her cheeks flush red. The man at her shoulder gives her an uncomfortable feeling and an urgency in her bladder.

  ‘Oh, right. Who?’

  ‘There’s a vegan vlogger – you know, keep things fresh – I can’t keep running from the particular uprising. And there’s an interiors woman who has some genius ideas about gold being a neutral or something – we’re playing with the flatplan, with an idea where we shift your column – whoever’s column – further back, in Homes rather than Relationships…’ Amy’s mirror face drops, and Maya knows she’s finally looking at Maya, rather than herself. ‘But I’m not ready to give up on you just yet, Maya. I think big drama is right around the corner for you.’

  Maya smiles, gratefully, although she’s not sure she should, and sinks into her chair. She wants to stick two fingers up at the man behind her, making an already tense situation feel worse.

  ‘So, thanks for column seventeen. I’ll read it and get back to you with changes. The fashiony one worked OK last Sunday – it went into our spring-to-summer special, but Miranda did have a few things we had to run past Legal. Something about the Miu Miu fakes.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t realise.’ Maya mentally slaps her forehead.

  ‘OK thanks, Maya. Have to go, I have a lunch, ten minutes ago. Speak soon.’

  The little window Amy Appleyard filled turns black before Maya has a chance to say ‘Bye,’ and she looks out of the vast glass window, at the planes lining the runway and taking off towards the low and looming moon. Lights and flashes illuminate the inky evening. Maya thinks of what London looks like right now; London at lunchtime. She wonders what Amy Appleyard eats at a lunch meeting. She thinks of the chargrilled sweetcorn and green chilli fritters in her favourite cafe in Hazelworth, and feels a pang in her stomach.

  Home.

  But first, a new country. And another twelve if they make it, before they eventually fly home on Christmas Eve. The man huffing and puffing at Maya’s shoulder is appeased by a Thai woman logging off and vacating the terminal on the other side of the tall metal pillar.

  Phew.

  Maya looks at the clock on the departures board and speedily types in James’ email address and password to check his mail for him. A message from Petra he can open in his own time. A generic banking newsletter from HSBC. Something from a Kaye-French email address, the photographer’s agency James used to shoot for. Maya knows none of it will be urgent and their flight is about to board. She logs out and hastily types in her own email login. Cursing her clumsy fingers for getting a few digits wrong and having to retype it twice.

  There he sits. In her inbox, as if the past seven years didn’t happen. Jon Vincent. Subject: I meant it.

  Maya can’t face reading it now. It’s all too confusing. So she leaves it there, like a grenade, and logs out.

  49

  ‘Police in Thailand leading the search for the missing French academic Manon Junot say they are now looking for a body. Ms Junot, whose disappearance was alerted when she didn’t board her flight from Bangkok to Paris on New Year’s Day, has been missing for four months now. With no new leads, police in Thailand say it’s most likely she has died.
Our Asia correspondent Clarence Meek sent this report.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO A PICTURE OF MANON JUNOT ON HER TRAVELS.

  ‘It’s nearly five months since Ms Junot was photographed with this elephant at a sanctuary in Northern Thailand, and almost as long since her family last heard from her. Now they are heartbroken at the news that Thai police have changed tack and are searching for a body, rather than a missing person.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO POLICE CHIEF SOMSAK KONGDUANG, WHO IS SURROUNDED BY MICROPHONES AND FLASHES.

  ‘It’s with sadness that we’re turning this into a different type of investigation, a different kind of search. But in this… this digital era of regular contact and surveillance, we have reason to believe that Ms Junot is sadly no longer alive.’

  SCREEN PANS TO CLARENCE MEEK, STANDING A FEW METRES AWAY FROM THE POLICE CHIEF WHILE HE TALKS.

  ‘The family in Alsace gave a press conference this morning with their reaction to the news, saying they are heartbroken by the suggestion and they will not give up hope of finding Ms Junot alive.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO MANON’S BROTHER ANTOINE AND FATHER ANDRE, AT A PRESS CONFERENCE IN FRANCE.

  ‘The Thai authorities have made no allowances for Manon’s mental-health condition. It was me and my father, a beekeeper not a police officer, who traipsed around hospitals and mental-health wings and asylums in their country, showing photographs of my sister to staff, photographs they hadn’t been shown before. We searched for her among their units, the police haven’t, and if they are not searching properly, we refuse to believe that Manon isn’t alive.’

  SCREEN CUTS BACK TO POLICE CHIEF KONGDUANG.

  ‘We are disappointed and disagree with what the family say, that we’re not searching. Thailand has spent a lot of money and used a lot of resources in turning every stone in the search for Manon Junot. It’s a very difficult thing to disappear in 2016; even people who want to disappear struggle to. So, with great sadness, we have to change the focus of the investigation and be realistic about what it means when someone doesn’t contact home, doesn’t use their bank account, doesn’t use their devices. We are just being realistic.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO REPORTER WALKING TOWARDS A CAMERA DOWN A BUSY STREET IN BANGKOK.

  ‘So what does this difference of opinion mean? What’s next in the search for the body? The police say they’re going to return their focus on Chiang Rai and scrutinise rubbish sites, tips and industrial areas, to see if they can find clues in the town in which Ms Junot was last seen alive. The family in France are appealing to their government and the new French Minister of Foreign Affairs for help sending investigators out to Southeast Asia, saying they can’t afford to do the search alone. The family, and the world, wait with bated breath. Clarence Meek, BBC News, in Bangkok.’

  50

  April 2016, Bangkok, Thailand

  James closes his copy of National Geographic without looking down as he watches the TV screen on the wall with a lump in his throat.

  How does that even happen? How does someone go missing without a trace?

  Maya walks across the airport lounge, pulled by the thread that always leads her to James, her heart pounding as she sees him on the bench with his daypack between his feet. He pushes his glasses up over mournful eyes, staring in a daze at the television.

  I can’t tell him.

  ‘We’re boarding,’ Maya says, pointing to the screen next to the TV. ‘We’d better get to the gate.’

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Fine. She didn’t fire me. Although she told me she’s considering it.’

  ‘That’s nice of her.’

  ‘Well, you know. I see her point. Fashion and frivolity didn’t really work out for me before, did it?’

  James gives a shrug as if to say it worked out in some ways; her undercover London Evening Standard column about fashion and frivolity did play a part in bringing them together. Maya sees what he’s getting at and backtracks.

  ‘Well, what I mean is I can’t make it up, I can’t invent drama just to keep a £175-a-week column going. Even though £175 a week keeps us in phad thai and spring rolls.’

  ‘It is a lot of spring rolls.’

  Maya urges James to stand up and get moving with a sigh. As she sighs, she thinks of the wasted storyline in her inbox; the one she can’t bring herself to write about; the one she can’t even tell James about. She can’t let him down.

  I love him so much.

  So she keeps it light.

  ‘Oh, you had a couple of things in your inbox. A banking thing. Something from Petra and Francesca. And something from Kaye-French. Do they even know you’re travelling?’

  James stands and lifts his daypack onto his shoulders.

  ‘I’ll check it when we get to Luang Prabang.’

  James looks back up from the TV to the flight departures screen next to it.

  ‘Final call for London – they’re off!’

  Maya drops her shoulders, lifts her neck and smiles. She is not going to let Jon Vincent ruin the best thing that ever happened to her, so she wraps her arms around James’ middle as he raises his to let her in.

  As they walk in tandem to the departures gate, to a new country, James puts his arm around Maya’s shoulder as she rests her ear against his heartbeat.

  ‘Just you and me again,’ she says.

  ‘Just you and me.’

  My Travels with Train Man

  Think of your typical holiday packing as you lay it out on your bed: cute flippy dresses, Ibiza-luxe kaftans, black pleather leggings for party nights on the beach, the capacious straw bag, bikinis you’ve worn so much they’re getting a little threadbare around the buttcrack. Bikinis you’ll never wear but you thought they were a good idea at the time (I blame Love Island). Denim cut-offs, vests and a few frou-frou skirts and retro tees… Well, now that packing pile is teetering in your head. Halve it. And again. And again. Keep the one bikini you know you’ll wear. Now take out the pleather leggings and your favourite skinny jeans and swap in some cargo trousers (1998 called – turns out they’re very good for travelling). Take out your heels and throw in Havaianas and some North Face Hedgehogs (not pretty, but damn they’re comfy). Take out the satin bomber and chuck in a daggy rain jacket. And a wool scarf and gloves as it’s going to get chilly in the southern hemisphere in summer. Take out any gorgeous 50s dresses you used to love to wear to parties and throw in one jersey halterneck that never creases, because, let’s face it, the only party you’ll be going to is a foam party if you join the Kiwi Express, and fancy dresses are wasted on drunk teens and cheap beer. Take out your bags and statement earrings because your daypack is the only bag you’re going to need and… Bingo! You have a capsule, all-season wardrobe, fit for backpacking for a whole year.

  Trouble is, it’s a wardrobe that doesn’t feel very… sexy.

  So what’s a girl to do when she arrives in tailor haven Hoi An for just forty-eight hours (the tailors here are fast)? She’s going to flick through a copy of Esprit or Vogue, that’s what, and find her favourite dress. And then get it aped.

  It’s what we did within hours of hitting Hoi An, this beautiful town in central Vietnam, where paper lanterns of all colours hang from the rickety wooden shopfronts of old trading posts.

  Train Man and I stood like scarecrows, arms out and rigid, while tailors measured us up so they could cut the fabric we’d chosen into stylish shapes to fit our bodies perfectly.

  The next morning: boom. Good enough to be guests at George and Amal’s wedding. Train Man looks epic in his midnight blue ‘Tom Ford’ tux: his olive skin, black hair and emerging traveller’s beard making him look too cool for the red carpet. I have a Miu Miu-style dress that is feminine, sexy, playful, and only about thirty quid. And I love it! Shame we don’t have any occasion on the road to wear our threads to. And they don’t fit in our backpacks. So we’re shipping them off and sending them home. Happy that they cost so little, delighted that when we get home, the first invitation we receive, we will be wearin
g those bad boys. Tom and Miuccia at a children’s party? So be it! As long as my nephews don’t put ‘dinosaur poo’ slime on my dress. For now, it’s back into the Hedgehogs and cargo trousers, and back on the road. Next stop: Laos and the beautiful city of Luang Prabang.

  51

  April 2016, London, England

  ‘Nena… you awake?’ Tom slopes into the bedroom in his hoody, joggers and Mahabis slippers because it’s Sunday, and that’s what he wears on a Sunday. A Sunday in spring anyway, although they haven’t shaken the chill of winter quite yet, even though the sun is streaming in through the Velux windows and onto the bed. He places a cup of Earl Grey on the bedside table and sits on the edge of the low bed next to Nena, who’s lying face down. He strokes the dark brown skin exposed on the small of her back, the space between her checked pyjama bottoms and a pink ribbed vest. Skin that evokes the tropical scents of the Costa dos Coqueiros and their halcyon honeymoon there. He wants to put his cheek to her skin and for everything to be OK.

  Nena faces away from Tom, gazing into the middle of the bed, and wonders if she should pretend to be asleep. Her eyes are wide open. Ava is having her morning nap in the cot against the wall.

  ‘I’ll just leave this tea here for you,’ Tom whispers.

  He doesn’t expect a reply and she doesn’t say thanks. But he kisses the small of her back anyway, strokes her bottom and stands.

  I’ll leave her to it.

  ‘Why am I so shit at this?’

  Tom is taken by surprise in the doorway.

  ‘What?’ He scratches his head and turns around.

  ‘Why can’t I do the one thing I was instinctively meant to know?’