The Postcard

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Jon, why are you saying this?’

  ‘I’m in love with you, Maya, that’s why.’

  She examines Jon’s face. He looks tanned. Blonder. More relaxed than he did in Thailand or Vietnam. His pressed, pale pink linen shirt is open to the chest. Perhaps this is the epiphany he was searching for all his life. Perhaps she is the one for him, and he her.

  ‘Come for a drink with me, there’s so much I have to explain…’ Jon takes Maya’s hand in his.

  Completely dumbfounded, she lets him lead her away, to see if this is really happening, because it all seems terribly unreal.

  59

  Jon lets go of Maya’s hand and carefully pulls out a chair for her at a table on the veranda of a restored villa. Blackboards on white shutters list gin brands and poetry nights. Maya takes her cue to sit down, imagining Graham Greene might have drunk a Martini on this very deck.

  ‘Two gin and tonics,’ Jon says to the waitress, as if he’s a regular, even though he’s never been to this country before. His confidence astounds Maya. How he can sit at a table with such command, as if it’s always been his table.

  He looks at Maya, a flash of contentment in his pale blue-green eyes.

  Maya looks back as if to say, What now?

  ‘Look, I’m thirty, you’ll be thirty in what, a month?’

  He remembers.

  ‘We both want the same thing. We want stability and babies and a fucking nice life we’ve worked fucking hard for.’

  Jon takes Maya’s hand across the table, and she lets him.

  He wants me.

  She twists the ring on her right hand and pretends to study the brown rectangular smoky quartz, so she can avoid his gaze. His eyes are too disarming.

  He wants babies.

  ‘Yes. We do want the same thing,’ she concedes. ‘But I want it with James.’

  ‘He’s going to let you down.’

  Maya shoots Jon a look and withdraws her hand. She wonders where James is, if he has already let her down.

  This is so unlike him.

  ‘I saw the look in his eyes, back in Hoi An, when your friend proposed. He looked almost… embarrassed.’

  Maya knows that face.

  ‘He’s not for you, Maya, I can see it.’

  Jon weaves his soft fingers back into hers and Maya feels completely confused.

  The waitress returns and Maya pulls back and sits up, happy for the distraction. Maya watches the woman who has a beautiful face and a knowing smile, as she places a square paper napkin in front of each of them, and on top of it a gin and tonic. A lychee bobs among the ice cubes Maya can hear cracking, as they swirl and enjoy their moment during the pause.

  The cracks ring in Maya’s ears and she feels guilty. Caught out by the waitress as she takes a sip from her cold gin and tonic, as she sits intimately with Jon on the veranda. The drink quenches a thirst she forgot she had and reminds her of the turquoise waterfall she and James stopped at earlier in the day, how thirsty she felt when they stopped for lunch. How much she loves him.

  Am I so vain that I need to hear him beg?

  ‘Look, I have to find James, he went for a walk a couple of hours ago and said he’d be back…’

  Maya knows she sounds like a cliché.

  Jon makes a face as if to say I told you so, which in turn angers Maya, and makes her stand up.

  ‘This isn’t like him.’

  Jon opens his mouth to speak, but Maya cuts him off.

  ‘James has never let me down,’ she pauses. ‘You did.’

  Jon plays with the chunky watch on his left arm and looks back up at Maya. Those eyes, standing out against his palest pink shirt and his tan, staring into her.

  ‘Go find him – if you can, that is. Ask him if he wants what you want. And then come back to me. I’ll wait here. All night on this veranda, if I have to. I fly back to Vietnam in the morning. Come with me. Watch me on set. Inspire me to be the best I can be. Then I’ll take you home. I’ll give you the life you want.’

  Maya walks off, past the other tables on the narrow veranda, apologising to couples for making them pull in, down a short flight of wooden stairs, weaving through the market to get back to the hotel, to see if James has returned. A million thoughts flying through her mind.

  60

  He’s not back.

  The room is unchanged, the note is on the middle of the bed where Maya left it. It has neither been picked up nor glanced at, Maya can tell. She stands, blinking and thinking, wide-eyed and wide-mouthed, gobsmacked and heartbroken.

  In the tall lush valley beyond the river, Maya hears a rumble of thunder. The clock ticks heavily on the wall of the bathroom.

  The clock.

  Maya rushes into the bathroom – she has no watch – and without a phone she has come to rely on seeking out the time in whichever airport, bus station or shop she can. It’s one of the first things she notices when they arrive in a new room. Usually it’s an LED bedside table clock radio, or the time on the tickertape of Star News, BBC World or CNN, with a little added mental arithmetic to cater for time differences. Maya looks at the grand clock on the wall. It’s 9.50 p.m.

  We never eat this late.

  They’ve never not gone out to eat by this time. This is so unlike James, who can tell the time from his hunger, to not come back, to not think about what they might have for dinner. Why does he want to be alone?

  What was it he had to think about?

  Fat drops of rain start to thump on the awning outside the room.

  What changed?

  Maya walks around the bed to the window that looks out onto the street and twists the fastening that opens the glass panel, enabling her to reach the shutter. She opens a slat. A flash of lightning illuminates the street outside; a rat scurries for cover into a drain.

  I don’t know what to do.

  Maya shuts the slat, the slam creating a frantic, pained echo in her eardrum as she locks the window in front of her. She sees an umbrella in a stand in the corner, between the door and the other window, the one that looks out onto the hotel courtyard. She lifts the umbrella out of its stand, like a musketeer going into battle. A flash of lightning illuminates the fronds in the garden courtyard and Maya screams at the shape of a figure, standing destitute in the rain. Was it a figure or was it a tree?

  Is that James out there?

  She presses her nose to the window and waits for the next flash of lightning.

  Nothing. Just rain. Flora and fauna. A monkey perhaps. Or was it a large palm that had fallen in the storm?

  I have to go and find him.

  Maya grips the umbrella in one hand and grabs her purse and room key with the other, as she heads out into the rain. To see if she can find an answer to at least one of the questions tormenting her.

  *

  Maya heads towards Sisavangvong Road, past white walls and swaying palms, lit and creaking in the storm. She opens out the umbrella to discover it’s a golfing size, with words from another, bigger hotel from another, bigger country emblazoned across its outside edge. Still, it offers Maya protection, from the rats and the rain, as she hurries towards the night market.

  The colours of the royal blue and pillar-box red pop-up gazebos are dulled by rain, as vendors huddle underneath them, protecting their families and their wares. Even now, the Laos temperament to sit and smile shines through, as locals huddle without complaint, used to storms that follow peaceful days. Those merchants without a canopy above them scrabble to keep their handicrafts dry. Maya sees a man deftly pull four corners of a pretty cloth, with all his wares sitting on top of it, into a big colourful bundle with one tug of a drawstring. The man saunters away through the emptying market, his goods on his back like a giant snail shell of a thousand colours, only he moves with purpose and agility.

  Paper lanterns wilt. Dresses flop. Everything soaks up the steamy sweet scent of the rain. Maya weaves through the muddle, under the large black golfing umbrella, trying not to knock into people as they pass; h
er hair soaking wet from the brief flashes she’s uncovered as she moves her umbrella to let someone pass. Her bare shoulders of her halterneck dress are shiny and wet. Searching, searching, searching as despair rolls on the steam of jasmine and frangipani.

  Everything’s ruined.

  And still, James is nowhere to be seen.

  61

  Maya walks into an internet cafe, suddenly cold and her hair bedraggled.

  ‘Can of Coke please,’ she says to a teenage boy with big ears and a skinny frame, who she assumes is serving. He smiles and grabs one from the fridge behind the counter. ‘And a computer if you have one?’

  The boy gestures to the machines, although neither he nor Maya can tell if there’s one free.

  Maya props her umbrella behind the door and sees that there is one vacant terminal among the two banks of computers. All the others are occupied by local teens or backpackers taking shelter from the storm, and Maya has to ask two men with bushy golden beards if she can squeeze in to the spare machine, where one of them is taking up too much space.

  ‘Sure,’ grunts one in an American accent, sizing up Maya as she passes.

  The teenage boy leans in cheerily over Maya, types in a password she tries to read but can’t and fires up the internet connection. The computer makes such a whir, Maya wonders if it is powered by gutter rats in the drain below the ground, running frantically on a wheel.

  She logs into James’ email first, searching for clues as to what could have happened; what made his demeanour change when he went to talk to Brooke from the Kaye-French agency. She’s hoping for at least a trace of evidence in his emails, or perhaps to discover something that might have been troubling James for longer, going further back than this afternoon.

  Did he see my message from Jon? Might he have seen me hold Jon’s hand tonight?

  There’s the message from Brooke at Kaye-French yesterday, a new message from his bank, and that email from Petra, now opened, to say she and Francesca are sending a parcel out for Maya’s birthday to Poste Restante in Sydney, so that Maya can pick it up in May. Maya smiles to herself. The kindness of her sisters-in-law. They obviously don’t know anything about what’s troubling James.

  They expect us to be together next month.

  There’s an amusing GIF from Dominic that means nothing to Maya. There are newsletters from the British Journal of Photography, See Tickets and Fantasy Football. Something from the electoral register about proxy voting, so James can vote to Remain in the EU. There’s another email from Brooke, sent a few hours ago but already opened and replied to. Subject line: More details. Maya reads it.

  So, the Linden/Jolly wedding, Cotswolds July 9th. They want you at the rehearsal dinner the night before at Chiltern Firehouse. They’ve booked out the whole place. Then the wedding itself in the Cotswolds. They fly the party to Nice on the 11th for all the villa shits and giggles. And fee, I know you didn’t ask the fee, but I think we could charge £25,000 plus expenses, minus our 20% of course. So that’s your flight home covered and then some. But Ashley Jolly wants to meet you in London on Tuesday, before Hugo Linden flies to Jamaica – he’s shooting there for three weeks, so all very tight. Speak soon. Bx

  He’s gone home.

  Maya feels a stab in her stomach and her eyes start to burn. She opens the cold can of Coke and its hiss and release don’t help her, nor do the cold bubbles that almost burn her throat.

  Fuck.

  She scrolls down to see James’ reply, sent two hours ago, after he left her in the bath and walked off.

  Her heart breaks.

  62

  I have to speak to Nena, I have to speak to Nena. How can I speak to Nena?

  In another tab, Maya logs into her Skype account and clicks on the little circle with Nena’s face in it. It’s an out-take from her BBC headshot photos, where she’s ditched her CBeebies smile and is sticking two fingers up at the camera. The call rings. Maya sits, agitatedly tapping the keyboard with her fingernails, waiting for something to happen on the screen, wondering why James didn’t come back to their room. Wondering where he is.

  No answer.

  Shit.

  Maya looks at the clock on the bottom left of the screen. Ten o’clock. It must be mid-afternoon in London. Where would Nena be if she wasn’t at home?

  I wish I had my phone. I wish we hadn’t given them up.

  Maya looks around the internet cafe, to see if there’s a phone station or a booth. James’ voice rings in her memory.

  ‘We’d only ever need a phone in an emergency…’

  There is no phone in the internet cafe. Maya doesn’t remember seeing a phone in an internet cafe since she bravely went travelling, from LA through to Ciudad Juárez, Central America and Bogota, all by herself, aged eighteen. Public phones are clearly a thing of the past, even in Laos.

  I need a phone now, I have to talk to Nena. She’ll know what to do.

  There is no phone. Nowhere to place a traditional old-fashioned phone call. She thinks of asking the American man next to her, the one who was checking her out, if he has a mobile phone – and if so can she use it. But she doesn’t know Nena’s number by heart anyway; there’s no point asking.

  ‘Are you done with that?’ says the man with the golden beard, the one she was just thinking of asking to use his phone. He’s already half sitting at her desk space and he looks a little put out.

  ‘Oh sorry, I didn’t realise you were about to use it.’

  ‘I wasn’t, but if the rain ain’t going away…’

  ‘Hang on, I just need to do two quick things. Then I’m done.’

  Maya types with urgency and then logs out of James’ email and into her own.

  She checks her messages. The one at the top of her inbox, the most recent, is from Nena. Subject line: Good gossip.

  Hey Sugatits,

  You OK? Gotta be quick – am about to try out a new class. Well, my only class to be honest, but hey… It’s one Emily Snatch recommended (I told you I bumped into her, right? Well, sometimes we hang out on a park bench, only this time with babies, not cheap Tesco’s vermouth). But I HAVE to tell you something.

  ANYWAY, when I told her you’d bumped into the Baby-faced Assassin in bloody Thailand and Vietnam and that he’s only gone and made it as a big-shot actor, the blood drained from her face.

  Do you remember Jon’s old housemate Adam?! Well, Emily bumped into Adam in hot yoga last week and Adam’s LIVID with Jon because Adam’s sister, whose name I don’t know – but let’s call her Eve (bit weird…) had a baby with Jon.

  Jon has a baby?

  I don’t think they got married or anything, and I’m pretty sure she’s not that Titania slut Jon ran off with when he was with you, Adam’s too nice to have a slutface sister – but they were definitely together, maybe married, and had a baby a couple of years ago. Anyway, wait for this – they called her something terroristy like Isis or Boko or something. His choice apparently, thinking he was being all poetic, actually it was Isis cause Emily Snatch said it was just before ISIS became a ‘thing’ – lol! (FYI, Adam is super embarrassed about this of course, as her uncle, but says luckily she’s cute enough to wear her terror moniker well).

  Was the baby on his phone a girl? He said it was his nephew Geronimo.

  ANYWAY, I digress. Adam’s really fucked off with his Baby-faced Assassin brother-in-law natch, not just because he gave his niece a shit name, but also cause he’s buggered off and left his sister broken-hearted. And he’s racked up SHITLOADS of debt living a faux-lavish lifestyle and owes Adam’s sister (did we say Eve?) and their parents THOUSANDS in credit-card debt. Oh and he ain’t no actor – he’s a total fantasist! Can’t even get a job playing the Gruffalo at Chessington. Emily said Adam was super upset because Jon has cleaned out what was left in Adam’s sister’s bank account, buggered off, and left her and their poor terrorist daughter in the shit. I told Emily you bumped into him in Thailand of all places! She’s going to tell Adam. Can you believe it?

 
; I can’t believe it.

  Baby? Actually that baby could have been a girl.

  Damian Lewis?!

  Maya thinks of the sharp shirts, the tailored shorts, the weighty watch, the shoots in Canada, the name-dropping… The customer who left The Haven without paying.

  I’ll give you the life you want.

  Maya looks at the computer screen, her eyes filling with water, and wants to choke. She takes another swig from the cold can, bubbles waking her up, making her think.

  ‘I told Emily you bumped into him.’

  ‘Bumped into him?’ Maya says to herself quietly. The American man with the golden beard gives Maya another glance, but she ignores it, and continues to read.

  ANYWAY, better go – gonna brave this class, then go for coffee with Emily afterwards – she can’t make it as she has to do the school run (she has older ones, did I say?). She’s been amazing actually. Wish me luck! Love your face.

  Nx

  63

  The steam on the windows of the internet cafe and the smell of rain on damp clothes and matted beards feels oppressive in Maya’s throat.

  I can’t breathe.

  She pushes back her chair, picks up her can of Coke, and leaves a 20,000 kip note on the counter for the boy with the big ears, before grabbing the umbrella and escaping out into the rain.

  It’s now coming down heavily, even thicker than before, and Maya realises there’s little point shielding herself now – she’s already soaked. Her midnight-blue jersey halterneck clings to every curve of her tired body and her Havaianas slip as she struggles to get a good grip in the floodwater. She closes the umbrella and lets the fat drops drum into her skull as she walks determinedly through the emptying streets with difficulty. Maya’s hair has turned its waviest, as she marches back through a town she doesn’t really know, towards the now-deserted night market. Still scouring left and right as she looks for his tall frame, his comforting neck, his olive skin. But there isn’t a single man looking through the lens of his camera; there isn’t a sight worth photographing.