by Zoë Folbigg
Did James see me holding his fucking hand?
Maya turns right and diverts to the bar, where Jon is still sitting under the white awning on the veranda, nursing a Beerlao now, reading Bukowski. He looks up and sees her. His eyes light up and he stands.
Maya flies up the short wooden stairway to the decking, to the table. To her utter surprise, she lifts the umbrella as if it were a rifle and pushes the tip into Jon’s chest, pinning him down to the seatback of his chair.
‘How did you find me?’
Her shoulders are tanned and goosebumped; her eyes are fiery and fierce.
‘HOW?’ she shouts louder.
A couple at the end of the decking, the only other occupied table now, stop their hushed longings and look up.
Jon’s face turns tomato red.
Maya lowers the tip of the umbrella, from his torso to his belly button, and leans in a bit harder, more threateningly. Jon winces, and raises his arms in submission.
‘How?’ she says, more quietly and composed this time. Maya is surprised by the fear on Jon’s face, but she can’t see the rage on her own.
Jon thrusts his palms forward, to assert his compliance. ‘Please, Maya—’
‘How?’
‘Let me explain…’
The penny drops and they say it together.
‘The column.’
The column. Maya’s jolly, glossy throwaway account of her travels with Train Man, without going into any real detail of their relationship other than their journey, their route, their plans. Her baby pangs.
He found my weak spot and exploited it.
‘You motherfucker.’
Jon looks down at his deck shoes on the veranda, palms still in the air, wondering why Maya is still pressing the sharp end of a hefty umbrella tip into his navel. He looks back up, his eyes dulled by the fear that he has failed. He tries harder. This is his one shot. He really has to dig deep into the intensity of his craft if he’s to convince Maya now.
‘I read your column one Sunday, about how you were going travelling. I wanted to know where you were and how I could find you. To go to the ends of the earth to tell you that I loved you.’
Did I ever mention Velma’s inheritance?
‘The actor thing is bullshit, right?’
Jon looks ashamed.
‘Look, Maya, it was the biggest mistake of my life. Can’t you see the lengths I’ve gone to – the lengths I will go to – to put it right?’
‘What was the biggest mistake of your life, Jon? What – cheating on me? Dumping me cold-heartedly? Clearing me out? Or doing it to your wife and baby?’
Jon’s gaze turns steely.
‘Or perhaps it was stalking me at The Haven? Doing a runner without paying? It was you who fled that morning, wasn’t it? You were no friend of Moon – he’d never seen you before in his life.’
Maya leans on the umbrella and presses it further into Jon’s belly button. He winces and sweats, looking less comfortable on his perch now.
‘You knew I had money, didn’t you? Did I mention my inheritance in the column too?’ Maya rolls her eyes and calls herself an idiot. She tries to think but can’t remember, there’s too much swirling in her brain, all underpinned by the despair of having lost James.
Did I say I had money?
‘What were you going to do to “put it right”?’ She drives the umbrella in further. ‘Because that sounds like a lot of mistakes to me. Which of those was your biggest mistake? Because they all seem pretty fucking epic.’
Jon can’t think of an answer – he knows he has lost – so he stares out to the rain beyond Maya’s shoulder. To the lofty green valleys above the now blood-brown river. He says nothing. He has stage fright.
‘What was your best-case scenario? That I’d go with you and you’d clean me out and leave me at the airport? Or wait until I had a baby before you emptied my bank account? What was your plan, Jon?’
The charming man is undone, and his smile has a hint of menace at the corners of his mouth now.
‘You following me around, making these gross promises, might have just ruined the best thing that ever happened to me.’
Jon hears the wobble in Maya’s voice, sees that she’s about to crumble, and swipes a hand to grab the umbrella, to free himself from her interrogation. But Maya is too wired, too enraged, too heartbroken. Too quick. She lifts the umbrella away from him, as quick as the rising cobra at their table in Hanoi. She holds it like a baseball bat over her shoulder.
‘You’re a failed actor and a lowlife.’
She thwacks the umbrella and hits Jon in the side of his ribs.
‘Argh!’
He takes the blow with a cry and pants heavily as he clutches his stomach.
‘That’s from me.’
Jon stands, trying to get out of the way, but Maya strikes twice more. He falls back into the chair with a high squeal.
‘And that’s for your wife and baby.’
The couple at the end table try not to laugh. The waitress with the beautiful face and the knowing smile comes out of the bar to shoo her away.
‘Go! Not here!’ she says, as if Maya is the rat.
Maya turns around, striding not scurrying, while Jon whimpers in his chair. She walks down the steps, umbrella under her arm. She walks the deserted streets back to the hotel room, where she lets herself in, locks the door behind her, goes to the bathroom and puts the largest towel around her like a shroud. Even under the towel she can hear the fizz of James’ contact lens solution bubbling as it cleanses them in a little pot, as it has since they got back from kayaking. From the open bathroom door, Maya sees the note is still there, unread and untouched. She walks over to it and falls through the voile net into the middle of the bed and sobs.
64
April 2016, London, England
‘Hi, I’m Nena, this is Ava.’
A circle of friendly female faces smile. The babies on their laps all look in different directions.
‘Hi Ava!’ shouts the woman at the head of the circle, with a long yellow ponytail and a loud voice. ‘I’m Jenny!’ Nena imagines Jenny talks at that volume regardless of the proximity to which she is standing or sitting by someone. ‘And how old’s Ava?’ she booms, without taking her face off the baby, doing friendly squints with her round, blue eyes.
‘Just over six months.’
‘Well hello, Ava! Welcome, Nina.’
‘It’s Nena.’
‘Sorry, Nena. HELLLLLOOOOOOO!’
Jenny makes an exaggerated wave like a children’s TV presenter, only the real children’s TV presenter is nervous and speaks gently.
‘Hey, Jenny!’ says Nena as if she’s a ventriloquist, waving Ava’s arm. Ava looks puzzled.
‘And how did you hear about Baby Sensory?’
‘My friend Emily comes with her little one, Iris. Although she can’t today… I think she comes to your Monday morning class.’
‘Ahhh!’ shouts Jenny. ‘We know Iris!’ Her encouragement is lost on Ava, who has never been awake when Iris has been in her company, but Nena knows she doesn’t need to mention that.
A few of the women nod and smile, as if to say ah yes, Emily is OK, so you might be OK too. Nena feels a sigh of relief whip up like a mini tornado around the room, escaping through the 1980s-style office blinds of the open community centre window. Beams of sunlight poke back through, creating a grille of straight lines on the floor.
‘Well, I’m not sure how much Emily has said, but today is all about fun, games, wonder and exploration – all helping Ava and her new friends develop through their senses.’
Nena looks around the circle, scouting for new friends among established friends, trying not to feel scathing. One mum wears a grey marl T-shirt with Femme Forever in a red retro font. Another has a shaggy fringe and a nice face.
Nena feels a mild panic in her stomach but quashes it by remembering that today she woke up feeling a bit different. The view from her loft bedroom seemed brighter: Ava was stirri
ng happily in her cot, talking to Dandy Lion, her favourite cuddly toy, when Nena woke at 6.35 a.m. The spring sunshine felt healing, beating down through the Velux window onto the bed. She showered, threw on her black skinny jeans and a blush pink jumper, the same colour as her ballet flats, and walked with Tom and Arlo to school for drop-off, Arlo proudly showing Ava off to his friends. After Tom kissed Nena goodbye at the Overground station, she walked around Clissold Park and Ava watched the world from her buggy. They went to Sainsbury’s and bought falafels for Ava to try for lunch, and meatballs for them all for dinner. While Ava napped in her cot, Nena took joy in sending Maya a gossipy email; and felt comforted after she pressed send, went into her sent items, and re-read it. The voice in her email was her old one. She sounded like herself again. And while she was tempted to stay at home and watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Orange County, Sydney or wherever – she didn’t. She finally plucked up the courage to go to a baby sensory class. And now, looking around the room, at the eager mothers and their indifferent babies on a Thursday afternoon in spring, Nena doesn’t feel cynical or hostile. A few of them even look like women Nena might hope she can go for a coffee with afterwards.
‘Right, so we’re going to start with “Driving My Tractor”, everyone, that OK?’ The other mums widen their eyes and open their mouths, some clap excitedly to their babies, and Nena realises straight away that this is a Popular Song. Jenny presses play on her iPod dock, repositions herself so she’s upright for singing, and mouths to Nena, with a wave of an arm, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it!’
And Nena smiles back, knowing that she will.
65
April 2016, Luang Prabang, Laos
Maya wakes to a metronome in her head and wonders if it’s the crestfallen beating of her heart or the clock ticking on the bathroom wall. It’s not the rain. Those dense and thick drops stopped somewhere in the middle of the night, during one of the many frantic and fretful times Maya woke, sat up and looked around the room. And it hasn’t yet returned.
She had sobbed into the mattress and then curled into a ball, crying and curling and eventually mustering up the effort to get under the bedlinen. Maya lay and cried, clinging to the empty space where James had slept the night before, willing herself to fall asleep so she could see if it were a nightmare when she woke up; and if it weren’t, that she might never wake up.
But she did wake. And every time she rolled and lolled and looked around the dark room at the posts around the bed that always made her jump, she realised it wasn’t a nightmare. He still wasn’t back. He had gone.
As deep night started to lift through a crack in a broken shutter slat, Maya went to the bathroom to pee.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The clock taunted her. The fizzing of the contact lenses taunted her. She didn’t know how to remove the clock battery and it was too heavy to take off the wall. So she went to put on the television, to see if Anderson Cooper, Stephen Sackur or Christiane Amanpour might bring comfort and company, or even news of James. Then she remembered this room didn’t have a television. She flicked the switch of the old bathroom light and crawled back to bed, jumping the last step and almost ripping the voile with an urgent leap, so the man who might be underneath the four-poster wouldn’t grab her ankles.
As the sun started to rise, it dawned on Maya that something terrible might have happened, something worse than James leaving without saying goodbye; he wasn’t the type of person to just walk off. With a thump of her fist on the pillow, she realised she needed a plan of action.
Do I tell the police? Do I call Francesca? No, Petra would be better. Do I contact Dominic to see if he’s heard anything?
Just as Maya was engaging her practical mind and trying to come up with a plan – just as she was giving up on night – fatigue and trauma pulled her under again, as if trying to stop her finding him.
Now Maya is awake, listening to the metronome in her head, and knows she has to do something. She crawls out of bed and wonders at which point in her most terrible of nights, she put on her olive-green slip.
I don’t even remember.
Maya feels the cool tiles of the floor beneath her Temptress polished feet, unlocks a window, and peers through the shutters, trying not to knock any of the china in the tea set as she leans. She wonders how long it will be before the internet cafe opens; what constitutes a missing person; how she can find out where the police station is.
If only we had brought phones.
Out of the window, Maya sees the tendrils of early morning – a cartoon-like mist is cut into a swirl by a peaceful parade of saffron-robed monks, wafting gently through the streets in an orderly line to collect their alms.
He wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Maya throws on her cargo trousers and James’ jumper. His nicest jumper. The aubergine-coloured one made of merino wool that he wore on the flight from Bangkok and then cast on the chair at the desk under the garden window. It smells of him.
He would have taken his stuff if he were planning to leave me.
Maya remembers how Jon removed all his possessions without her even noticing.
He wouldn’t have just taken his camera.
‘And his passport?’ Maya whispers out loud, to no one.
Maya pulls James’ large backpack out from under the bed and slides it across the smooth patterned floor, before realising it’s more likely to be in his daypack. She releases black clips and fastenings, presses a toggle and opens a zip. Sounds Maya associates with James. The purposeful opening and closing of buckles, the punctuation and the soundtrack to packing and unpacking, taking off and landing. Maya rummages, searching inside to find James’ brown leather travel wallet. A gift from his sisters for Christmas, to send him off in style. Maya opens the wallet to see credit cards, insurance cards, immunisation records. James’ forehead peeps out of the slot housing his driving licence. There is one passport in the zip compartment, not two.
Maybe mine is in my backpack.
Maya slides her fingers in so she can take out the passport. On the back of it are barcodes and luggage labels, digits and codes.
Sometimes I just don’t give it back to him, at least his is here.
Maya opens the passport on the thick page towards the back.
Maya Elizabeth Gloria Flowers. Her serious face in the photo looks up at her serious face in the room. She doesn’t even smile at how James always laughs about Gloria.
He’s gone.
Maya laces up her walking shoes, grabs her coin purse and room key and puts them in the small bejewelled bag she bought all the way back in Udaipur, not stopping to smooth her hair or clean her teeth.
Maybe he’s out there. He must be out there. Why would he go home without his stuff?
Maya steps outside and brings the long thin double doors together behind her. Click.
Or has something terrible happened?
66
Adolescent monks walk barefoot, their wide yellow belts swinging around the waist of their robes. At their hip is a drum-like satchel, in which to collect their alms. Laotian men, women and children, and the more gung-ho tourists, line the pavements on their knees, making offerings without making eye contact. Maya, her own eyes puffy and swollen, is comforted by the invisibility the parade affords her.
She walks into a French bakery, set back slightly from the road, to buy a boule of bread. Her offering. While Maya waits to pay, she looks out of the windows, still searching, to the empty veranda of the now-closed bar next door. She sees the table at which she sat last night with Jon and wonders whether he is still in town or whether he flew back to Vietnam to not shoot a pretend spy drama.
Did James see us holding hands?
Maya feels the sick taste of deception in her mouth and just wants to get back to James, to have his hands on her; his arms around her. For him to be safe.
She reaches the counter and hands a middle-aged woman 30,000 kip. The woman nods but doesn’t speak.
&
nbsp; ‘Excuse me please, can you tell me where the police station is?’
The woman looks up but doesn’t understand.
‘Police station?’ Maya repeats hopefully. ‘Do you know where the police station is please?’
The woman shouts to the back of the bakery and a teenage girl pads through a dark wooden beaded curtain.
Maya tries her luck, hoping the girl might have picked up some English in school, but she is mindful not to shout; not to speak to the girl as if it is she who is stupid.
‘Please can you—’
Her voice is drowned by a roar outside, something sounding like thunder, only more foreboding. The girl looks startled, and turns to her mother, who shrugs.
‘Oh, don’t worry…’ Maya says quietly to herself.
Everyone in the bakery looks to the window, to the sky. The deep rumbling noise at the head of the peninsula, echoing in the valley, starts to ripple down the street, and Maya can tell from the mother and daughter’s faces that this isn’t usual at dawn, during alms-giving, or at any other time. The baker cranes her neck to look out of the front window as she puts Maya’s money in the till.
Maya gives a small smile that goes unnoticed and blinks through sore, puffy eyes, to say thank you as best she can, as she heads out into the street where the mist is lifting and the sky is morphing from blue to orange, as if the monks might be painting it with their robes.
It’s not raining, I don’t think it can be thunder.
The young monks continue their parade; the alms givers are unperturbed by the growing, pummelling noise in the valley.
Maya hands a small boy in the crowd her boule of bread, so he can share it out, as she retreats to the pavement. To watch. To look for James across the street or on a corner, to see if he is weaving through the crowds, taking photographs.
The rumble by the river is getting louder, more thumping, more disruptive. Tourists, who’d risen in the dark to witness or take part in the alms-giving spectacle, look around and tut. Their faces are furrowed and disgruntled, with looks that say, If this isn’t nature’s force, it’s mighty disrespectful. The locals kneel with serenity, unmoved by the unusual din in the near distance.