The Prodigal Sister: An emotional drama of family secrets

by Laura Elliot

  Their hotel is in the centre of a small square slung with coloured lanterns. High steps, swing doors, a porter standing outside. Lauren can visualise everything except its name. The road she enters is narrow, darker. She passes overcrowded bars, the winking signs of strip joints and clubs, the murmuring promises of young prostitutes, their jutting hips reminding her of awkward children mincing across a school stage.

  Once, when she was a child, she strayed from her mother’s side during a shopping trip. She has never forgotten the panic, the crowds, the sense of being abandoned. The same panicked feeling comes over her again when she fails to find the hotel. Why did she dally and allow the women to flatter and cajole her? To flash pendants and dangle earrings, sweep her hair upwards with their tiny, busy hands.

  Two middle-aged men walk towards her, accompanied by a woman, sleek as a caterpillar in a green satin dress. She links their arms, her hips swaying as she leads them into a doorway. Light glints behind the broken slit of a Venetian blind. Streetlights glaze the shadows. A door opens and they disappear inside.

  Lauren turns another corner, then another. The streets look identical. She keeps on walking, hoping to see the familiar high steps but recognises, instead, the beggar and his dog. The elephant has disappeared and the beggar, a moon-faced man with one trouser leg pinned above his knee, reaches out as she passes and grasps her ankle. She frees herself and begins to run, almost crashing into a tiny, hunched woman pushing marigolds in a wheelbarrow.

  A man wearing a backpack approaches. Walking faster, almost running, he holds his head high and wards off the advances from a line of prostitutes.

  ‘No, thanks! No, thanks. Sorry…not interested,’ he mutters.

  ‘Excuse me, can you help me?’ Lauren tries to detain him but he shies away.

  ‘Fuck off! I’m not interested.’ His beard, ginger and spiky as an armchair tuft, vibrates with nervousness.

  Too panicked to be indignant, Lauren suddenly remembers a boutique called Style Focus. She noticed it when she was leaving the hotel and hopes to browse through it tomorrow. She approaches a prostitute who calls out to the passing pedestrians in English.

  ‘Excuse me. I’m lost—’

  ‘You sex seek?’ The prostitute’s voice is soft, almost sibilant.

  Lauren shakes her head. She should have heeded Rebecca’s advice and bought a phrase book. ‘I’m looking for a boutique called Style Focus.’

  ‘You seek sex? Good time, yes?’

  ‘Style Focus.’ Lauren raises her voice. ‘Can you tell me where it is?’

  Perspiration trickles under her arms. The moon is a washed-out quarter, almost invisible above the hazed neon. The humid night air, trapped between the narrow streets, is redolent with incense and the sweet scent of tiger lilies.

  ‘You fucky fuck lady.’ There is an alertness about the woman as her gaze shifts beyond Lauren. ‘Go way to hell. Go way.’ She shrieks in Thai, her arms flailing. The shrill intensity of her voice drives Lauren backwards.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’ A man stands in front of her. ‘If you want the services of my girls, then you deal only with me.’ A luminous yellow shirt strains across his stomach. His pallid features and acquisitive gaze belong to the night.

  ‘I wasn’t looking for anything except directions to my hotel.’ Dry-mouthed, Lauren swallows and forces the words towards him.

  ‘The name of your hotel?’

  ‘I don’t…I can’t remember—’

  ‘Where is it located?’ Perspiration beads his upper lip. Thinning blond hair hangs lankly to his shoulders.

  She cringes, as if she has made contact with his skin. ‘I was with people. I didn’t take down the details—’

  ‘Voyeuristic bitch.’ In a movement so swift she is unable to brace herself, he shoves her against the wall. ‘For my girls you pay like everyone else. Or would you prefer one of my boys to stretch your cunt?’ His cold dispassionate stare is more brutal than his words.

  She wants to reach out with her nails, tear the skin from his face, but something about his eyes warns her to stay silent. She will collapse if he does not release his grip. For an instant longer he increases the pressure until she is unable to breathe. Then, almost playfully, he opens his arms wide and allows her to escape.

  ‘Go back to your hotel, slut,’ he shouts. ‘And don’t waste my girls’ time.’

  She begins to run. Voices clash. Musicians play in cafés. Neon lights spin. She is overwhelmed by the familiar terror of tumbling through the night. She kicks off her shoes and leaves them behind. In the babble of voices, one sound emerges. A male voice, close and urgent, calling on her to stop. She is deaf to the sound but his footsteps gain on her, his arm forces her to a standstill.

  ‘You ran before I could reach you.’ The passenger from the coach breathes heavily as he holds out her shoes. He has changed from his casual linen suit into a formal tuxedo. A white silk scarf hangs around his neck.

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid.’ He places her shoes on the ground. ‘We’re almost at the hotel.’

  He holds her when she collapses against him. Her feet are grazed but she is unaware of pain as she slips on her shoes. They walk towards the high revolving doors.

  Julie rushes forward when they enter the hotel and hugs her. Rebecca turns from the reception desk where she had been discussing the possibility of informing the police about Lauren’s disappearance. Her sisters look quizzingly at her but Lauren has no desire to discuss her experience. The pimp and his sordid power games are behind her. She is safe now, anxious to move on to the next stage. Her companion offers to buy her sisters a nightcap. They refuse, claiming exhaustion. They wait to be introduced but Lauren makes no effort to do so. Names are not important. He is a ship briefly passing through her night. The moment matters, nothing more.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Her sisters are sleeping when she returns to the suite. She enters the ensuite and turns on the light above the mirror. Her bottom lip is swollen and the two tortoiseshell combs she bought hold her hair upwards in a style that emphasises her long neck with its delicate wishbone tendons. Her dress is ripped beneath one arm, the frayed material as unsightly as a weal against her tanned skin. The air conditioning hums softly as she walks through the bedroom towards the glass doors. She stands on the balcony, watches the dawn rise and break above the high conical roofs of temples and pagodas. On the dressing table, her mobile phone vibrates silently, flashing a warning light.

  In the small intimate hotel bar, he ordered a bottle of Evian with a twist of lemon. Reluctant to drink any more wine, she also sipped a glass of iced water. She tries to remember what they talked about. Their childhoods, mostly. His was spent on the island of Phuket where his parents ran a beach restaurant. His father is a New Zealander with Scottish roots; his mother, now dead, was originally from Bangkok. In his teens, he divided his time between his father’s old boarding school, Christ’s College in Canterbury, and the coral beaches where he was equally at home in sea or on land. Bare feet and freedom, striped blazers and routine. Lauren imagines his boyhood, the contrasting traditions and cultures as he journeyed between Thailand and New Zealand.

  He is a composer, he told her. His latest composition had been performed earlier in the Thailand Cultural Centre. He was returning from the concert when he saw her running and recognised her.

  ‘Your music, what inspires you?’ she asked.

  ‘Life,’ he replied. ‘And you, in your poetry? What is your inspiration?’

  ‘Destruction,’ she answered. She had told him she was a poet, regretting the words as soon as she uttered them. She can barely remember the poems she wrote during that brief flowering, and it is many years since she has had any inclination to write. She spoke about her own childhood, that special time when life was a prism dazzling with possibilities. Nothing in her demeanour, or in her tone, suggested that the prism had been smashed beyond repair, and that her life, from then on, was defined by the splinters.

  The
barman dimmed the lights, except for the lamp shining above their table, and left the bar. As the hotel settled into the quiet hours, the stained-glass lampshade shadowed their face with jewelled hues. She pressed her fingers against his lips when he asked her name, refused to allow him to divulge his own. He stood and offered her his hand. She arose without hesitation and accompanied him to his room.

  Lauren is not a faithful wife. There have been other men in her life, daytime lovers, faceless, eager men from whom she demands nothing except discretion and the ability to be gone from her life before the affair grows stale. She is always careful–no telltale clues, no whispering, inopportune phonecalls, no gifts, no secrets exchanged or experiences shared. She does not want their baggage and they are discouraged from peering into her past. Occasionally, she confides in Julie, who might moralise but will never betray a confidence.

  ‘Why take such risks?’ she asked Lauren once, unable to understand how it feels to balance on the edge of a blade.

  Lauren moves restlessly across the room and opens the fridge, pours orange juice into a glass. Julie’s faint snore is comparable to bees droning above lavender, and will, Lauren suspects, drive her and Rebecca crazy before the holiday is over. She lifts her mobile phone and reads the text from Steve. He misses her and hopes she is thinking about him. She sends back a response that she knows will please him, and returns to bed. She is married to a man who adores her. An obsessive man who cherishes her and keeps her from falling. As his beloved, she holds all the aces. This affair, she warns herself as she tosses sleeplessly, must not stray beyond the brief hours they have spent together.

  Kasem guides them through the heat-filled day. Temples, pagodas, palaces and flower markets. Lauren’s head spins with a kaleidoscope of impressions. She is intrigued by the ferocity of warrior statues, comparing their war-like expressions with the passive smiles of the saints she worshipped as a child, lighting candles before St Joseph, bargaining over lost items with the ever-obliging St Anthony. Julie, spotting a statue with a human face and elephant tusks, orders Rebecca to stand in front of it. She will send it to her boys and caption it ‘The Day We Discovered Rebecca’s Perfect Man’.

  Barefoot, they enter the temple of the Emerald Buddha and kneel, as instructed, their feet pointing away from the Buddha. A woman, oblivious to the tourists thronging the temple, kneels before the tiny bejewelled Buddha on top of the high conical altar. She carries flowers, which she lays before her, and bows her forehead to the floor. Lauren envies the woman’s belief in a promised reincarnation–the expectation of a second chance.

  She has passed the day in a fever, her eyes seeking him out in the hotel breakfast room, in the foyer before Kasem collected them, on the coach, hoping he too would have decided to partake in the tour. As they journeyed through the crowded streets and viewed the shimmering temples, she grew more anxious but now, she tenses, draws her breath slowly inwards when a movement to her right alerts her. She glances sideways and watches as he moves through the crowd and kneels beside her. Rebecca’s expression is remote but Lauren knows she is aware and watching.

  After a few moments, Lauren arises and walks towards the temple door. A light, almost translucent scarf covers her bare shoulders. An ivory skirt floats above her ankles. She moves with the nonchalance of a woman alone and unobserved in a crowd but every fibre of her being knows that he follows a pace behind her.

  The courtyard is thronged, the shoe racks overflowing. He bends and lifts her sandals from the top shelf and lays them before her. On this occasion he does not have to hold her steady when she slips them on. She pulls her sunglasses from her hair to her eyes and nods, an almost imperceptible gesture of thanks, before she walks away.

  At the temple gates, Kasem steers them past the vendors who descend like a scattering of crows, waving postcards and joss sticks in their faces. Inside the hospitality coach, Lauren watches him hail a taxi and disappear into the traffic.

  ‘Who does he think you are?’ Julie demands. ‘Cinderella?’

  ‘Prince or pauper, he’s of no interest to me,’ Lauren replies, and is suddenly transported back to her childhood when she and Cathy used to analyse the gravity of lies. A little white lie, a fib, a falsehood, a whopper.

  ‘Oh, really?’ Julie raises her eyebrows. ‘I believe you…thousands wouldn’t.’

  ‘Cinderella was home before midnight,’ says Rebecca. ‘So Lauren doesn’t qualify.’

  ‘What time did you get in?’ Julie looks curiously at her.

  ‘Late,’ said Rebecca. ‘Do you want to tell us what’s going on, Lauren?’

  ‘Nothing is going on, Rebecca.’

  ‘But—’ says Julie.

  ‘Julie please, I don’t want to discuss this.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Julie, sounding distinctly huffy, takes out her mobile phone and texts her sons.

  This time Lauren will not talk. Words will bring him to life, put shape on her experience, give meaning to a physical encounter that is nothing more than a one-off holiday fling.

  The buttons on Kasem’s blazer sparkle like newly minted coins as he coughs apologetically to attract their attention. They will now see his City of Smiles from the Chao Phraya river.

  Tired from the day’s excursion, they decide to eat in the hotel restaurant. Lauren plays with her food, spears a prawn and lifts it to her mouth. She resists the urge to spit out the rubbery substance and swallows. Outside the temple he touched her feet. His fingers stroked the inside of her ankle and she was gripped by a delirium that will give her no rest until they lie together again.

  ‘Come to me tonight,’ he whispered. She shook her head, knowing that to do so is not only foolish but reckless. His black eyes told her she lied. When the music is over, he will be waiting in the bar for her.

  The restaurant door swings open. An elderly man and a young woman enter. A waiter immediately approaches and escorts them to a nearby table. The tall, silver-haired man is at least forty years older than his companion. She knows the waiter. Lauren notices the glance they exchange and his immediate return with a daiquiri. Her companion is Australian, a businessman with a twanging accent that carries across the restaurant each time he speaks on his mobile phone. Without consulting the woman, or even glancing in her direction, he orders steaks for two. She spins the daiquiri glass by its delicate green stem and makes no attempt to eat her meal when it is placed before her. He takes out a calculator and declares figures. His brain is a spreadsheet, projecting, planning ahead. She removes a phone from her evening bag. Rings, heavy with cheap stones, glint as she begins to text. He frowns and reaches across the table. She pouts but does not protest when he takes the phone from her and places it firmly beside his plate. Lauren’s skin crawls, remembering the visceral hatred the pimp stirred in her, stronger even than her fear.

  ‘Creep!’ Rebecca, glancing across the restaurant towards the Australian, speaks too loudly for comfort. ‘Sex tourists like him are a boil on the arse of humanity.’

  ‘Lower your voice, Rebecca.’ Julie coughs warningly into her hand. ‘For all we know, she could be his wife.’

  ‘Hardly likely. Those stones are fake. A trophy wife wears the real thing.’ Rebecca’s gaze skitters towards Lauren’s rings and away again. Unable to hide her embarrassment, she adds, ‘Yeah, maybe she is his wife. What do I know about jewellery?’

  Lauren stands up. Her leg jolts against the table. The wine glasses wobble, red wine sloshes on the white cloth.

  ‘Excuse me. I need some fresh air.’ If she does not walk away, she will smack Rebecca across her smug, self-righteous face.

  In the ladies, she smudges foundation over her flushed cheeks, moans inwardly when the door opens and Rebecca enters.

  ‘I’m sorry…did I say something to upset you?’ Rebecca turns on the taps and washes her hands.

  ‘What on earth gave you that idea?’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting…I’m really sorry if I offended—’

  ‘Forget it, Rebecca. It’s not the first ti
me you’ve called me a trophy wife.’

  ‘I didn’t call you—’

  ‘I know what you think about my marriage.’

  ‘No, you don’t—’

  ‘Let’s just leave it, shall we?’ Lauren removes the combs from her hair and brushes it. Fifty strokes a night, her mother used to say. Lauren brushes and brushes until the black strands spring outwards, as if touched by electricity.

  Rebecca shakes moisture from her hands and holds them under the dryer. She applies hand cream and vigorously rubs her hands together. She is dressed in a pair of chain-store jeans. Her cotton top has the print of a seal’s face on the front and was obviously designed for some animal protest march against the culling of seal cubs. Her only concession to glamour is the red silk scarf Lauren gave her for Christmas, which is casually draped over her shoulders. But Rebecca has the height to wear jeans and make them look elegant, the erect shoulders to turn a scarf into a statement. Lauren has the same height but not the effortless style that Rebecca can achieve without trying or caring how the end result looks.

  ‘Are you coming back to the table?’ she says. ‘Your meal will be cold and you’ve hardly touched your food.’

  ‘Listen, Becks—’ Lauren stops, bites her lip. She can’t remember the last time she used Rebecca’s nickname. ‘Go ahead, Rebecca. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’ She piles her hair upwards and stabs the combs back into position.

  ‘Whatever you say.’ Rebecca turns and almost collides with the young Thai woman, who moves aside with a polite apology. The door swings closed on Rebecca’s heels.

  The Thai woman stands before the mirror and settles her eyes on Lauren. Her glance is swift and appraising. A delicately drawn sunflower is tattooed on her arm, childish and cute, as is the face lurking beneath the sultry make-up. She is young enough to be Lauren’s daughter. The pain that comes with this realisation is almost sweet in its familiarity. Lauren dabs perfume behind her ears. The smell of cheap perfume wafts upwards as the young woman sprays it on her cleavage. Lauren removes a tube of lipstick from her bag. The other woman rummages in her bag then pouts and strokes her lips until they glisten like over-ripe plums. Aware that they are mirroring each other’s actions, Lauren quickly closes her handbag and hears the same snap from the prostitute’s stone-studded clasp bag.