The three listened, interested by the story. Miles pushed a curl of grey hair behind his ear.
“We didn’t even know where we were going, but we set off. You can’t do that anymore. Everyone knows where they’re going now. Got these sat navs and that. We just knew we had to go east. Got a compass glued to the dash. So we kept going east. We’d often meet up with other people doing the same – you could see their bright vans. We’d take turns sleepin’, stop when we wanted.”
Miles spoke while the others listened. Leo thought there might have been some opposition to him dominating the conversation, but there wasn’t – they were absorbed by his story. Draining the bottle of beer, Miles ordered another before continuing.
“Back in those days, it was full of hippies on the way east. We travelled down through Turkey into Iran, Tehran, didn’t stay there long, just passed through. They didn’t have alcohol. Then into Afghanistan, Pakistan, India. Then we chose to head north and came here. It’s such an incredible feeling to travel that far over land, you really get a true impression of how small the world is and how many different people live across it. We left a raining, grey London one day, and four months later rolled into Kathmandu in the same battered old transit. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“How long did you stay?” Jack asked.
“Stayed here for a month, it was the sort of place you just couldn’t leave. Then we went back to India. We’d planned to drive home, but by that point it wasn’t looking too good in Iran or Afghanistan so we bummed about for a few weeks. One morning we got a letter from our parents. Inside were two airline tickets home. They’d never been that keen on us going and had seen Iran on the news, and assumed the whole of Asia was like that. Using them felt a bit like selling out, having come all that way in the van. In the end we turned up at Bombay airport on a Monday morning and landed back in London on Monday evening.”
“And the worst thing…” Miles said, taking a sip of the fresh beer. “The worst thing is that I don’t even have any pictures of it. I didn’t have a camera. All I’ve got to remember it by is what’s in here,” he said, tapping the side of his grizzled head.
“I can imagine,” Jack said. “How did you fit back into normal life after that?”
Miles laughed. “Yeah, that was hard. Had to get a job, the first real job I’d had. A year later I was married and had a baby on the way. The eighties came and the world felt different. It wasn’t quite as fun anymore. We were lucky to do it when we did.” Miles looked into the middle-distance as though the past ran like a film through his vision.
He continued, telling the young travellers about his three children, how they’d moved to Australia when his oldest was eight and how he now had a collection of grandchildren.
“Your wife didn’t fancy coming with you?” Jack asked.
“She died last year,” Miles said, regaining focus on the table. “It was a total shock. One day she was complaining of a headache – that was totally not like her. She took a few painkillers and went to bed, and just didn’t wake up again. She’d had a stroke during the night. After a while we knew she wasn’t coming back.”
The lanterns around the bar shivered. The night had taken on a chill. Leo drained his beer and added it to the pile of empties. Looking at Miles he still felt a sting of apprehension, the conversations of conspiracy with Allissa fresh in his mind. What interested him about Miles’s stories was that he seemed so at peace with his past, as though it had happened to someone else, as though he was telling a story that didn’t belong to him. Or maybe Miles was just content with letting time pass in the way it wanted to and accepting the present for what it was. Leo wondered if he would ever be able to do that, just accept that’s the way things are. Or would he always be fighting to find, or change?
“You know, I always said I’d come back here,” Miles continued, looking around. “My wife said that she’d come with me. That’s one of the reasons I had to come back. She’d heard so many stories and wanted to see the places for herself. We kept saying we would…”
“Well you’re here now, mate, and it’s good to meet you,” Jack said.
Leo looked at Allissa; she seemed content as though the company was a much-needed distraction. Letting his eyes lower, Leo looked at the small tattooed spider climbing up the inside of her arm. Realising Allissa was looking at him, Leo looked away awkwardly.
“You know all the cool places to go around here, then?” Jack asked. “We’ve only been here a couple of days,” pointing at himself and Leo.
“I’m sure it was different in those days, though,” said Allissa.
“Oh yeah,” said Miles, his expression brightening. “When we were here before there was the most incredible restaurant. We went as often as we could. I’ve eaten at restaurants all around the world, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a meal as good as at this place.”
“What was it called?” asked Allissa.
“You know, I’ve no idea. I’m not even sure it had a name. But I don’t think it was far from here.”
Miles looked left and right as new beers arrived and the hoard of empties were collected.
“You reckon you could find it?” Jack asked.
Miles thought for a while and asked Allissa a couple of questions about land marks and street names.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, smiling. “Of course I could.”
“Well then… we’re going,” Jack said.
Chapter 63
“What did you make of that, then?” the editor asked, answering Green’s call on the first ring.
“Allissa,” said Green. “He’s got to be talking about her, she must be in Kathmandu.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like the sort of plan a normal father would be making for his daughter though, does it?”
“She knows something, something he really doesn’t want coming out.”
“That girl is the key to this,” the editor said. “Green, listen. I’m raiding the budget. Get out to Kathmandu and find that girl, find out what she knows. Tell her she might need to testify too – I’ve got a feeling this will go to court once the CPS get hold of it.”
Green nodded and tapped his laptop to life.
“I just hope I can get there in time.”
Chapter 64
Out in the orange-tinged street it was clear the group had already sunk a few beers. Their voices got louder in agreement as they walked. The evening was pushing on, and the traffic had sunk to a trickle of cars, bikes and taxis.
Jack and Miles walked at the front of the group, laughing loudly at each other’s tales of travelling in obscurity and swigging the beers they’d bought “for the road”. Although Miles was taller than Jack, he walked with the permanent stoop tall people get from spending their lives ducking under things. With Jack’s upright, boyish posture they were almost the same height walking side-by-side.
Leo and Allissa followed the rocking, laughing pair.
“You don’t mind coming, do you?” Leo asked.
“Seriously, if I didn’t want to be here, I’d already be gone. I’ll come for a bit of food then head back. The girls will be alright on their own for the evening. Plus, these guys are entertaining.” She pointed to where Jack and Miles waited beneath a rare working streetlight.
Miles had pulled a pouch from his pocket and started to roll a cigarette. With great dexterity he took a bud of cannabis from the pouch, broke a section across the tobacco and rolled it tight. Lighting it and putting it to his lips he took a deep drag. The end sparked an angry red, his grizzled stubble expanding as he inhaled.
“You know what I’d like to see,” Jack said, his expression turning sombre as he accepted the spliff from Miles.
“I bet you just want to keep on travelling,” Allissa said, as she and Leo joined them in the island of light.
“I want everyone,” Jack said, pausing to exhale, “to be able to experience what I have in the last two weeks. If everyone in the world did a bit more of this,” he waved the splif
f around as though indicating the place, “then the world would be a much nicer place. Much more… tolerant.”
Allissa, standing between Leo and Jack in the milky half-light of night-time Kathmandu, agreed. For the majority of her life she’d been surrounded by excess, intolerance and greed. It had taken her coming to places like Kathmandu to realise it. It wasn’t that she grew up around bad people, it was just that the system they were born into told them that was normal. Many of them had travelled widely and lavishly. Allissa had seen their pictures on social media before cancelling her accounts. But she knew it was one thing to travel, looking at the world from behind the glass of air-conditioned judgement. Another entirely to walk the streets, meet the locals, learn their suffering and suffer with them. Standing beneath the streetlight, surrounded by people she’d only just met, Allissa remembered something Chimini had said to her at the first village they’d visited. The sight of the abject poverty had shocked her, but so had the happiness of the villagers. “We’re all suffering somehow,” Chimini said as they walked back to the car, “the only difference is choosing what to do about it.”
“That’s the shame, isn’t it?” Jack said, “the people who could really do with this, would never do it.”
There was a pause before Miles spoke again.
“I know it’s around here somewhere… I remember this street here, I’m sure of it. It was a long time ago… I knew I’d be coming back though. I told Anna about it many times.”
Miles walked on towards a road that was darker and thinner than the previous one. A car would struggle to fit down it, especially with the dark shapes of piled boxes and rubbish either side. The only light seeped from the lit windows which seemed to float above the road.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Jack shouted forward to Miles, not entirely sure where he was in the darkness.
“Nope!” came the reply from somewhere up ahead.
Jack laughed; it seemed like he was enjoying the journey.
“We gotta look for a light,” Miles said. “It used to be exactly the same as this, I think. There always used to be a light hanging above the door. That’s how we knew where it was.”
“We look a bit lost to me,” Leo said from another part of the darkness.
“Do you know the greatest thing I’ve ever heard?” Jack said, his words starting to slur. “It was the Dalai Lama talking to some journalist in a suit. The journalist asked him about the meaning of life. He thought for a few seconds, and then said that he didn’t know.” Jack laughed dryly. “If the wisest dude in the world says it’s okay not to know the answer sometimes, then that’s alright for me.”
Allissa, standing behind the others, knew that although Jack’s words sounded drunken, there was some truth in them. Having spent years of her life being told what she should do, where she should go and who she should spend time with, it was exhilarating to be able to stand back, sniff the air, and let the future come.
Chapter 65
“You’ve got to look for the light,” Miles said, stumbling blindly.
Leo was starting to think this was a bad idea, although Allissa’s silent shape in front of him showed no concern.
Each turn had taken them down a narrower passage until they were walking in single file through the darkness, following a man who said he hadn’t visited Kathmandu in forty years. Above them, the tops of the buildings were almost indistinguishable from the sky, which still glowed in reassuring orange.
“There it is! I’ve found it!” Leo heard from somewhere up ahead. “I knew I’d still know the way. Forty years I’ve been planning to come back here!”
In the darkness, Leo could make out Miles standing at a small crossroads of passages. He was pointing to the left.
It looked like nothing. Closed metal shutters, dark windows, the towering concrete structures. Then he saw the light. A bare bulb hanging on a wire above the door, a fruit on a dying vine.
Beneath the bulb, a dark doorway looked closed. Miles strode towards it expectantly. The others watched.
The door opened as Miles neared it. Without a backwards look he ducked and disappeared inside.
Jack looked back at Leo and Allissa, excitement reflecting in his eyes from somewhere. Rushing forward, he also disappeared beneath the bulb, leaving Leo and Allissa exchanging glances.
“What do you think?” Leo said, pausing at the end of the passage – there was something about the dark door that he didn’t like. He’d done his job now, he’d found Allissa; he didn’t need to be here any longer.
“We’ve come this far,” she said, looking around the passage and then walking towards the door which remained open, “we might as well go and see.”
Together the pair neared the bare bulb.
Leo swallowed hard, his throat dry as they ducked into the gloom of the restaurant.
“I told you I would find it,” Miles said as they were shown to a table by a waiter.
“We never doubted ya,” said Jack. “Been looking forward to this.”
As Leo sat, the waiter fussed over the table, pulling out chairs and arranging cutlery.
“I was here in 1978!” Miles said.
The waiter nodded in nonchalant acknowledgment.
The restaurant had less than ten tables, each one lit by a hanging bulb like the one outside. They were close enough together that care had to be taken when walking between them. Most of the tables were full, surprisingly, considering how difficult it had been to find the place. But perhaps it was like Mya would say, the more difficult it is to get somewhere, the better it is when you do.
“We need to have the Himalayan Lamb,” Miles said. “It’s amazing. It comes from the mountains where the air is fresh and the grass is clean. They’re really difficult to get, but somehow this restaurant does it… that’s what we always used to have.”
The other three nodded, happy to go with Miles’ suggestion. The waiter arrived with four bottled beers and Miles made the order.
“How you feeling about Jem today?” Leo asked Jack as he shuffled to find comfort on the low seat.
“Yeah, alright. Sad to see her go, but I’ll see her in a few weeks.”
“What’s that?” Miles asked.
“Jack’s had a bit of a holiday romance, haven’t you, mate?”
“Well, we just spent a bit of time together,” Jack said, reddening in the darkness.
“Tell us about her…” Allissa said, taking over the interrogation.
Leo grinned at Jack’s discomfort.
“Yeah, she’s a decent girl,” Jack conceded.
“Details…” Allissa prompted.
“We met in Varanassi and travelled together for a couple of weeks,” Jack said, relenting with a sigh. “You know when something just feels easy, like it’s meant to be? It’s been great. Totally didn’t expect that to happen.”
“Apparently they’ve not been without each other,” Leo said, digging in.
“Nice one, mate,” Miles said. “You gunna see her again?”
“We’re going to try. She went to Thailand yesterday for another six weeks, but she lives in Canada and I live in England. We’ll see.”
“How do you feel about that?” Leo asked.
“I’m just happy it happened.” His voice took on a softer tone. “Right now I’d love to see her again, but time will tell.”
Jack had totally the right attitude about it, one that Leo wished he could have.
“What about you?” Miles asked Allissa.
“I’ve got all the girls,” Allissa replied, grinning in the half-light. “I don’t want to be confined to just the one. I’m far too young for that.”
Miles laughed.
“You’ve just not met the right one yet. Once you do that’ll change. I was like that before I met Anna. I thought I’d go on forever. I wasn’t a dick to any of them or anything, I just didn’t want to settle down. But she changed all that. What about you?” Miles looked towards Leo.
“I know exactly what you mean, abo
ut finding the right person,” Leo said, telling Miles about his search.
“You know if I was you, Leo,” Jack interrupted loudly. “If I was you, and that was me and Jem, I’d spend two years looking for her,” he paused to hiccup, “and I’d go around the whole world to see her again.”
Jack’s comments hung uninterrupted in agreement.
Leo looked around the table, and each person who looked back at him seemed content with the beer, the intimate restaurant and the company. He thought of his friends in England who said he should move on, many offering to take him out or set him up with others. His parents had thought his and Mya’s lives were too hedonistic and that they needed to settle down. But here, with people he hardly knew, in a place he’d only been in a few days, to have someone say he was doing the right thing was reassuring.
The lamb arrived a few minutes later. Leo thought it looked incredible, hissing and spitting as it cooled. Some bits on the bone, others not. It had been cooked in the dish mixed with onions, garlic, chillies and a blend of spices, which could be seen glistening on the meat. The four looked at each other in excitement.
Despite the waiter’s best effort, it thudded to the table.
Miles was the first in, abandoning cutlery and diving in with fingers and thumbs. Jack was next, going for a large bone that rose from the top of the dish. He picked it up by the end and removed the supple lamb with his teeth, pausing every few bites for a swig of beer. Leo and Allissa, after watching the unceremonious way the other pair had dived in, followed with fingers, thumbs and teeth.
The restaurant, which had been busy when they’d arrived, was getting quieter. A handful of customers remained, some eating, others now slouched in their chairs.
“Man, this is taking me back!” Miles said, pausing mid-bite, a piece of lamb held by its unusually long bone in his clenched paw. “This is exactly how it was all those years ago. It’s mad to think the last time I tasted this lamb I was twenty! All the things that have happened since.” He took a pull on the beer with his free hand. “It’s amazing the way life works sometimes.”
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