The Trailing Spouse

by Jo Furniss

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Jo Furniss

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503949218

  ISBN-10: 1503949214

  Cover design by David Drummond

  For Mark

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.

  ―Isabelle Eberhardt

  Chapter 1

  Amanda Bonham watched an infinite number of Edward Bonhams shrink to the depths of the mirrored walls in the elevator. She jabbed the button and the lift rose with a shudder. When the doors opened, she followed a single Edward Bonham into their apartment, and the elevator made a silent retreat like a well-trained servant.

  Ed weaved toward the bedroom, shunting a console table with his hip as he steered himself into his en suite. Amanda hurried to catch a teetering ginger jar, her heels squeezing mewls of pain out of the marble floor. She straightened the display and turned into her own bathroom. Jasmine scented the air from a sprig of cuttings by the sink. For the first time that evening, she broke a genuine smile; Awmi, their maid, always brought flowers from her evening walk in the condo gardens.

  After washing, Amanda sat on the bed to undo the ribbons of her shoes. With no curtains to obscure the view of Singapore, copper light lapped the walls, swelling with the same perpetual motion as its source—hundreds of container ships moored off the island. The boats lolled in the dark waters, lit up like jovial taverns, as though a ghostly vision of the raucous old port rose from the waves every night and burned itself out again by morning.

  Ed’s bathroom door opened. The bed rolled beneath his weight. If she let him, he would start singing “When My Ship Comes In.”

  “There’s an art exhibition coming up at the Sentosa Club.” She glanced over as she spoke and saw him grimace while swallowing a sleeping pill. “Breakout painters from Southeast Asia.”

  He settled against the pillows; his crisp profile caught the light, creating a high ridge amid a valley of shadows. “I like the apartment minimalist,” he said, with the verbal precision of a drunk man, then scowled at a portrait of Chairman Mao rendered in pixels made of painted fingernails, which hung beside the doorway. “Are they human nails?”

  “Acrylic.”

  “Human nails might justify the price tag.”

  “He watches me when I undress,” Amanda said. “I hate the thing.”

  “So why did we buy it?” Ed asked.

  “You bought it. You were hammered at a charity auction and got into a bidding war with another dad—”

  “Who called Josie a prick-tease.”

  “He didn’t say that—”

  “He said she’d been leading his son on. Like a seventeen-year-old boy ever needs leading on. I won’t let some limp-dicked kid talk about Josie like that.”

  “So you defended your daughter’s honor by outbidding his father for artwork? Every day I’m with you, Ed, I learn vital lessons in parenthood.” Amanda slapped his bare thigh and held up her palm to display the red oblivion of a mosquito.

  But Ed was still trying to stare down Mao. “Josie went on and on about this picture. The fingernails represent the eternal spirit of humanity.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your fingernails never stop growing, do they? Even after death.”

  “That’s a bit literal,” Amanda said.

  “Yeah, well, that was before she decided it was creepy and we got lumbered with it. But at least I got to show that dad who has the bigger dick.”

  “It was pretty clear to everyone who was the bigger dick.”

  A slow smile pushed aside Ed’s scowl. “What’s got Mrs. Bonham so crabby? Is Mr. Bonham less attentive than Mr. Mao?” He rolled toward her, but she slid out of his grasp and off the bed. His attempt at a light touch chafed her raw feelings. Any reasonable person would have smelled the acrid perfume of hurt and anger that she’d worn all evening. In her dressing room, she struggled with a zipper, then gave up and tried to pull the dress over her head, ending up with a tight bundle around her face.

  “Stay exactly like that.” Ed’s knees buckled hers from behind. “I’m going to fuck you in the closet.”

  “For God’s sake, Ed. Who wants to do it in a wardrobe?” His hand wrenched her bra so that one breast stuck out, treacherously responding to the chilly air con.

  “All tied up for me.” The other hand enclosed her wrists in the air above her head.

  “Since when have you tied me up?” She bucked him away with her haunches and tugged at the fabric until the dress landed on the floor with a huff. Ed had retreated with his hands raised in submission. Warm light from the bedroom cast him in copper. He invested an hour a day in the pool or gym because “no one wants to be the clichéd ang moh”—the overweight, sweaty white guy. Normally, she delighted in his efforts. Even now, through her indignation, she detected his resinous scent of whisky and amber, a strumming base note that reminded her of the first time they’d met, on New Year’s Eve in Switzerland, three years earlier.

  Of course, Ed had been fully dressed then, wearing an open-necked shirt when everyone else was trussed up in black tie. He’d made eye contact from his high stool at the bar, and she’d let herself rise the length of the room like a bubble in her champagne glass, carried by an inevitability that relaxed her, made her feel that what was happening was as natural as gravity. Other women approached him—but it was Amanda he watched over their naked shoulders.

  “Since when have you been into bondage?” she asked.

  “It was a joke. I thought everyone tied each other up these days. And you’ve been wearing those h
ooker shoes all night, with the ties—”

  “Ribbons.” She slid her feet into the shoes again, wrapping the black silk up around one calf and then the other, before facing him again, hands on bare hips. “You like the shoes?”

  “Of course I like the shoes. And the underwear.”

  “You like this?” She turned her back to him and bent over to lay her palms on the seat of an upholstered chair.

  “Of course.”

  She hooked her thumbs in her knickers. “What makes you want to fuck someone, Ed?”

  “Not someone—you.”

  “So prove it’s me that you want.”

  As soon as skin touched skin, she tugged down the front of his boxer shorts.

  “Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ve taken a sleeping pill—”

  “You won’t last a minute.”

  Ed gave a pant of laughter and took hold of her hips, and Amanda had to lay her palms on the seat for support. When they parted, a minute or so later, he dropped his underpants into her linen basket while she punched her arms into a bathrobe.

  “What was that about?” he said.

  “I’ll be ovulating soon. Just getting the party started.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “I’m speeding things up. Milking the cow.”

  “Charming.” He walked into the bedroom. “I’m off to Manila tomorrow with Bernardo, did I tell you?”

  “So that’s another month down the drain.” Amanda undid the shoes’ ribbons and they tumbled to her ankles.

  “I thought we agreed to take a break, give you time to recover from the IVF and the rest of it.”

  “The rest of it? We can say the word out loud; it was a miscarriage, not the return of Voldemort. And anyway, you agreed, not me.” She kicked the shoes into the bottom of her wardrobe and threw the dress on top. “Will you be back in time to take Josie to the Cold Sister gig? She’s been looking forward to it.” She didn’t remind him that she was the one who’d made an early-morning dash halfway across the island to queue at the venue for tickets that sold out in record time. Because it was her husband and her stepdaughter’s favorite band.

  “Can you take her?” Ed said. “I can’t leave Bernardo to close this deal. You know what happened last time. I can’t lose another client.”

  Amanda heard the bedsheet brush his body. A gig might be fun, but Josie should go with a friend. Or a date. Like a normal teenager. Ed’s daughter was pretty and droll and cool in an unplucked-eyebrows kind of way. Not passive enough for boys her own age, that was the problem. Amanda would never say it to Ed because he would huff and puff, but Josie needed an older boyfriend—not weird older, just a handful of years. Like her and Ed.

  She went through her bathroom to the hallway, listened for a moment at Josie’s door, then continued on to the curio shelf in the living room. Shrouded in a pocket of shadow amid the ambient light, she lifted the lid of a blue-and-white urn and felt around its copious belly. After she counted three fat bundles of plasticized bills held tight by hair bands, she replaced the ceramic lid with a low chime. She glanced over both shoulders, first along the hallway toward the family bedrooms and then to the maid’s quarters beyond the kitchen. Then she picked up a much smaller ginger jar from the shelf, cupping it in one palm as she adjusted her wedding photo: a candid shot of her and Ed beside a London cab, the flash picking out Josie’s pale face and chalky gown in the interior. They’d married just six months after that New Year’s Eve party; not, as some people said, because Ed planned a move to Singapore—although a marriage certificate did make their paperwork easier—but because they knew it was right. Sometimes, Amanda thought, you just know when something is right.

  Or wrong. She bounced the ginger jar, hearing its contents bristle. Sometimes you know when something is wrong.

  She felt all Blade Runner, beautiful and tragic. The mood made her wish she could smoke while looking at the view, but none of their huge windows opened. Instead, she went to the deep-red kitchen and put the ginger jar on the island counter. There was no movement in the apartment. Only the ceaseless expiration of the AC, as familiar as her own breath. Her thumb and middle finger encircled the lid of the pot, and she lifted it away. Turning the jar upside down, she shook out a stiff strip of packets, neat rubber rings visible through the transparent squares.

  Amanda ripped one square off at the perforation. The packet opened easily. She supposed it would be a design fault otherwise; no one wants a delay while opening a condom. The rubber ring slopped onto her palm. A tart smell hit the back of her throat and she remembered the taste of lubricant. It had been years since she’d encountered a condom. They didn’t use them anymore, she and Ed.

  Well, she didn’t.

  As she held the teat aloft, the condom unraveled to the shape of a dead squid, as sticky and wrinkled as an empty scrotum. Amanda dropped it into a paper towel and poked it to the bottom of the waste bin. She washed her fingers. The remaining condom packets she pushed back into the ginger jar, wondering when Ed would miss them from the travel bag where she’d found them hidden inside a pocket. Once he noticed, would he worry that she knew? Would she be able to tell when he realized? Would either of them show their hand at the marital poker table?

  His sleeping pill must have kicked in by now. She should go to bed too. But her intoxicated blood hummed through her veins. Her mind also hummed with the effort of not freaking out about the condoms and the encounter in the wardrobe, Ed grabbing her bound wrists. I’m going to fuck you in the closet. Since when did he talk like that?

  Don’t rush to conclusions, she told herself.

  So she focused on the sound, the external hum she heard. Not the perpetual whine of the fridge, air con, lights: their life-support system. Something else. She swung around and saw that the glass door leading to the rear balcony was ajar. The maid’s quarters lay at the end of the balcony, and although Awmi would be asleep and the streets below would be quiet at such a late hour, the open door broke the seal on the sterile vacuum that passed for her home.

  Amanda got up to close the glass door. But as she gripped the handle, she saw that the door to Awmi’s bedroom was also open.

  Amanda called out to her. She hesitated on the threshold of another woman’s territory; what little privacy Awmi had she tried to respect. “Awmi? Are you awake?” She pushed the balcony door wider; night air, as dank as a wet towel, engulfed her.

  Her shadow stretched away, a path leading to darkness and a black shape on the floor. The humid air clotted with the brute fumes of bleach, making her eyes tear up. A rattle from Awmi’s room told her the air con was switched on, melting through the open door into the heat of the night. It made no sense: Awmi was frugal with everything but especially air con, which was a luxury for a Singapore maid. Amanda took baby steps toward the black shape. Something warm mashed between her toes. The bleach clutched her lungs and a scream scorched her throat.

  Stumbling backward over the threshold into the kitchen, she slammed the door shut with both hands flat on the cold glass while she gasped for breath. She had almost touched the black shape before it registered as Awmi. Her broken body lay in a puddle of blood and vomit that crept like a living organism, reaching out to touch the polished tips of Amanda’s toenails.

  Chapter 2

  Camille Kemble walked to the bus stop under rain trees, their limbs flexed in a centuries-long dance. Hot mist shrouded the leaves and lampposts. These city streets were carved from the jungle, and the jungle raised ghosts every morning so it would never be forgotten.

  She stuck out her arm at lights coming through the gloom, and the bus snapped open its doors before it even came to a halt. Since she returned to Singapore a year ago, she’d noticed that everything ran faster here than it did back in London. Public transport in general, elevators and escalators in particular, and even urban planning: entire new districts had evolved in the fifteen years since she’d set foot on the island.

  Stretching to hold the leather strap that stopped her
from bowling down the aisle as the bus sped on, Camille returned the greeting of a man who wished her a good morning. Maybe he’d singled her out because she had her head up and alert, like a scrappy little terrier that enjoys getting its ears rubbed. Or maybe it was because her red hair and freckles marked her as a foreigner—a guest in a country she’d once thought of as home. Even if Singapore was printed on her passport under place of birth, she was legally and culturally and indelibly an outsider now.

  Everyone stumbled as the bus braked. Camille jumped off, then followed the shaded walkway to the British High Commission. At the gatehouse, a guard swabbed her handbag with a cloth-tipped wand before buzzing her inside the compound. As she strode up the path toward the embassy offices, a buzz inside her bag made her pull out her cell phone.

  “Good morning, this is the British High Commission press office, Camille Kemble speaking.”

  “Camille, it’s Ruth.” The little-girl voice of Ruth Chin from Reuters News Agency always pleased Camille, although a press officer had to keep her guard up: Ruth’s forthright reporting was a stark contrast to her timid delivery.

  “What can I do for you today, Ruth?”

  The journalist had emailed the previous day asking questions about the British High Commission’s influence on Singaporean domestic politics. Now she was calling to raise the issue again. As Camille made her way into the building, Ruth’s questions circled the same ground like a tiger waiting for a glimpse of soft underbelly. Camille kept her responses brief and bland until Ruth gave a sigh of exasperation.

  “Come on, Camille, I know you have a personal interest in the welfare of maids.”

  “Maids?” Camille managed not to show her surprise at the conversational about-turn. “I thought we had to say ‘helper’ these days.”

  “Helper, so cute”—she made the word last a long time—“but so expat. We call a maid a maid. In any case, the parliamentary debate on the working conditions of foreign domestic workers—if you prefer the official name—is coming up.”

  “You’re covering it?” Camille glanced toward her boss’s office, but it was still early; his door remained closed. She pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk and slipped a file from beneath a stack of brown envelopes. It was a document she had stayed late the previous evening compiling—long after the rest of the BHC staff had left—because it had nothing to do with her day job. She slid down the corridor to the staff kitchen and closed the door behind her. “I’m speaking as me, not the BHC, and I’m off the record.”