The Trailing Spouse

by Jo Furniss

  “Okay.”

  “Since when does the world care about the rights of poor migrant women?” Camille asked.

  “The world doesn’t care. Parliament will discuss the issue and probably decide that nothing can change without inconveniencing voters. Or maybe a new law gets passed that appears to protect maids but with a loophole wide enough for all the usual problems to slip through.”

  “You’re preaching to the converted, Ruth.”

  “So, let’s be evangelical. The rest of the world pretends not to see the exploitation because Singapore is rich and stable, and the government has a calming influence over its troublesome neighbors. But I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about women’s rights, and I know you have too.”

  Camille pressed her hand over the mouthpiece as though the journalist might hear her thoughts. A few months ago, she’d let slip to Ruth that she volunteered at HELP, an NGO that campaigned for the rights of foreign domestic workers. She’d set up an interview between Ruth and Sharmila Menon, a hotshot lawyer who’d offered her services pro bono to HELP. Bloody journalists, Camille thought, they never forget. “But what can I do? The BHC can’t comment.”

  “I need an angle,” the journalist said.

  “You won’t get one from us.”

  “Maybe a quote? A teensy-weensy one?”

  “Nope. But HELP is lobbying members of Parliament ahead of the debate. Sharmila’s outspoken, no holds barred. Very, very scary woman, as you may have noticed. But lovely too.”

  “She’s a lawyer.” Ruth spoke in the bored tone that journalists get when dealing with talking heads. “What does the BHC in Singapore do to promote human rights?”

  Camille closed the file on Sharmila’s number. “As I said before, the UK urges all countries to uphold fundamental human rights. But we don’t interfere in the democratic process of a foreign nation.”

  “And the colonies breathe a sigh of relief,” Ruth said sweetly. “We’re back on the record, right?”

  “If you speak to Sharmila, she’ll be more forthcoming and relevant.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  After the journalist hung up, Camille opened the briefing she’d pulled together for Sharmila. The welfare of a quarter of a million maids would be affected by this debate. Camille scanned her report and concluded that she’d done as good a job volunteering for HELP as she did for the BHC. She treated herself to an espresso from the machine. With both hands full, she shouldered her way through the door and came face-to-face with a security tag hanging over a chest that retained its military bearing.

  “Glad you’re in early,” Joshua MacAlpine said. “A call just came through on the bat phone. Thought you should know the details in case it makes the news.” A British woman had requested consular assistance. Her apartment was full of police, she was freaking out, and Josh thought he might pay her a little visit.

  “Do we do house calls?” Camille asked.

  “Mrs. Bonham found the body of her helper late last night. Suicide. And cases like this can be complicated if the press get wind of it. Another suicide just as the foreign domestic worker debate comes to Parliament—”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s necessary . . .” Josh walked away, but then came right back around to face her again. Camille waited. Her boss was not an indecisive man. He was a trained diplomat, for goodness’ sake, smooth enough to tell you to get lost in a way that made you look forward to the trip. “Not necessary” wasn’t the same as “not invited.” He wanted her there for some reason.

  Camille shrugged one shoulder. “I could advise her on how to handle unwanted media attention.”

  Josh rubbed his chin, and finally nodded. “Come on, then, Batwoman. Get your cape.”

  The taxi reached the turn for Sentosa—a leisure island off the mainland of Singapore—and pulled free of the traffic knotted around the port. Camille drummed a finger on the pleather armrest as they drove over the causeway, past container ships on one side and superyachts on the other. She considered how Singapore trades in superlatives: the largest port, the biggest boats, the richest people. The recreation island of Sentosa—home to theme parks, man-made beaches, and golf courses—was one of its weirdest residential areas.

  A Merlion rose up behind trees. The creature had bewildered Camille even as a child. A ten-story-high mythical creature, a fish with the head of a lion, rendered in concrete. The time her parents brought her and her brother, Collin, to climb the Merlion was one of her few focused memories of the Singapore years, beyond a vague sense of heat and happiness.

  She must have been about five. Collin raced up the steps inside, darting between plodding adult legs. Camille gave chase. Somewhere amid the saris and chinos, she gained momentum and beat him to the top, where she could look out from the lion’s mouth, between its four teeth. Down below, tiny people circled a mosaic fountain as though moving to the music of the water. She thought her parents must be there too. Camille inched forward on her belly to see them, the concrete scraping her skin. But then Collin dragged her away from the edge, and however much Camille shouted that she wanted to see what Mum and Dad were up to, he wouldn’t let her go. They’d been playing the same roles ever since.

  The taxi jerked to a halt outside a waterfront condo, and the Merlion was replaced by a much taller structure, an apartment block fronted with black glass and marble. Someone had tried to soften the effect with fountains and orchids, but there was only so much yin an herbaceous border could bring to the yang of a forty-story phallus. Camille and Josh negotiated stepping-stones over running water to reach the lobby, where a concierge dipped his head at their introductions and waved them to the lift. As they stepped out seconds later into the Bonhams’ apartment, Camille held her nose to regulate the pressure in her ears, and had the fleeting thought that she was jumping in at the deep end.

  She slid her shoes into the cubby beside the lift, noting the wealth of the furnishings, the enormous square meterage of the space, the expansive view over the Straits of Singapore. She itched to take a peek through a telescope that stood astride its own oriental rug. Josh was already in conversation with a neat woman perched on the edge of a rock-hard sofa. She was attractive. Tie a little scarf around her neck and she’d make a fantastic air hostess. But Camille suspected this woman had never had a job that required long hours on her feet: they stretched out from her yoga pants, too slender and creamy to have spent time pounding the aisles in shoes that pinch. Josh asked for her husband’s travel schedule.

  “I’ve lost track. He’s away a lot . . .”

  Camille wondered how a wife could lose track of her husband. She marked Amanda down as a trailing spouse, a career wife, a professional expat. And Josh seemed content to put his straight back into attending to this high-maintenance woman. Despite a year of eight-hour days, Camille had rarely seen Josh’s private alter ego. He hid behind the anonymity of a tailored suit and the kind of banter that created a lighthearted atmosphere but forbade real intimacy. But now he was drawing on all his charm to put an attractive woman at ease. Frankly, he was a dark horse. Camille wondered if he already knew Mrs. Bonham and meant to impress her—they would be around the same age, midthirties. But she didn’t seem to know Josh, so Camille shook the thought away.

  Her bare feet were silent on the marble. A hallway stretched away to her right, lined with bedroom doors and a home office at the far end, facing the corridor. Bad feng shui, she thought. The kitchen lay on the opposite side, beyond the vast living space. In pride of place opposite the lift, a Chinese cabinet of rounded shelves held a display of blue-and-white ceramics. There were more ginger jars perched on a console table farther along the hallway.

  Camille glanced at a wedding photo of the couple lounging against a black cab. London. She bent closer. The bride was Mrs. Bonham, but the groom . . . Behind her, the elevator doors shivered as the lift passed. Camille focused on Mr. Bonham, who looked so famil—

  “Camille?” Josh’s voice snapped her t
o attention. She hurried across a dense rug to shake the hand that Mrs. Bonham offered, surprised to find it feverishly warm despite the chill of the apartment. Her eyes were tinged pink, and Camille felt a kick of guilt as she wondered if everyone Mrs. Bonham met was so quick to judge her by her trappings.

  She introduced herself and, at Josh’s prompt, explained why there might be media interest in the suicide of another helper. The woman listened until Camille finished and then said simply, “I have some experience with media intrusion.”

  Josh segued seamlessly into paperwork while Camille made a mental note to google Amanda Bonham’s past. Meanwhile, she took surreptitious glances around the apartment. Aside from the ceramics, everything was sleek and neutral, the television sunk into the wall. And that reminded her: in the police procedural shows she loved to watch, detectives always found an excuse to nose around.

  “Could I make you a cup of tea, Mrs. Bonham?” she asked.

  “Well, the police are in the kitchen . . .”

  “Let me check,” said Josh, and guided Camille with one hand floating under her elbow. Clearly, he wanted to nose around too. In the kitchen, he peeped through a glass door that led to a balcony and the maid’s quarters. Outside, a policeman in a white jumpsuit was packing up his gear.

  “Mrs. Bonham found her helper out there. The girl drank a bottle of bleach. No cry for help, this one, she really meant it. The husband, Edward Bonham, left this morning for Manila.”

  “He left?”

  “Urgent business, he said.” Josh gave a flick of his hand but made no comment. “There’s a stepdaughter too, Josie Bonham, but she went to school. Exams. Mrs. Bonham is holding up well in the circumstances, and the condo manager will arrange a cleaner once the police leave.” He handed over the paperwork he’d taken from Mrs. Bonham, which included important phone numbers and the family schedule for the day. Camille offered to make herself useful by following up on the cleaner, and Josh returned to the living room.

  Camille put her bag on the countertop, then picked it up again. This was a crime scene. Forensics. On the floor by the door, she could see red circles marking little half footprints, yellow stains on the white tiles from the toes and pads of a foot. Amanda Bonham’s feet, Camille supposed, after she’d found the body. As though on cue, an officer stepped through the door, pulling a white hood back from his face and dumping his kit on the counter. The smell of bleach that came off his clothes encircled Camille. His phone beeped and he answered, identifying himself as Officer Pang.

  He turned his back, resting his free hand on the counter. He gripped two ziplock evidence bags that must have come from the helper’s room: the first contained two stocky bottles with printed labels while the second held flimsy foil packets of tiny pills. Side by side, little and large, they looked to Camille oddly male and female. She slid one foot forward and leaned in. The bottles were in the name of Edward Bonham but had been prescribed by different doctors in Manila. The other pills were contraceptives: long, thin strips marked with days of the week and wrapped together with an elastic band.

  How did the helper get such a stash? The more conservative doctors refused to prescribe contraceptives to maids, so they weren’t easy to come by except under the counter. Maybe Edward Bonham got them from the same place as his medication. With a quick glance to check that the police officer was still focused on his call, Camille flicked her phone onto silent and snapped a photograph of the two evidence bags full of drugs. Just as she slipped her phone back into her pocket, the officer hung up and started to leave the kitchen.

  “Officer Pang?” she said.

  He stopped with his hand on the sliding door. “Who are you?”

  “British High Commission. I wanted to ask if cases like this are prosecuted. Suicide is illegal, correct?”

  “Who can we prosecute? The woman is dead.”

  Camille felt herself pink up. “Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I mean, if you find contributory factors—abuse and the like—could there be a prosecution of the employer?”

  Pang showed no reaction. “I can’t say.”

  “I’m asking generally. Not about this case.”

  “I can’t say.” He slid aside the door.

  She couldn’t help herself. “What nationality was the helper? Do you think she was underage?”

  Pang stepped through the door, and Camille had to move closer to ensure she wasn’t overheard by Josh and Mrs. Bonham in the living area.

  “There have been a number of recent suicides by helpers from Burma, and some of them turned out to be underage,” Camille explained.

  Pang leaned back through the door. “I can’t tell a person’s age or nationality by looking at them.” Then he was gone.

  She picked up the paperwork to find the number for the condo management. But her mind drifted. The contraceptives made sense; pregnancy was a deportation offense for maids. But why did she have Mr. Bonham’s medication in her room?

  Camille considered why a helper who had a good job in a prestigious apartment might kill herself; at what point did the girl decide that her dream of a better life had become a nightmare? She glanced again at Mrs. Bonham’s footsteps, yellow smears on the white floor. Maybe the wife’s feet weren’t the only ones creeping through the door to the young maid’s room late at night.

  Chapter 3

  As the taxi crossed the causeway to the main island of Singapore, the driver swerved between lanes, throwing Amanda sideways so that her cheekbone bumped the window.

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  The police and the pair from the British High Commission had wrapped up that morning, leaving her alone with the absence of Awmi. The apartment was always quiet in the middle of the day, the period when the two women usually went about their domestic lives in companionable peace, but now the hush took on a malignant quality. The space whispered with fleeting sounds that Amanda found herself straining to identify. A scrape that might be a footstep. A click that might be a door. A hiss that might be air sucked through gritted teeth. It reminded her of when she was a little girl, alone in a vast bedroom at the top of a town house, holding her breath to check if the breathing she could hear was her own or—

  It’s just the shock, Amanda had told herself. There’s nobody in the apartment but me.

  She had taken her laptop down the hallway to the office, as far from the rear balcony as she could get, away from the smell of bleach that triggered thoughts of Awmi’s pain—not just her final moments but the months the girl must have spent smiling through her despair. Because however hard Amanda tried, she couldn’t recall a single inkling that Awmi was unhappy. Homesick, yes; they had discussed many times how Awmi missed her sisters—one working in Hong Kong and one in Dubai. But suicidal? Amanda hadn’t had a clue. Had Ed? She’d tried to ask him before he left for the airport, but he only held her while she cried, saying that he hardly knew the girl, not really, and she felt him check his watch behind her head.

  And so, when she’d received an email reminder about that afternoon’s book club, she’d made a quick decision to go; anything was better than sitting alone in the apartment, wondering what else she was oblivious to.

  Her greasy makeup on the taxi window smeared into a flesh-colored fingerprint that she couldn’t erase however much she rubbed. Book club was populated by vibrant women with vibrant opinions based on vibrant careers—some present, some past. The group made Amanda feel drab, as neutral and featureless as her apartment. If it weren’t for the permanent record maintained by the Internet, she could’ve invented a new version of herself: someone who belonged. If only former school friends who knew her past—it was an old classmate who’d introduced her to book club—didn’t keep turning up in Singapore like bad pennies circulating the banking capitals of the world.

  With a tissue, she wiped the smudge off the window as the taxi took the ramp onto the highway. Having a child might help me belong, she thought, not for the first time. Maybe alchemy was at work inside her now, unfelt, unseen, brightening th
e darkness of her fallopian tubes. She pressed her belly with both hands, but she knew the magic wouldn’t happen this month, not with Ed traveling. The more she understood the nuts and bolts of fertility, the more improbable it seemed that it could happen to her; the precise timing and intricate sequence of steps seemed like a Japanese puzzle box. Everyone else seemed to have the knack—especially those who didn’t want a child or those who would squander it or lumber it with a ridiculous name. Even her gynecologist had apologized for the “clumsiness” of human fertility—making Amanda feel like a giant panda—while simultaneously pushing a needle through the wall of her vagina to extract ripe follicles. The science is potent, Dr. Chan had said when the procedure was done, though the final step requires nature’s intervention; its—what did she call it?—thaumaturgy. The spark of life. What were her and Ed’s chances of a miracle? Diminishing further with every month he spent overseas.

  Well, Amanda concluded, the benefit of fertility treatment was that she didn’t have to take it lying down. She should make that joke at book club. The women might find it funny, laugh off some tension. Stress didn’t help fertility. She had to stop obsessing and think about something else. So she got out her phone and tapped on Facebook, where she typed in a username and password: Annaliese Del Rey / identity1. She ignored the timeline with its scant handful of friends and clicked through to a private page: Singapore Overseas Wives, known to expats on the island as SOWs. The group had a membership of tens of thousands of women like herself—overpaid, overwhelmed, and over here.

  She navigated to the classifieds. Good: people were queuing to buy a pair of Louboutins that Ed had brought back from Shanghai a few weeks before. The style reminded her of those little booties for women with bound feet. Ed always returned with expensive, impersonal gifts from his trips, and she never asked why. She’d even felt sheepish when she started flogging them, as though it were a betrayal. But then she found his condoms and began imagining hotel hookups based on alcohol and anonymity. The morning after: a guilty headache assuaged by an expensive trip to the hotel shop. Look, darling, I was thinking of you.