The Trailing Spouse

by Jo Furniss

  The website had a header of Singapore’s concrete skyline against cement clouds. Its mood was melancholy, not in a teenage way—the online equivalent of dressing as a goth—but something deeper. Whoever had designed this page wasn’t celebrating, not a birthday or anything else. Below the banner, there was a GIF, an image of Amy Winehouse silently mouthing her song “Stronger Than Me.” Amanda recognized the video; Josie often played it. Alongside that she had posted a drawing of a woman and a caption reading, “Who Is She?” The face looked a lot like Josie—a self-portrait, perhaps?—but the dense scribble that made up the hair echoed a picture that sat next to the bed: Josie’s mother looking out from her gilt frame, squinting through a squalling wind on a cliff top.

  Below the drawing was a blog post, dated that morning. Amanda turned her phone to let text fill the screen.

  Hello World! This is your first post! Edit it or delete it, then start writing!

  OK, then, here goes :)

  Hello Inner World! This is my private diary! One post per day, unless I lose the will to live!

  In the future: Thirteen Days Until D-Day

  In the past: Thirteen Days That Made Me Me

  Post 1 of 13: My Earliest Memory

  The frosted grass crackles under my boots like spilled sugar. The cold shatters when I run through it. He snatches me up in the crook of one arm and holds me against his chest and laughs that I’m full of beans. Smoke comes out of his mouth when he says it. I say Beans—Beans!—and smoke comes out of my mouth. He holds up his cup of coffee and smoke is coming out of its little mouth too, like a tiny volcano about to go off.

  Take me on the slide, Teddy? I ask him.

  Come on then, Jo-Jo Sparrow, race you!

  When we get to the playground, Chloe from playgroup is there at the top, too frightened to slide. I climb the steps and she sees me and knows she has to get out of the way, so she slides and tumbles onto the wood chips and starts wailing like she always does. I slide and the cold rushes inside my ears and tugs my sleeves, but then I realize that Teddy’s hands are the ones tugging me; he is dragging me from the slide and all I can see is wood chips scattering under his boots. When we reach a bench on the path, my mother forces me to sit next to her on the burning-cold metal. She smells of smoke and her cigarette is still alight on the broken paving stone.

  Oh my God, it’s horrible! Teddy says.

  She splays her fingers over my eyes. I scrunch my nose up so I can see. Chloe under the slide. A black and brown dog on top of her. Chloe is staring up at the marshmallow sky, but down on the ground her mummy is pulling her one way and the dog is pulling her the other and a man is pulling the dog. Everyone is screaming.

  Do something, Teddy! my mother says.

  Her fingers slide from my face as my daddy runs and leaps over the slide and throws his coffee into the dog’s face. The dog jumps back and the man gets him around the neck and drags him away. Teddy stands with the cup in his hand, dripping. We run over. He helps Chloe’s mum get her up, and they sit on the end of the slide. There are two black holes in Chloe’s face and even when her crying washes away the blood, more wells up out of the holes. We stroke the mummy’s arm, but we don’t touch Chloe.

  Later, when the ambulance slams its doors and drives away across the thawed grass, we go back to the cold bench and hug. Thank God, she says, it wasn’t Jo-Jo Sparrow; she thanks God again and again, and I wonder why she doesn’t thank Teddy—he was the one who saved Chloe from that dog.

  Amanda had never heard Ed tell a story about a dog. Maybe it was just a writing exercise . . . something for English class. The seconds on the timer landed with the sting of sharp slaps designed to rouse her. Outside in the hallway, the lift chimed and she darted from Josie’s room, ready to greet the girl. But the elevator bustled past. The gong sounded a floor above, and Amanda realized that she’d only heard it because the slightest sound echoed through her hollow home, and she faced another evening with only suspicion for company.

  Chapter 13

  The electric peal of a kingfisher signaled Amanda’s early-morning presence on the balcony, the first time she’d stepped through the glass door since finding Awmi’s body. She wrinkled her nose at the garbage smell that had seeped through the apartment overnight, as rancid as the mood that pervaded her home. When Josie had sneaked in late the previous night, she refused to offer any explanation for her whereabouts, saying she would discuss the suspension with her father—if he deigned to return her calls. Amanda cursed Ed; what after-hours activity in Tokyo had sucked him in this time?

  Amanda was determined to clear up the mess contaminating her household, starting with the garbage smell. But Josie entered the kitchen and Amanda watched from outside the girl’s nimble movements, her fastidious way of laying out cutlery and arranging breakfast into a bowl: a layer of M&M’s hidden beneath healthy fruit, yogurt, and honey. Her eyes flicked up and locked onto Amanda’s, widening to see her stepmother on the balcony. She recovered quickly, gathering her breakfast onto a tray, making to leave. Amanda stepped into the kitchen and closed the door on the smell.

  “Can we eat together, Josie? I’d like to clear the air.”

  “The air stinks.”

  “It’s coming from out there.” Amanda nodded to the balcony. “I’m on it.”

  Josie grunted, but slid her tray onto the counter and her behind onto a stool.

  Amanda tipped the dregs of Awmi’s homemade muesli into a bowl and added milk.

  “Did you manage to speak to your father last night?”

  Josie skimmed banana into her mouth and shook her head. Amanda crunched on nuts. Once upon a time, he jumped through hoops to avoid his working week spilling over into the weekend. And yet here they were on a Saturday morning, one man down.

  “Do you mind me asking where you went yesterday after you were told to come home from school?”

  “Central Library. Downtown.” Josie’s spoon clattered as she reached for her phone, jabbing at the screen while she spoke. “I can prove it. I have a check-in at the Starbucks next door and the books are in my room—”

  “You don’t need to prove it. But when your father is traveling, I’m responsible—”

  She put the phone down on the counter. “So you can report back to him.”

  “So I can protect you.”

  “From what?” Josie threw her hands open.

  From yourself. From your father. Amanda stirred her muesli to mush. But let’s go with from the dark web. “Mr. Milne couldn’t tell me much detail about your forum. Except the name—Sexteen—which does sound provocative.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t even know how to access the site.”

  “The school computers are blocked from the dark web—for good reason.”

  Josie’s spoon screeched against the bottom of her bowl. “What good reason is there for censorship? School is dominated by the thought police. And then I come home to the Taliban.”

  The exchange reminded Amanda of the first weeks after she moved in with Ed, when Josie unleashed histrionic tirades on a daily basis. Ed had responded to the melodrama with indulgent smiles or teasing, which only infuriated the teenager, an anger she laid down like a layer of fat for the cold winter that raged between the two females. Eventually, things seemed to thaw. But then, as now, Josie’s mood could change with the unpredictability of the wind. She got up and blasted her bowl clean under the tap.

  “I did it for Willow, if you must know. Everyone at school is shit-scared of messing up. We know how much the parents have spent on our education. We’ve been given everything on a plate, but—” Josie let the crockery drop onto the drainer.

  “You’re under pressure, I get that. But how does this forum help?”

  “You know what Willow said? ‘I’m ready to cut myself.’ The forum was a place to blow off steam while remaining invisible.”

  “It was a mistake to put it on the dark web—”

  “It was a mistake to think adults have the requisite technical sk
ills to appreciate that the dark web offers anonymity. That’s the whole point.”

  “But you only drew more attention to yourself. Couldn’t you have given people fake names?”

  “Fake names. Yeah, genius.” Josie made eye contact with Amanda as she moved toward the door, giggling as though her stepmother was an amusing child. “I’ll see what Dad thinks. When he surfaces. And FYI: I’m going to the library again. I’ll check in on Facebook so you can track me.”

  I could track you on Find My iPhone if I wanted to; I’m no Luddite. But remembering Josie’s previous comment about knowing when to stop talking, Amanda let her go. In any case, she didn’t know how to ask about the scribble-of-a-girl blog and its puzzling countdown without revealing that she’d stolen Josie’s journal and rooted through her bin. She’d have to confront that little mystery another time.

  After stacking the dishwasher, Amanda returned to the balcony to tackle the smell. She peered over the balustrade into the muggy air. A cobalt kingfisher flitted through rain trees that never wilted. They were as stoic as the trailing spouses who insisted this city was a marvel, despite the heat. A wonderful place to raise children. Once Amanda had some, maybe she’d acclimatize.

  She opened the rubbish chute to a belch of sticky air. Rancid, but not strong enough to account for the stench that circulated the whole apartment. She cracked the door of Awmi’s room, and her throat closed up as though someone had grabbed it. Two bulging black sacks sat inside. She let the door swing wide and turned away to gulp air as thick as molasses.

  The bags must have been there since Awmi last emptied the kitchen bins. Why the condo cleaners had left them, she didn’t understand; they’d probably assumed a new helper would arrive right away and deal with them. After five days in tropical temperatures, the trash could almost walk itself to the dumpster. One bag sat in a mucous puddle. The other looked dry, so she decided to carry that one onto the balcony to tackle first. She opened the sack and receipts from Ed’s credit card tumbled onto the tiles along with reams of tissues used to blot her red lipstick, images of her mouth printed over and over again in a dumb ring of shock. For a moment, she watched the slips blow about the floor.

  Does this man belong to you?

  She sat down and gathered the receipts into a pile between her outstretched legs. Taxis, meals, currency exchanges. For the first time in weeks, she had an insight into his working day. He used to write his itinerary on the family calendar. Now: What’s the point when a flight might change at the last minute? It was true that he often switched flights, but it was also . . . convenient. Furtive, even.

  Josie’s blog came to mind. Maybe Ed had forgotten the incident with the dog, though it clearly made an impression on his daughter: “my earliest memory,” she wrote. But Amanda hardly recognized the man Josie described. Of course, when two people meet in their thirties, there is history. The past is unveiled in snippets, a radio broadcast of your life constantly playing in the background; sometimes you tune in and pay close attention to an intriguing segment, but mostly your focus is required in the here and now. For the first time in three years—with their intimacy breaking up like a bad signal—Amanda was all ears.

  She got to work. Via taxi chits, she followed Ed from Sentosa Island to Changi Airport, across the South China Sea to the Philippines. He’d withdrawn a modest amount of pesos at an ATM in downtown Manila and then bought a solitary lunch of a BLT and an avocado smoothie. Back at the hotel, he’d purchased the Economist. She scrunched this evidence of Ed’s unimpeachable behavior into a tight ball and tossed it down the chute.

  What was she doing? Snooping around because of some dingy photo posted by a pissed-up expat. It was certainly true that Ed was traveling more (a nasty voice in her head chipped in: Does he relish the freedom?) and he brings too many presents (guilty conscience?), but there could be a perfectly simple explanation for the condoms in his travel bag (oh, come on!). Real evidence, not just her gut instinct, would be useful . . .

  Arranging the receipts chronologically, she pursued Ed around the globe, and soon she had a trail of question marks. It started in Manila, a few hours after the BLT. In the hotel bar: beers and a Cosmopolitan. A drinks bill from Kuala Lumpur included a vodka and lime. In Zurich, an Aperol Spritz. Ed drank Bloody Marys, beer, wine, whisky—sometimes in that order.

  So who’d ordered the girlie drinks?

  Amanda went through the whole sack, collecting five instances of Ed buying drinks for women in hotel bars. She laid them onto the tiles between her feet, photographing the offending checks with her phone. The images blurred, lost to a haze of tears, like Ed’s features when they kissed. Too close to see him clearly.

  She had to find out more about this stranger who stood at the epicenter of a perfect storm of other women. Josie’s blog would show her the kind of man he had once been. But while Amanda waited for the past to be revealed, she needed to focus on the present. And evidence. Hard evidence. The travel receipts tumbled down the chute, her husband’s trash murmuring on its way to the incinerator.

  Chapter 14

  The revelry of the bars along Boat Quay struck Camille as a kind of mass hysteria. Each raised toast, each swell of laughter, each friend welcomed with bear hugs and air kisses pounded her chest like an oncoming wave, grinding her down to a lonely grain of sand, one insignificant fragment among the millions. Her fingers pinched the skin between her eyes. A walk had done nothing to relieve her headache, but at least it got her out of the apartment, away from the brand-new filing cabinet that she’d spent the day buying and then filling with documents about her parents. She wondered what Collin was doing with his Saturday night, and what level of exasperation he might reach if she told him how she’d spent hers. At the crest of a bridge above pewter-colored water, she found a calm spot and pulled out her phone: still no reply from Edward Bonham.

  “Hello, Camille.”

  A voice behind her: Josh. Out of context—dressed in running gear, his shirt marked with a heart of perspiration—he seemed like a different person, his own younger brother, maybe. Camille almost introduced herself. But as the moment passed, she dropped her phone deep inside her pocket and hoped her freckles would hide her flush as well. He apologized for being sweaty and she managed to joke that those might be the most commonly uttered words in Singapore.

  “Waiting to hear from a friend?” he said. Josh didn’t miss much.

  “Just taking advantage of a cool evening.”

  “I managed to squeeze in 10K before the rain. But I need to keep walking or I’ll seize up like the Tin Man.”

  They dropped down onto the promenade, heading away from the hustle. A catamaran bustled through the slick water beyond the mouth of the Singapore River, distorted party music and garish lights churning in its wake.

  “My dad would have called that a ‘cattle-maran,’” she said.

  “A sailor, wasn’t he?” Her boss knew the basics of her family history from her background checks. Though Camille wondered how much more he might know, given the proximity of the Foreign Office to the Secret Service, the very reason she’d gone for the job in the first place.

  “He ran a yacht charter.”

  “Nice life.”

  “He said you had to be a saint or a schmuck. And Mum said she was a saint and a schmuck because she was the one who mucked the boat out on turnaround day.”

  Josh stopped at a drinks stall to buy calamansi juice and handed one to Camille. The tart flavor of lime took her right back to Tanglin Green. They strolled on, and Josh left a stillness between them that she wanted to jump into with a splash.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents since I got back to Singapore.”

  “You know what they say: neurons that fire together wire together.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I read it in a magazine on a plane. If I remember the article correctly, when you repeat an experience over and over, the brain triggers the same neurons each time until they’re permanently wired together. So i
f your mother makes you cocoa each night, after a while the smell of cocoa makes you sleepy. Or if you practice your golf swing, the moves become instinctive. Or if you return to the place where you grew up after being away for a long time, the sights and sounds and smells fire neurons that are hardwired to memories.”

  Camille finished her juice with an ungraceful slurp of the straw. “My neurons don’t fire or wire. I don’t remember much at all.”

  “There’s a theory that we store everything. Forgetting is simply an information retrieval issue. It’s in there somewhere. After all, you can ride a bike, can’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can tie your shoelaces?”

  “I can.”

  “And who taught you that?”

  “My parents. Or more likely our maid, when my parents were on their . . . assignments.”

  “And you remember your father’s sayings.”

  Camille was impressed by Josh’s willingness to speak about her parents. People weren’t usually so comfortable. They tended to think on it more than she did, as though it were a scar on her face that she forgot but they could see. What she’d endured was indefinable to them, not grief and yet—realistically—not hope. It was a lonely limbo that daunted some people, an evil twin who scared away outsiders. But maybe Josh was older, wiser, bolder.

  “But those skills—the cycling and shoelaces—have been reinforced since I was ten; they’ve taken on a life of their own. How can I find memories of my childhood when there’s been no one to tend the fire between neurons over the years? Maybe the connections can fizzle out?”

  “Good point. The article didn’t tell me that. Your experience is somewhat unique.”

  They reached a dessert stall, and Camille realized that she’d skipped dinner. Sticky rice wrapped in a pyramid of pandan leaf called to her. They found a bench, and she pulled her parcel apart to get a fragrant mouthful of sugared coconut.