by Jo Furniss
“So you grew up at Tanglin Green,” Josh said. “I’ve noticed that you often walk that way.”
She nodded, relieved that the glutinous rice gave her no chance to elaborate. She didn’t want to blurt out that her most recent memories of that place involved Edward Bonham.
“It seems you have good associations with your childhood home. You’re drawn back there. You must have been happy.”
Camille used the chewing time to organize her thoughts. “There’s a thin line,” she said, “between nostalgia and mawkishness.” She told Josh that her brother had accused her of wallowing. And then she segued from unreliable memories to hard facts—the police report into her parents’ disappearance. A week after they delivered her to school in the UK and flew back to Singapore, her parents took a taxi from Tanglin Green. They left before dawn at 5:00 a.m., which the guard noted in a logbook. But he failed to record the license plate of the taxi, which was never traced, or the destination, which was never established. Lani told the police that the couple left in a hurry, but their schedule was always unpredictable: she used the word secretive. The case remained unsolved, and Lani was sent back to the Philippines. Camille never saw her parents or Lani or her home again.
Sharing the story made her feel light, giddy almost, and she took another bite of sticky rice, craving its density to fill the space that had opened up. Neon lights picked out the muscles of Josh’s face as he turned morsels of coconut in his mouth. He didn’t patronize or pity or pooh-pooh her belief that she might one day explain her parents’ disappearance. When they walked on along the riverside, Camille felt she had left something indefinable behind, like a balloon tied to the back of a chair.
A storm was blowing in from the sea, firecrackers of lightning amid the clouds. Beads of windblown spray advanced up Camille’s bare arm.
“Does Singapore feel like home?” Weekend stubble softened Josh’s jawline and the edge of his formality.
“In a way. But I’ve done my reading too; detailed memory is an active process. You have to kind of . . . lay down a store of memories. Harvest them.”
“Like putting apples in the cellar for the winter.”
That made her smile. “Exactly. I recall moments, places, images. But I feel like I’m visiting film locations. One of those old cine films, you know when it gets to the end and it’s still whirring but the screen’s gone black?”
She noticed his arm swinging in the space between them, his fingers curled up as though cradling a mouse.
“But it would be good to know what happened. Just to stop it whirring in my head.” She saw his fist close. The first rain fell, and they jogged to reach the cover of a communal area under an overpass where buskers played and lovers mooned. Camille waved her hand at the water coming under heavy fire from the sky. “I love Singapore rain.”
Josh was quiet for a long time. Camille knew that they lived on opposite sides of the river. This was the obvious place to part. They turned to face each other.
“I have a child back in England,” Josh said. “A son from a brief relationship. He’s almost ten. What you said made me wonder”—he looked over the water and then back at her—“if I do enough to lay down memories. I’m so far away.”
She looked into Josh’s eyes, the color of an old bronze statue. “Does Singapore feel like home to you?” she asked.
“I love it here, but I would happily move back to the UK if I thought he needed me . . .” He shrugged. “He’s happy. She married and had more kids. They’re a family. By the time I worked out what was important, the ship had sailed.”
A blast of K-pop from a nearby bar seemed to taunt him with its exhaustingly upbeat energy.
“We could stop for a drink,” Camille said in a rush.
Josh indicated the lack of pockets in his running gear. “I blew my emergency dollars on lime juice.”
“I’ll shout you a beer,” she said.
The party catamaran heaved into view, pulsing with dirty beats, rocking beneath glistening girls in bikinis. Josh glanced it over. “I enjoyed our stroll down memory lane, but I should do my stretches.”
“I wouldn’t want you to stiffen up.” She felt her freckles burn as she realized what she’d said. “Like the Tin Man. After your run.” Stop talking, just stop talking. She saw him suppress a smile, trying to spare her blushes, though it was too late for that, and she stepped backward into the shadows thrown by the bridge.
“Good night, Camille. See you Monday.”
She set off to retrace her steps, wishing she could backtrack on that last comment too; what a thing to say to your boss! He was still on the promenade, arms braced on a handrail, stretching his calves. The existence of a son was news to Camille, but somehow she wasn’t surprised that he had his own intrigue. As he jogged off, she thought again that Josh was a dark horse. The kind of person who kept secrets, personal and official. And if he’d known Edward Bonham, maybe once the neurons fired he’d remember something about her parents too.
Chapter 15
When Amanda returned from a sunset run to find Ed’s travel bag in the hallway, her stomach shriveled. Voices came from behind Josie’s door. She wiped pearls of sweat from her hairline, as her trainers made silent progress over the marble.
“So move the forum to the normal web. Whatever you call it—the webby web. Then it’ll all blow over.” Ed’s voice sounded tight, his levity squeezed out through frustration. The door handle dipped; he must be standing on the other side, poised to leave.
Keen to get into the shower after Tokyo.
Josie’s response was indistinct.
Ed again: “The surface web. Put it there. Problem solved.” The door opened a crack, and Amanda backed up.
“If it’s no big deal, why ground me? That’s antiquated; I can Skype whoever I want.”
“I’m grounding you tonight because I want to take my wife out for a meal and I need to know where you are.” The door swung wide, and Amanda retreated almost to the lift.
“You know where I am.” Josie’s wail tore the air. “I’m here, waiting for you.” Her door closed. Amanda crept forward again, but the voices inside were too low to hear. When the handle dipped again, Amanda rushed past into her bathroom.
They met in the bedroom ten minutes later, both immaculate from the shower. He suggested an impromptu date night and Amanda agreed; not that she was in the mood for romance, but—she realized with a spark of shock—going out seemed less alarming than sitting with him in an apartment that echoed with the rustle of receipts going down the chute. How long until their gossiping voices filled her head and she couldn’t resist asking him, Who ordered a Cosmopolitan in Manila, Ed, an Aperol in Zurich? Questions that could tear her world apart.
So she put on a dress and makeup, papering over the cracks for another night. An hour later, they were beside the Singapore River. Ed turned his back on the restaurant, facing the steps that led down to the promenade. He seemed mesmerized by the water that ran as smooth and slick as fleeing rats. When a waiter arrived with the cocktail menu, Amanda took it.
“Do you fancy a Cosmopolitan?” she asked.
“No.”
“Aperol?”
“God, no. Bloody Mary, no celery.”
“And a gin and tonic for me,” she said to the waiter, snapping the leather cover closed. “Don’t you like Aperol?”
“Tastes of mothballs. Why?”
She was saved from answering by the arrival of a huge man who took the steps from the promenade two at a time. His arm was decorated by a tribal tattoo of an octopus, its tentacles bulging around his bicep and tapering to the wrist. He shielded himself behind a pinboard that jangled with key rings.
“I’m sorry, gentleman, lady, a moment of your time.” He spat the words without making eye contact, as though he might gag if he didn’t let them out. “I must be honest, I am an ex-convict, sir. I served my time and want to improve.”
Ed fingered a key ring—decorated with a yellow smiley face—and tapped a handw
ritten sign saying $10. “Price is criminal, mate.”
The grinning key rings clattered as the guy shifted from foot to foot, his octopus pulsating when he snatched up the pinboard. Before he could speak again, the waiter arrived and the hawker vanished into the crowd below. The waiter muttered as he set down their glasses. Ed slopped the celery onto his tray and chinked the glass against Amanda’s.
“To my favorite wife.”
“To my faithful husband.”
She held Ed’s blue gaze over the rim.
“You all right?” Ed spoke once he was a quarter of the way down the glass.
“Yep.”
“You seem a bit—”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Glad we cleared that up. Look, here’s a welcome distraction.” He pointed the base of his glass down the steps to the riverside.
A crowd had formed around a street performer. He stood in a dramatic pose side-on to the audience, red cloak raised to cover his face. He held the position for several minutes until the crowd settled and music crackled from a speaker. Then he sprang around, face tilted up to reveal a green grimacing mask. The audience rippled.
“I love this,” said Ed.
Amanda glanced at his rapt face. “What is it?”
“Bian Lian. Chinese opera.”
The dancer lunged at the crowd, swirling the cape. He mock charged the audience, until the soundtrack reached a crescendo and he stopped, a hand glanced across his face, and—Amanda gasped in time with the crowd—the mask flipped from green to red.
Again, the dancer reached toward onlookers and then—with a flick of the chin—his mask flipped red to black. As the music pounded on, his masks scrolled through emotions. From anger, to fury, to death, and back to light. So many changing faces. When the red cloak sailed off his shoulders and he faced the audience full-on, the music built to a climax and his hand made one last sweep. The dancer’s own smiling face was revealed before a final snap of his chin left the audience staring at a bony death mask.
Ed slapped one palm on the table, sending their cutlery and glasses dancing. “‘The Man with Fifteen Faces.’ Haven’t seen that for years.”
“How did he do it?”
“Sleight of hand. They pass the skills down from father to son. It’s a secret art.”
“It’s dark, though. That death mask—”
“Opera, isn’t it? Star-crossed lovers.” Ed reached a hand across the table, and the tenderness of his palm made her want to throw off her own cloak and confront him, force them back to normality—
“Hello!”
Over his shoulder, Amanda saw a woman on the promenade waving her arms like she was bringing in an aircraft. Ed frowned, and Amanda hissed through her smile that it was Willow’s mother, Erin, from upstairs. She bounced toward them, her husband a few steps behind. “Fancy running into you two. We’re not even supposed to be here. Arnault fucked up the Uber booking, and we’re so late we lost our table.”
“You told me it was the other side of the river, Erin.”
“Let’s leave the domestic argument at home with the helper. Shit, I’ve said the wrong thing already!”
Arnault shook hands with Ed and came toward Amanda with his arms out. “My wife means to say we’re sorry to hear what happened.” His lips caught the corner of hers and peeled away. “She’s rabid for details.”
“I am not!” But as the subject was hanging over the table, Erin decided to make a centerpiece of it. “Willow tells me there’s an investigation? The case is going to be featured in a media campaign?”
Her barely concealed glee stuck in Amanda’s craw.
“Won’t happen,” Ed said.
“How can you be so sure?” Erin voiced a question that Amanda wanted to ask herself.
“Let me ask you something.” Ed turned a wineglass in his fingers. “Why is it we can sit here, in the tropics, and not get a single mosquito bite? Not one fly on our food? No bugs swarming the lanterns?”
“Pest control,” said Arnault.
Ed bowed his head in agreement. “If someone makes a pest of themselves, we control them.”
Amanda looked at him, startled. A cannonade rumbled through her bones, and she glanced up to see the peaks of the downtown skyscrapers swamped in storm clouds.
“What about Josie?” Erin was saying. “I heard about her suspension. You’ve had it all going on.”
Arnault rolled his eyes from Ed to Amanda. “Thinks she’s Oprah.”
“After raising three teenagers, I know a little bit about how girls think.” Erin closed one eye, like a photographer trying to get something huge into shot. She preached while Ed knocked back his drink. When Arnault’s phone glowed in his palm, Erin stopped abruptly, glaring at her husband as he took the call to the river.
Out of embarrassment, Amanda invited her to join them. Ed’s eyebrows shot up as quickly as Erin snatched a spare chair. By the time her husband returned, she had drained a cocktail and ordered wine. Arnault held a closed fist across the table toward his wife: “Don’t say I never bring you anything.” A key ring clattered into her palm. “That was New York. I have to go to the office.”
“Now?” Erin held the smiley face aloft and it swung on its chain. There was no tell in her poker face as Arnault made a swift exit. Ed also got up, saying, “Little boys’ room,” and leaned down to kiss Amanda’s cheek, the grip of his fingernails on her wrist as tight as his voice: “Get rid of her”—the pinch got harder—“before I wring her neck.” He set off and she saw a row of notches indented in her skin.
Amanda tuned out Erin’s monologue and rubbed the marks left by Ed’s fingernails. He had a temper but had never once turned physical. Yes, she had seen his irritation building, but—her fingertips traced upside-down smiles—he’d shown no flicker of this level of anger. It gave her the sense of being inside a magician’s box with an up-close view of the trickery, his emotional sleight of hand, while she waited to be sawed in half.
He returned one step ahead of the waiter, who laid down a burrata the size of a pert breast. Amanda cut the cheese and watched it deflate, figuring she had nothing more to lose on this disastrous evening; Erin could surely be relied upon to show off her superior knowledge of the risks that girls face online. Maybe enough to put a seed in Ed’s mind that Josie needed more help than just a pep talk and grounding for a night.
“Erin,” Amanda said. “Could I ask your advice?”
Erin ducked forward as though presenting herself for a medal. Amanda ignored Ed’s look.
“Does Willow use the dark web?” Amanda said.
Erin picked up the topic without breaking stride. “Willow’s very tech-savvy”—she’s certainly Tinder-savvy, thought Amanda—“but she wouldn’t go onto the dark web.”
“She didn’t visit Josie’s site?”
“Josie showed it to her. Said it was a discussion forum for kids struggling with exams. Of course, Willow has a tutor.”
Amanda reached to top up Erin’s wine.
“You have to remember”—Erin’s eyelids fluttered as she continued—“they’re the digital generation. Here’s a funny story: Willow follows a girl on Instagram who posts pictures of owls. Just owls. I asked what she would do if this girl wanted to meet in person. And you know what Willow said?” Erin swirled her glass, and the wine circled like her punch line. “‘Mummy! It’s probably an obese man in a tracksuit.’” Erin widened her eyes at Amanda over the rim of the glass.
“Josie’s business is a family matter,” Ed said tightly.
“I’m trying to help,” Amanda said. “I know she’s upset about Awmi, but—”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living in Asia”—Erin dug her fingers into her fringe as though straightening a halo—“don’t let your children grow attached to the help.”
Sod it, Amanda thought. She got to her feet and set a course for the ladies’ room. Let Ed deal with his daughter and her best friend’s mother. She dodged waiters until she reached the bathroom, where
the door closed with a soft suck that inhaled the din. In the sudden hush, Amanda’s ears rang with a heartbeat as unruly as the Singapore River.
She went into a stall and sat on the lid. Why was she the only one worried by Josie’s need to hide—on the dark web, on her secret blog? She navigated to the site on her phone: the timer showed twelve days. Twelve days until what?
Ed was Janus-faced: overprotective and careless at the same time. She recalled how her own mother had been erratic, her father distracted by affairs—business or otherwise. Who did Josie have on her side? Luckily, Amanda’s skin had been cured by a lifetime of her mother’s vinegar. It was thick enough to endure as many knock-backs as Josie needed to dole out before she could let down her defenses.
She tapped the timer and entered the password. The previous blog post had been replaced by a new pencil drawing: a man’s hand reaching out. Amanda touched his palm and text filled the screen.
In the future: Twelve Days Until D-Day
In the past: Thirteen Days That Made Me Me
Post 2 of 13: Summer Daze
When we get to the park, the ice cream van is driving away but stops to give me a cone. My mother lays down our red tartan picnic blanket, and Chloe is there on the playground, watching my every lick. Then I’m told to go play for a while, because Daddy will arrive “in his own sweet time.” I like this phrase even though my mother says it through hard lips; I’m looking forward to sweet time with Teddy.
From the water pipes comes a burp like the sound of bath taps when you first turn them on. I grab my boat, beating Chloe to the top of the chute because, like always, she starts crying. Chloe is spoiled because of her face where the dog bit her—my mother says that all the time to Teddy, but I’m not allowed to repeat it because it’s not kind.
She comes up and lifts me into the chute. Underwater, our hands are gray and flat. Up high now, I see Teddy coming over the grass with his tennis bag across his chest and I think of a knight with his shield. But he walks to Chloe’s mummy. His fingers slide over her shoulder like the cold water running over our hands. Chloe’s mummy pops her head up just how our rabbit does. She looks up at us and then Teddy looks up at us. He waves the hand that was on her shoulder and jogs to the top of the water chute. His hair is wet and smells of orange when he hugs me.