The Trailing Spouse

by Jo Furniss

  Their bodies block the light. I can see their feet. The man’s scuffed shoes face the coach. Hers, in high heels, lift off the ground, scratching against his legs. It doesn’t seem like they’ll notice me, so I crawl out and scoot between the gnarly trunks of the bushes and onto the steps of the taverna, where I find our suitcase and wait for her there.

  The woman pressed between the coach and the waiter is my mummy. But she is not Mummy now. She is wearing high heels and her hair is red from the coach lights. My camera is hanging off the handle of the suitcase. I pick it up and snap a photo—one flash, bing! like the fairies—so I can show Teddy how happy she looks once we get home.

  Chapter 22

  All the way home from the coffee shop, Amanda wondered if Josie’s blog was a confession. A child working through guilt for alerting her father to her mother’s infidelity. Because what then? What did Ed do when he saw his wife in the red light, pressed against another man? She thought of the photo on Josie’s nightstand. Her mother smiling, hair flailing, indifferent to the wind and the fact that she planned to kill herself that very day. Indifferent, Amanda thought, or innocent?

  Everyone—including the authorities—had concluded that her death was a suicide. But what if she looked happy because she was happy? What if she had no plans to die that day?

  The lift arrived at the apartment with a soft chime, a gong sounding through the empty halls of a palace as though trying to wake Sleeping Beauty. Amanda shook her head once as she got out of the elevator, wired from too much coffee.

  In the blood-red kitchen, voices. Female. A stabbing yelp that could be laughter or tears. Ed’s bass reply. Josie’s figure passed the doorway. Someone else was there too—Willow?

  Slipping her shoes off, Amanda tucked them under her arm, then darted down the corridor in the opposite direction, past her Chinese pots. All her secrets. And now she knew that Ed also had hiding places: the helper’s room where she’d found the phone. Could there be more?

  Through ripples of light, past Chairman Mao pixelated in fingernails, she went to Ed’s dressing room. His closet stood open. She got down on her knees and pressed her hands inside each shoe, right into the toes. Then she stood and faced his suits. She went through the pockets, ran her fingers along lapels and hems. Finally, a holdall on the top shelf, his sports bag. She found squash balls, muscle rub, nothing incriminating. She stopped, staring and thinking, until the automatic light went out and she stood in the dark.

  Another night sleeping alongside him, stiff and cold like I’m inside a glass coffin. She went to the doorway, slammed on the light. Hidden behind the door was a short rail to hang dry cleaning for the maid. Ed’s suit crumpled from travel. Amanda ran her hand down the sleeve, feeling heavy winter wool. Not a fabric suited to tropical Singapore. Her fingers slipped into the inside pocket. Nothing. She ran both hands up and down its full length, front and back. She stopped. There was a thin, hard patch somewhere inside the breast.

  She opened the jacket, revealing amber-colored lining. There was a bump the size and shape of a credit card. Fingering the inside pocket, she found a slit in the silk, its edge starting to fray. Inside: a plastic card. She held it in the light and, for a stomach-shrinking moment, thought it was her mother’s key card from the library ship, the one she’d locked in her safety-deposit box. How could that be here? But she turned it and saw a logo. The Pfannenstiel Grand Hotel. Her heart double-thumped.

  Amanda closed the jacket and fastened the buttons. Then she opened them again. How had she found it? Would he know she’d been here? She smoothed the wool, clicked off the light. At the door, she heard voices overlapping in the kitchen, Ed’s bass tone creeping through the apartment like low fog. She held the card by the corners. The Pfannenstiel Grand Hotel. Where the exotic dancer died. But Ed had not stayed there; he had a bill from the neighboring Dolder Grand. So why would he have a key to another hotel? She turned the room card between her fingertips.

  If he’d been involved in a woman’s death, why keep an incriminating item?

  Killers keep trophies, don’t they? Certain types of killers. Serial killers.

  A popping cork jolted her into motion. She moved down the hallway to a tea caddy marked with a double happiness symbol, a traditional wedding gift. She dropped the key card inside. As she turned toward the voices, her vision rippled. Outside the huge windows, the ships were blinking points of light, like fireflies. Fairies.

  The kitchen door slid aside, and Josie marched out. When she saw Amanda, her hand flew to her chest. “You scared the crap out of me!” She recovered and set off toward her room, trailed by a sniveling Willow. “Dad needs you, there’s stuff going down. Willow’s staying tonight. That was so freaky . . .”

  “Amanda?” Ed appeared in the doorway. “Erin is here.” The tone of his voice intended some meaning that Amanda missed. She couldn’t take her eyes from his hand, as cool gray as the metal doorframe it encircled. His index finger was bandaged—presumably from the fire extinguisher—but he tapped it twice, businesslike, on the glass door. “Are you with us? Could use you in here.” He turned away, leaving fingerprints on the brushed steel.

  Erin sat at the counter, her neurotically thin fingers gripping the stem of a wineglass. Ed poured Amanda a drink and handed it to her with a “you’re gonna need this” expression. When he turned to fuss at the sink, she stared at his shoulder blades shifting beneath linen, until Erin’s voice dragged her attention away.

  “It came to a head today. Chuck me out when you need to.”

  When she didn’t attempt to fill Amanda in, Ed wrung the dishcloth. His arms folded over his chest and his shoulders slid to his ears. “Arnault left.”

  Erin’s eyes flashed up. “It was mutual.”

  Amanda slid onto a barstool. She took a sip of wine and held it in a pool on her tongue. If she was careful, she could let it dribble slowly down her throat without even swallowing. She did this several times while Erin was speaking.

  “We’d agreed a while ago to cohabit until Willow finishes her schooling. Another year, and then all three are at university. But he’s filed for divorce. He’s going to fuck me over. He’ll say anything to get me out of Singapore.”

  “How can he get you out of Singapore?” Ed asked.

  Amanda and Erin gave the same involuntary scoff, and the kitchen bristled for a moment as the universe scored an invisible dividing line between the sexes.

  “We trailing spouses live on thin ice, Ed, which cracks a little more each day, like our tired, out-of-date faces.” Erin drained her wine, her profile gleaming as light bounced off Botox-thickened skin.

  Ed raised his eyebrows and his glass.

  “As soon as a divorce is finalized,” Amanda explained, “Arnault could revoke her Dependant’s Pass.” This was a common thread on SOWs. “Then Erin would have thirty days to get a job with an Employment Pass or leave Singapore.”

  “And I’m a trained actress, Ed. A fucking actress. Past forty. How many jobs are open to me, do you think? Executive jobs with an EP?”

  Ed turned his chin from side to side.

  “And the worst-case scenario is Arnault continues to sponsor the children to stay in Singapore but not me. I have to leave, but I can’t take the children home without his permission. Because of the Hague Convention. So, in his ideal world, he gets rid of me, keeps the kids, and probably shacks up with a younger model.” Erin unfolded a tea towel to find an unsullied corner to press to her eyes. “With my luck, he’ll find an actual fucking model.”

  “A lot of models are quite ugly,” said Ed.

  Erin clawed across the counter to reach the bottle. “Says the man with a wife ten years younger than himself. And totally hot.”

  “I’m five years younger!” Amanda protested, but Erin waved the comment away with one hand, sloshing red wine.

  “I’m sure Josie’s mother was relieved to hear that.”

  Ed stepped forward and placed his glass on the counter without making a sound. Amanda watched Erin�
��s eyes flit over Ed’s face, which had set as hard as the surface. Erin pulled herself up in her chair and brushed her hair back. A physical retreat.

  Finally, Ed’s lips softened enough to speak. “Josie’s mother died. When Josie was fourteen. She hates talking about it. I met Amanda shortly afterward. A little too soon for Josie, but that’s how it happened.” He gathered up the empties and took them to the sink. “I think we’ve had enough for tonight.”

  Water crashed into steel as Amanda escorted Erin to the lift. The women waited in the chill stream of air con. Amanda couldn’t select one thing to say from the clamor inside her head, so she focused instead on the scritch scritch of Erin’s fingernails as they clawed the inside of an elbow that was raw with eczema. The rhythm steadied Amanda, and by the time the mirrored doors of the lift slid back, her brain had zeroed in on the thought that bothered her most: Willow.

  Willow shouldn’t be near Ed. Amanda grasped Erin’s elbow, and she staggered slightly. “Take Willow home,” she whispered. The crashing water in the kitchen stopped abruptly, as though the apartment had taken a sharp intake of breath. Erin’s expression moved through several options and settled on conspiracy.

  “Is it Ed? I know he can be . . . inappropriate.”

  “Inappropriate how?” She could feel brittle flakes of eczema under her thumb.

  “He’s chivalrous—until you displease him. Let’s just say it’s a pattern I’ve come to recognize. Someone who functions at the extremes.”

  The photo of Josie’s mother came to mind, and Amanda wondered if her infidelity had sent Ed to the extreme. Or even over the edge.

  “Are you safe, Amanda? Is Josie?” Erin’s voice brought her back; the image replaced by wolfish eyes too close, too hungry, too triumphant.

  “It’s nothing like that!” She managed a half laugh. “I just think you and Willow should be together tonight.”

  Erin scanned Amanda’s face, as though the truth were written between the lines. Interesting, Amanda thought, that she’s chosen to erase her own.

  “I’m upstairs if you need to talk.” Erin marched off to Josie’s room and rapped on the door. “Or if you need somewhere to run.” A moment later she swept past with her daughter. Nothing more was said, and with a soft gong the mirrored doors closed.

  Chapter 23

  Collin held Camille at arm’s length and turned full circle while standing on the bed, showing her via Skype the extent of his new apartment. She cooed over the view of Kowloon Bay but complained that the sofa didn’t look like it folded out to a spare bed.

  “It doesn’t,” said Collin, “and it’s too small even for your short arse.”

  “I’ll sleep in your whirlpool tub.”

  “Funny. You can have the bed. I’ll sleep standing up in the shower.”

  “It’s swanky, though. Great view.”

  “There’s the Aqua Luna.” He held the phone up so she could see the glowing red sails of a wooden junk cutting through the neon-lit waters. “Wave,” he said, and she did. He turned the phone back to himself. “How’s Singapore?”

  “Good. You should visit.”

  “I’ve been loads of times. When are you coming to see me? It’s embarrassing you’ve never been to Hong Kong. How do you keep face in the expat crowd?”

  “I don’t try to. The expat crowd is . . . too tense. Self-satisfied, but at the same time terrified they’ll have the rug pulled. They make me think of ants.”

  “Welcome to my world. When the rug gets pulled, they come running to HR.” Collin shifted position, sending Camille hurtling out the window to the skyline and then back to his face. His hairline had started to recede, and she realized with a jolt that her brother was around the same age their father had been when he first emigrated to Asia.

  “What do you think Mum and Dad would make of us, Col? Sellouts, aren’t we? Corporate meal ticket for you, civil servitude for me.”

  Collin got up off the bed. She watched his chest and heard the click of the kettle being switched on. His face reappeared, lips pursed.

  “What are you on about?” he said.

  “Nothing. I went to Tanglin Green.”

  “Again?”

  “Why not?”

  “Stop wallowing, Cami.”

  In the background, the kettle rumbled to boiling point.

  “I met this bloke,” she said. “He lived in Singapore in the ’90s, and I showed him a photo of Mum and Dad. He said he didn’t recognize them, but I could tell he did.” She raised her voice over Collin’s scoff. “He said, ‘I don’t recall their names.’ Isn’t that a weird way to say it: ‘I don’t recall their names’? Like he wanted me to read between the lines.”

  “A mystery within a mystery.”

  “Right!”

  Collin shook his head and stared out the window, his profile backlit by foreign lights. “I knew this Singapore move was a shit idea. You’re going to start obsessing again, aren’t you?”

  “I can find out what happened to them.”

  “You won’t. And it’ll consume you like it did before. I’m trying so hard to stay dry, but this conversation is enough to drive me to drink.”

  She watched her brother pour boiling water onto instant noodles.

  “Ed picked up on this one thing,” she said. “I told him I’d been to the yacht club, right?”

  “Who the hell is Ed?”

  “The bloke I met.”

  “The weird one?”

  “He’s not weird. He’s a hotshot businessman. Sells private aircraft. Bit of a silver fox.”

  “So you fancy him?”

  “I think he might have been having it off with his helper.”

  “Massive eye roll.”

  “And then she killed herself.”

  “Doesn’t say much for his sexual prowess.”

  “It’s not funny! She was vulnerable.”

  Collin apologized.

  “Just listen, Col. Ed said—”

  “Ed, Ed, Ed!”

  “Stop!” Camille laughed despite herself. “Edward Bonham said it was weird that no one remembered Mum and Dad at the yacht club. That is weird, right? Considering the business they were in?”

  Collin pushed a pair of disposable chopsticks through the plastic wrapper, snapped them apart. “After fifteen years? Not really.”

  “If they’d been well-known, people would remember. It’s a tight-knit community. So what if . . . they weren’t well-known. What if the yacht business was a cover?”

  Collin grunted through his noodles, but Camille plowed on.

  “Today I called the port authority and requested the historical paperwork for their yacht. All the old float plans and outward clearances have been computerized. And I went through the original Interpol paperwork when I got home, and those documents were never included in their file, so either the police didn’t request them or they disregarded them. And this is what I’m thinking: If their yacht didn’t have outward clearances from Singapore, then that’s interesting. Because how can you run a yacht charter without sailing anywhere? But if I find that Mum and Dad did sail from Singapore on the day they disappeared, then I can make the same information request at ports in Malaysia and Thailand and track their route.”

  “You won’t find records at the other ports—”

  “They didn’t sink. It doesn’t make sense. It’s a busy shipping lane. They would have been seen.”

  “Yachts go down fast.”

  “Let’s not discuss that theory again.”

  “It’s not a theory, it’s the only explanation that makes sense. More sense than your ‘espionage’ one. They disappeared. Their yacht disappeared. Unless they sailed all the way to the Bermuda Triangle . . .”

  Camille made a gesture in front of the camera as though she could swipe him off the screen like an unattractive Tinder profile.

  “Cami—”

  “Their business is the key. Which has been my point for years.”

  “When we were kids, we pretended they were spie
s.”

  “Right!”

  “When we were kids, Camille!”

  She watched her brother get up and shrug on a denim jacket.

  “Don’t hang up,” she said.

  “I’m meeting someone.”

  “At midnight?”

  “I got a match. I’m young, footloose, and fancy-free. I can meet people whenever I want”—his eyes loomed large on the screen—“and so can you.” Collin lunged to throw the noodle pot into the trash can, sending her into another spin.

  “Haven’t you wondered why you’re living in a shoebox with a sea view?” she said.

  “What’s your point?”

  “You can’t let them go either.”

  “There’s nothing to let go. They’ve gone. And anyway, what does it matter?”

  “It’s who we are!”

  “No, we are who we are.” Collin went to the window and turned the phone so that her screen filled with dazzling lights. “Look at this city. Look. Every one of those lights is a living thing. Our parents disappeared and, yes, our childhood disappeared with them. And it’s sad that we don’t have a mum to tell us how cute we were and what kind of cake we had on our birthday. But that’s in the past, and here in the present, we’re alive. So get up, Cami, go out”—the phone swung back to his face again, his eyes so much like hers, and his voice softened—“and live a little.”

  There was silence while Camille swallowed something that stuck in her throat like undercooked noodles. Other young people lived for flirtation, dalliances, broken hearts. But having your heart broken—well, that assumed it was intact in the first place.