Run Away

by Laura Salters

  Kayla nodded, unsure what to say. She pressed her lips together to prevent any more silly responses from spilling out, then realized it made her look slightly insane and quickly slackened them again.

  “It looks like the Thais have done a fairly good job of covering all the bases, but let’s start from the beginning, shall we?” He looked up at her for the first time. There was no intensity behind his eyes.

  “Okay,” said Kayla meekly. Stop looking so bloody guilty, Finch. You didn’t do it. Stop acting like you did.

  A strange silence. Kayla waited for him to ask a question. He seemed off, like half his brain was in another room, another police station. Another country.

  “So,” he said, coughing into the back of his hand. “Talk me through the events of the afternoon of June seventeenth.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as though trying to rub some life back into them.

  It seemed like a decade ago. Kayla strained to remember how the day had started. “Well, we woke up at around eleven-­thirty A.M. We’d had a lot to drink the night before—­”

  Shepherd started gesturing vaguely. Kayla thought he might flag up the fact they’d been drinking—­could that mean anything?—­but instead he said, “We can skip the morning. Mr. Kingfisher was reported missing at, uh, just before seven in the evening? Let’s start at six.”

  She frowned. Wouldn’t he want to know about their exact movements that day? Wouldn’t it help them to retrace Sam’s footsteps? “Okay . . . if you like. So at around six, I was with Sam down by the lake. We had a lake near our villa,” she added.

  “So you were the last person to see Sam alive?” Shepherd asked.

  “Uh, yeah. I was.” Kayla paused, waiting for him to comment on the way that looked: bad. He didn’t. “So we were by the lake. We were talking about . . .” She gulped. She couldn’t tell the truth, but she certainly couldn’t lie. Not to a police officer. “ . . . about the last few months,” she finished vaguely.

  He nodded. No further questions. He gestured to continue.

  Wouldn’t he want to know if Sam seemed on edge? If he had mentioned the drugs? If there was a sense of fear?

  Kayla cleared her throat. “Sam went inside at around twenty past six, and my friend Russia—­I mean, Minya—­came out to join me by the lake.”

  “And that’s your alibi.”

  “Yes,” Kayla replied, caught off guard by his bluntness. “That’s my alibi. I was with Minya when Sam went missing.”

  He nodded again. “Ms. Pavlova corroborated this statement. Okay. Carry on.”

  “We smoked and chatted for a while. Mainly about how strange Sam had been acting . . .” She paused, but Shepherd didn’t visibly react. “ . . . until I headed inside to find him. That’s when I discovered all the blood.”

  “So you were the last person to see him alive, and the person who realized he was missing?”

  “Right.” Jeez, when you say it like that . . . it’s a wonder I’m not locked up.

  Shepherd stared at another page in his file. A file all about Sam. Kayla wondered what it’d be like to read it. To see all the cold, hard facts laid out before her. Images of blood splatters, DNA, footprints. Timelines. Evidence. The thought made her stomach turn, but a small part of her wanted to see it.

  “Were you aware that Mr. Kingfisher was in debt?”

  Kayla flinched, not anticipating the change of conversational pace. “No. But like I mentioned, he had been acting strangely.”

  “Strangely in the way that a person in a lot of drug debt would?” He seemed to emphasize the word drug.

  Kayla shrugged. “It’s hard to identify what kind of strange until you look back in hindsight.”

  “You have hindsight now. Would you say that’s what it was?” he pressed.

  Uneasiness crept over her. Was he trying to put words in her mouth? “Maybe . . .”

  “Right, right.” Something about Shepherd’s tone didn’t sit right with her. Was it boredom? Apathy?

  She pushed on. “It was more like . . . anger. Like he was angry with all of us. With the world.”

  “With you?”

  “With me.”

  With everything.

  WHEN KAYLA GOT back to the house, she felt a little deflated. Empty. Even Shepherd, the guy who was meant to be leading the investigation on UK soil, hadn’t seemed all that invested in Sam’s case. After and twenty minutes of lackluster debriefing, he’d let her go. His questions had seemed vague and disjointed. His eyes betrayed his exhaustion—­his desire to be anywhere but in that room, talking to her.

  She’d expected—­hoped, maybe—­to meet someone as desperate to find Sam as she was. Okay, so maybe he already had all the detailed notes he needed from her interviews in Phuket. Or maybe he thought finding Sam wasn’t possible. Maybe he thought finding him would just mean finding a beaten body. The Thais could do that.

  Maybe he just didn’t care.

  She slung her handbag—­a knitted, rainbow-­colored hobo bag she’d bought in Bangkok—­onto the breakfast bar. It clashed horribly with everything in the sleek kitchen, which made her love it even more.

  She looked around the room. In the middle of the oversized oak dining table stood a big glass vase holding cream-­colored lilies, which had bloomed a ­couple of days ago and were now a little droopy. The chrome tap dripped water every few seconds, the sound of fat droplets hitting the sink echoing around the silent kitchen. Her breakfast bowl was still abandoned on the counter above the dishwasher—­opening the door and putting it in had seemed like too much effort—­and the TV remotes were strewn across the breakfast bar from when she’d angrily punched the off buttons that morning.

  Nobody had been here since she’d left. Kayla swallowed down the lump rising in her throat—­the hard knot of loneliness and grief she’d been desperately trying to bury—­and grabbed the kettle, filling it too full with water from the dripping tap. She plonked it on the stove. Coffee would help. Coffee always helps.

  On autopilot, she clattered around with expensive mugs and the secret stash of instant coffee she’d hidden in the back of the cupboard. Her dad abhorred her preference for cheap coffee (“We have a thousand-­pound espresso machine and you choose that crap every time!”), which, again, made her like it even more. Some teenagers rebelled with drugs and tattoos—­she chain-­drank Nescafé Gold Blend.

  After spooning granules into the biggest mug she could find, she leaned back against the counter, the ridge digging into the bottom of her spine. The water in the kettle was just starting to whir and bubble, wisps of steam pouring from the spout. The scent of freshly cut grass and lawn-­mower fuel drifted through the open window, and a few patches of sunlight were beginning to break through the fleecy clouds. It was an ordinary June day.

  And yet the normality of the day felt suffocating. How dare I live through these blissfully average days when my brother is dead and my best friend is gone? The sheer absurdity of the idea pierced her chest. How can the world keep turning as if nothing has happened when everything, everything, has changed? How can I be making coffee and smelling freshly cut grass and feeling the warmth of the early summer sun when so much blood has been shed?

  Time kept ticking relentlessly forward.

  Her throat felt thick and her lungs tight. She cranked the window open even farther, struggling to gulp in enough fresh air. Her limbs were heavy and her stomach was hollow, hollowed out by grief and longing, longing for everything to be back to normal. There was a ringing in her ears—­or was it the kettle whistling?—­and she was being crushed, crushed by the weight of a depression so dense there was no way to escape. She slid to the floor.

  With her legs twisted awkwardly and her head tilted backward and resting on the cupboard, Kayla breathed deeply, laboriously, trying to escape the helplessness enveloping her. They’re gone. They’re never coming back. I’ll never see the
m again. Never. Her shoulders crumpled and she writhed with gasping sobs.

  When can I wake up? When can I wake up from this nightmare?

  When can I go back to my real life?

  The kettle kept whistling. The tap kept dripping. The world kept spinning.

  The room stayed empty.

  Chapter 8

  April 15, Thailand

  IT WAS HOT.

  Though not an especially deep or descriptive sentiment, it was the only one Kayla could focus on: it was hot. There was nothing else. The heat seeped into every orifice, every pore in her body. If ever there was an apt time to use the adjective “stifling,” it was now. It stifled movement, it stifled thoughts, it stifled feelings. Which, in all fairness, was rather nice. If only temporary.

  “Jesus. What is this? What actually is this heat?” Even Dave’s usual shrieks and splutters had been dulled to a murmur by the oppressive temperature. Every sentence was half yawn, half incoherent muttering.

  “I feel like I’m trapped under a hot air vent,” Russia mumbled. “You know when you walk into the supermarket and just outside there’s a vent that hurls baking hot air at your face, but it’s all right cause it only lasts a second? Yeah. That. Except I can’t escape it.” With as much energy as she could muster, she fanned her face with the intricately painted fan she’d bought from a stall on Khao San Road. Two of the flimsy wooden toothpicks holding it together had already snapped. Like most of the group, it was on its last legs. She discarded it with a sigh, letting it drop onto the patchy grass next to her.

  It was mid-­April, and two weeks of intense partying and adventuring in the hottest time of the year had started to take its toll. They’d soaked up the dynamic party scene of Bangkok—­Ralph and Thomas had enjoyed the “massage parlors” in particular—­explored Lampang’s enchanted ruins by bike, eaten fried bugs at the Sukhothai night market, and taken a canal boat trip that resulted in most of its hungover passengers hurling over the side into the water. Kayla could hardly believe they’d only been here two weeks. It felt like these ­people, these near strangers, were the only friends she’d ever had. It was relentless, sure, with no alone time. But that’s exactly what she’d been looking for when she booked the trip. No time to think meant no time to sink into the deep depression that was looming on her horizon.

  Today was the last day of the Songkran Festival and, incidentally, their last night staying on Khao San Road before traveling to Kanchanaburi for the next leg of their trip. Songkran marked the Thai new year, and their adopted home street had been transformed into a flurry of flags and festivities.

  One of her favorite Songkran traditions—­in no small part due to the climate—­was the mammoth water fight that took place, with officials and visitors alike roaming the streets and drenching each other with full containers, water pistols, and water bombs. Khao San Road sang with a chorus of unfaltering laughter, almost like birdsong in perfect harmony. There was no time for sadness here.

  The practical problems? The sheer volume of water had rinsed their skin of sun cream, leaving the group burnt, uncomfortable, and irritable. Sam, Kayla, Russia, Dave, and Bling were currently seeking respite in Lumphini Park. They were laying on a small grassy bank next to a green-­tinted lake, a grand old tree providing them with some delicious shade. The intoxicating scent of pink lotus flowers clung to the air. The faint sound of traffic was distant.

  Bling lay with her eyes closed, her hands behind her head and her eyelids twitching as she succumbed to the wave of fatigue enveloping her. Sunstroke, really, though she’d insisted otherwise. Bling did not show weakness. Russia had her head in Dave’s lap, grabbing clusters of grass with her hands and wrenching them out of the soil to throw over Bling’s face like confetti. Sam sat with his feet on the ground and his arms resting on his upright knees, running his hands through his fluffy brown hair and facing the ground.

  Kayla kept trying to catch his eye, then wondering why she did.

  “So are we going out tonight?” Russia asked.

  “Nah, Russia, I thought we’d just stay in,” Kayla replied. “Catch up on some sleep. It’s not like it’s our last night in Bangkok, or anything.”

  Russia laughed. “You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”

  “Well, I try to cater for my audience.”

  Russia threw a handful of grass at her, though it didn’t even come close to reaching Kayla. Instead it blew back into Dave’s face, who shook violently and sent Russia rolling down the bank. Sam snorted with laughter and said, “You two are so woefully idiotic that I sort of admire you.”

  Dave nodded sincerely. “Thanks, mate. ’Preciate it.”

  FAST FORWARD EIGHT hours and it’d just be Kayla and Sam in the park. They’d left the others in the bar. Dave and Russia were sucking face in one of the booths, Ralph was hitting on an unimpressed Bling, and everyone else was in the middle of the dance floor. Sam had turned to her and said, “I miss the park. Want to go back one last time before we leave?” He didn’t quite have a twinkle in his eye—­the alcohol had stolen off with such sharpness. But his eyes were definitely glazed over with something more than intoxication.

  After one more shot of tequila for luck, they’d hailed a cab to the park entrance and returned to the exact same spot they’d been earlier that day. Just as they’d sat down and gazed awkwardly at each other, not knowing quite what to say, Kayla’s phone rang in her pocket. She picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Kayla? Kaaaay-­la?”

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Kayla! It’s your nan! Can you hear me? I don’t think my phone works abroad.”

  “But you aren’t abroad, Nan. I am.” Kayla turned to shoot a disapproving glare at Sam, who was sniggering drunkenly. She was the only one who was allowed to laugh at her nan.

  “Right you are, poppet. Are you having a nice time on your holidays?”

  Kayla concentrated very hard on not slurring. “Yes. Wonderful. Hot. Nice.”

  “Good, that’s good. I’ve not been up to much. Today I went for afternoon tea with Muriel. You know Muriel, she was married to your great-­uncle Bill before the nasty business with his secretary. Anyway, I had a really lovely scone. A fruit one, it was lovely, and a pot of tea. One of those new flavors—­peppermint, I think it was—­then I went for a walk with your mother.” A pause. She waited for Kayla to ask the question. She didn’t. “She’s not doing well, Kayla love. She misses your brother, and now that you’re not here . . .”

  Kayla looked away from Sam. The park was so quiet, she knew he could hear exactly what her nan was saying, though whether he was sober enough to make sense of it was another matter. “Now isn’t a great time, actually, Nan, we’re about to go out, erm, volunteering. Building schools and that. Can we talk another time?” A little white lie wouldn’t hurt. Her eighty-­five-­year-­old grandmother had no concept of time zones, after all. Plus she really wasn’t in the mood for another guilt trip. She’d been subjected to enough of those before she left. Her family couldn’t believe how selfish she was being, jetting off during such a tumultuous time.

  “All right love. Well I hope you’re looking after yourself out there?”

  “I am.” Don’t cry.

  “I’m glad. I love you, sweetheart. I can’t wait for you to come home!”

  “Bye, Nan. Love you too.” Kayla hung up and peered upward through her eyelids to stop the tears prickling behind her pupils. She worried that Sam would ask her what was wrong, then realized he was on the phone too. He was having significantly more trouble forming full words than whoever was on the other end.

  “Okay . . . but mate . . . th’park . . . wha . . . ?” The recipient lost patience and seemed to hang up, leaving Sam frowning at the mobile in his hand. “That was Bling. She’s mad.”

  “What? Why is she mad?”

  “I dunno. Probably something to do with noodles
.” Sam rolled over onto his front and smiled dopily. “You’re all right, you.”

  “Not bad yourself.”

  Sam rested his head on the grass. A few moments of silence passed, but it wasn’t awkward. Just peaceful. “Kayla?”

  “Sam?”

  He paused, as if uncertain whether to continue. “What happened to your brother?”

  She considered getting angry and defensive, but decided against it. She felt too sad after talking to her nan. Besides, she’d have to tell Sam eventually, if they were ever to—­ She stopped the thought before it ended. She reached into the patchwork bum bag she’d taken to using every day and pulled out a squashed packet of cigarettes. Russia had gotten her into the bad habit. She lit it slowly.

  Blowing the smoke away from Sam’s face—­as a sort-­of med student, he deplored the very concept—­she tapped the cigarette free of its loose ash and sighed. “He killed himself.”

  Sam didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, only peeling them open when he’d processed the information. He looked up at her, though had difficulty meeting her eyes. “I’m so sorry. That must . . . that must have sucked. It must still suck.”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Kayla finished her cigarette, and once she flicked it away into the pond—­Sorry, fish—­Sam began tracing infinity signs on the palm of her hand with his fingertip. It was more absentminded comfort than anything of metaphorical significance, but the touch of his skin felt nice.

  “His name was Gabe. He . . . he was my best friend. I know it’s probably really generic to say that in retrospect. I can hardly say I hated him, can I? But it’s true. We weren’t like siblings who tolerated each other’s existence just because we had to. We just . . . liked each other. He was hilarious, so funny. And so sweet.” Kayla bit down hard on her bottom lip. “I miss him, you know?”