No, she wouldn’t fall for this man with his infectious smile and confident, yet boyish, charms. No. Definitely not.
‘Well, I could meet you tomorrow at eleven.’ She couldn’t believe the treachery of her own voice. ‘Just for a coffee,’ she quickly added.
He smiled. Not only did his mouth smile, his eyes did as well. His whole face lit up. She just couldn’t prevent herself from smiling with him.
‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘Meet you at the coffee bar up the road?’
‘Yes. Alright,’ she told him. ‘I have to go back to work now.’
‘Thank you, Siswan,’ he said, and gave her a wai. ‘See you tomorrow.’
She gave a wai of her own and turned back to the bar. She felt hot. Her face was flushed. What the hell was she doing? This wasn’t a part of her plan. She shook her mind free. Back to work. There were one or two customers still looking a little shocked. She didn’t want to lose their custom. She smiled and moved towards them.
*****
When Siswan left the bar in the early hours of the morning she walked up the main road to the bank. She used the twenty-four-hour deposit drawer and banked just over sixty thousand. Not bad for one evening. The bar was doing really well. After deducting overheads, her and Mike were splitting almost a million a month between them. Her personal bank account stood at nearly three million. Not bad for a girl who had started out with absolutely nothing.
It wasn’t enough though. Not yet. She reckoned on another two years, maybe three. By then she would have enough. She knew the local attitude of only thinking about today because tomorrow may never come was stupid. What if tomorrow did come? She was planning for hers.
She hailed a motorbike taxi and gave directions to her room. There was no need to use anything other than a motorbike taxi. They were cheap and she wasn’t out to impress anyone.
As she stepped into her small room on the third floor of the apartment block she kicked off her shoes. It wasn’t polite to wear shoes into one’s own home. Even a home as simply furnished as hers. A single room that contained a bed, a chair and table, a wardrobe and a basic dresser with a mirror. She didn’t need anything else and it was extremely cheap.
She took off her clothes and went to the bathroom to shower. Pouring cold water from the large bucket stood in the corner, she washed her body and hair. Drying herself with a white towel she moved across the small room and sat at the dresser. She looked at her reflection in the mirror.
‘You fool,’ she said to herself.
She didn’t know why she had agreed to meet Mirak for a coffee. It was most annoying. The last thing she needed was a man in her life. She used the towel to dry her wet hair. She couldn’t help but think about him. His smile. The way his face lit up. His confident manner. The way he had controlled the farangs fighting in the bar. So confident and yet not so much that he became arrogant. It was most infuriating that she couldn’t yet find anything not to like about him.
She shook her head and allowed her hair to fall across her shoulders. She took a note pad and pen from the small drawer in front of her. A quick line to Ped. Enclose a cheque.
Siswan had kept her promise to her cousin and sent her money each month to take care of her parents. She realised she was a hypocrite. Always telling the girls that their families didn’t deserve any help and yet here she was, sending money home. Just like a bar girl.
Ped had written back a few times thanking her and telling her how her parents were doing. Her father was very ill. Her mother not quite so bad. Siswan guessed her father would not be too long for this world. She hoped he would return as a dog. A dog that would be beaten every day by a cruel master.
The note she wrote this time told Ped to buy a mobile telephone and she included her own telephone number. It would be easier than writing. She wrote out a cheque for twelve thousand and, together with the note, she sealed the envelope. She stood it on its edge by the mirror to remind her to post it before meeting Mirak.
She looked at her image once more. An image she still found difficult to face. No one else saw what she saw. They only saw what was on the surface. A woman. A woman with a pretty face and a pleasant smile. They didn’t see what she saw. The hurt. The pain. The revulsion of what she had been made to do and the things she had made herself do. The condemnation from her own mother.
She turned away and made for her small bed. She switched on the ceiling fan. The breeze it produced was hardly cool but the noise was strangely soothing. She lowered herself to the bed and switched off the light.
Lying in the dark, with the sound of the fan circling above her, she allowed her thoughts to wander. The bar was doing very well. Mike was a good partner and allowed her the freedom she needed to operate. The fight earlier in the evening had been a little unexpected but it had soon been resolved. By Mirak, of all people. He was her only concern.
The charming and confident Mirak had gotten past her defences. She couldn’t understand how it had happened. She sighed in the dark. It had been her in the end. Her that had accepted the offer of coffee. Why? She didn’t know. Didn’t understand her own actions. Why hadn’t she just left it? Let the conversation end? She hadn’t though.
She had deliberately told herself not to accept his invitation. Had turned him down. Had stopped him asking again. And then, when everything was settled, she had suggested meeting tomorrow morning. This morning, she corrected herself. In a few hours time.
‘You fool,’ she berated herself, again.
She didn’t need anyone. Didn’t want anyone. Yet here she was, telling Mike he was like a father to her and arranging to meet Mirak for a coffee. What was happening to her?
It was true about Mike though. He was like the father she had always dreamed of having. Not like a real father at all. He was mild mannered. Polite. Kind in his own way. And, most importantly, he had a conscience. He even felt guilty over the way he lived his life. She wished he was her father. He wouldn’t have beaten her mother. She knew that about him. He wouldn’t beat a woman.
Now Mirak. First Mike and now Mirak. What on earth did she think she was doing? She determined that when they met she would be polite, refuse another date and leave him in no doubt that he wasn’t needed. Wasn’t wanted. Wasn’t welcome. She didn’t need anyone other than herself.
With a shrug and an almost angry pull at the thin sheet that covered her, Siswan turned onto her side and closed her eyes tight. Better to think of something else. Better to go to sleep and deal with Mirak when she awoke. There was little point in thinking about it now. She allowed her mind to drift to other matters.
She would need to order more bar stools. Would need to make sure that the bar was cleaned from top to bottom again. She’d check with the cleaners after she’d had some sleep. After she’d met with Mirak, she told herself.
She was going around in circles! Everything seemed to be leading back to him. To his smile. The way his eyes lit up. His confident and easy manner.
‘Oh stop it!’ she said aloud in the dark.
She concentrated on something else. Anything else. Something that would take his image away from the front of her mind. She remembered the workhouse. The first real bed she had since leaving the village. She couldn’t call the hospital bed a real bed. It wasn’t as though she had really slept in it. Not like the workhouse bed. She’d slept in that one sure enough. Slept from exhaustion. A dreamless sleep that did little to ease the aches and pains in her tired body. Not for the first few weeks anyway.
Chapter 6
When Siswan eventually found the house that Song had mentioned, she was tired and dizzy from dodging the people that strolled along the busy pavements. So many people. Farangs wandered along looking into the local stalls that sold everything their owners could think of to entice the rich foreigners to spend money. More locals rushed back and forth calling to the white skinned
westerners.
‘Massage?’
‘Tuk-Tuk?’
‘Watch, very cheap watch?’
‘Suit? You want good suit?’
She couldn’t take it all in. There was too much to understand. So much she didn’t know. Restaurants and cafes lined the streets. Coffee shops, bars, ice cream parlours. She didn’t have a clue. Couldn’t comprehend what was going on. She had never seen anything like it.
Arriving at the front of the house she looked up at its worn façade. Paint peeled off the wooden frames of the windows. The concrete exterior looked worn and dirty. It was in a back street. Away from the throngs of holiday makers that wandered the main road.
The steps leading up to the front door were almost covered in pairs of old, worn, rubber flip flops. She slid her feet out of her own and left them on the bottom step. Her feet were dirty. She felt ashamed. The rest of her body felt just as stained.
She walked up the steps and into the darkened foyer. An old wooden desk stood off to one side with an equally old woman sat behind it. On the desk was a book. Its binding was worn and faded but Siswan could make out that it had once been red. The old woman eyed her as she approached.
‘Hello,’ Siswan said, and gave a wai.
‘What’s your name?’ the old woman croaked.
There was no other welcome. No wai. Not even a smile. Siswan considered herself too lowly to complain. It didn’t matter anyway. This was her last hope. She needed a bed, a shower, something to eat.
‘Bee,’ she said.
‘Identity card?’ The old woman raised an eyebrow.
‘I don’t have one,’ Siswan answered, in all honesty.
‘Where are you from?’
Siswan lied again, giving the old woman the name of a village they had passed through on their way to the coast.
‘You will have to share. Sign here.’ The old woman turned the worn book towards her and opened the pages to the most recent. ‘You can write, can’t you?’
‘Yes. I can write. And read,’ Siswan told her as she inserted her false name on the first free line.
‘Most of you can’t,’ the old woman said, as she turned the book towards her and checked what Siswan had written.
Siswan didn’t answer or make a comment. There didn’t seem to be any need. The old woman didn’t appear to need any.
‘What’s the matter with your arm?’
‘I cut it working in the fields,’ Siswan told her.
She didn’t ask any further questions. She’d seen enough girls walk in here with bandages or scars. They all said they cut themselves working in the fields.
‘Room eleven.’ She nodded towards the back of the foyer where Siswan could make out a flight of stairs. ‘Back here at seven tomorrow morning to start work.’
‘What will I be doing?’ Siswan asked.
‘Laundry,’ the old woman told her.
Siswan started towards the stairs. Her small bundle of clothes seemed heavy as they swung from her arm. Before she reached the first step she stopped and turned.
‘What is your name?’ she asked the back of the old woman.
‘Ma.’ She didn’t turn. Just said the word.
‘Thank you, Ma,’ Siswan said and, once again, made for the stairs.
The room was small. There was a single, dim light bulb hanging by a twisted wire from the ceiling. There was no window. The walls were bare concrete. No paint. No colour. The air hung heavy and smelled musty. Two beds, one on each side of the room, contained single, foam-filled mattresses. Nothing else. No sheets. No pillows.
There was a rail along one wall. Two tee shirts and a pair of worn shorts hung from it. To the left an opening, that had once been filled with a door, led to a small bathroom. A hole in the floor, surrounded by a white porcelain rim, sufficed as the toilet. A large black dustbin, filled with water, contained a small plastic yellow bowl. The combination served as a shower and toilet cistern. It was enough.
Siswan chose the bed nearest the door. Opened her bundle on it. Hung up her shirts and spare shorts on the rail beside the existing clothing. She stripped off and stepped into the bathroom. Washed herself from head to feet. The cold water made her feel more awake. Cooler. She found what remained of a bar of soap on the floor beside the large bucket. She used it to wash herself and her hair. It felt good to get clean again.
She removed the grubby bandage from her arm and looked, for the first time, at the scar that ran down to her wrist. Black stitches held the wound closed. The flesh on either side looked red and swollen. She counted eighteen stitches.
After carefully washing her arm, and making sure she rinsed it thoroughly with the cold water, she washed the bandage and hung it over the rail. The thin gauze wouldn’t take long to dry in this heat, she decided.
She dried herself, using one of her spare tee shirts. She was very careful to dry the stitches in her arm. Then she washed the tee shirt and the other clothes she had been wearing. She hung the wet items in the bathroom to drip dry.
By the time she had finished her laundry, the bandage was dry enough to replace. She wound it, as best she could, around her arm and tied it off at the wrist. It would do to protect the wound from dirt.
Finally, when she felt that she was ready for the following day, she pulled a clean shirt over her head to act as a nightgown and allowed herself to collapse onto the single bare mattress of her chosen bed. Within minutes she was fast asleep.
It seemed only a short time before she was shaken rudely awake. She was still too tired to do anything about it. A hand shook her shoulder, a voice spoke.
‘You’re in my bed.’
Siswan rolled over and looked into the face of an older girl. Her thoughts returned to the old man in the park. He had said much the same thing. The eyes staring at her were cold and hard. There was no kindness within them.
‘I said, you’re in my bed!’ the girl shouted at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Siswan mumbled sleepily. ‘I didn’t know.’
She struggled to her feet and crossed the small space to fall onto the other bed. It sagged badly in the middle and she realised why the girl had been so insistent that she move. She rolled about trying to get comfortable. In the end, despite the awkward position the bed forced her to take up, she fell asleep once more.
When she awoke in the early hours of the morning, her body ached from her uncomfortable sleeping position. She stretched her limbs as best she could before trying to sit up. She didn’t know what time it was but she guessed it was early. She was so used to waking early that she would have surprised herself more than anyone to have overslept.
She slowly crossed to turn on the small light. Her body still felt stiff and her back hurt as she walked the few paces. She turned on the light and saw, for the first time, her roommates’ prostrate body lying prone on her bed. She lay naked and didn’t move. The only sign that she was even alive was the slight raising of her chest as she breathed.
Siswan took a few seconds to look at the girl. She didn’t look quite so old as she had the previous night. Maybe sixteen or seventeen. Her breasts were fully developed and hung slightly to either side of her body. The dark patch of her pubic hair formed a tangled triangle as it descended between her legs. She carried more weight than Siswan. Slightly chubby, Siswan thought.
The girl’s long black hair was strewn around her head and framed her face as she lay on the old mattress. One hand lay across her stomach and Siswan noted the broken fingernails and weather beaten skin. Her hands looked as though they worked hard.
Suddenly, the girl moved. A turn of her body. A small groan. The light no doubt disturbing her slumber. Siswan moved at once. She didn’t want to be caught staring at the girl. She moved towards the bathroom. She would take another shower, get dressed and go downstairs to see what the day
would bring.
When she entered the bathroom she found that all her clothes had been taken down from their various hanging places and thrown onto the floor next to the toilet hole. With a silent sigh she started to pick them up, only to notice the strong smell of urine emanating from them. Siswan stopped picking the clothes up. Why would a girl she didn’t know do something like that? What kind of girl, what kind of person, would be so unkind? An anger began to swell inside her. She had felt this anger before. The time she had finally dealt with Bak. Now she felt it again. A slow anger. An anger that could be used.
She picked up a shirt from the top of the pile. Twisted it until it wouldn’t turn anymore. Folded it, and twisted again. When she had finished she held a hardened club of cloth that was soaked in urine. She returned to the small bedroom.
The girl had turned fully onto her stomach. Her bare buttocks rose into the air. Siswan could make out small, pale stretch marks on her skin. Without thinking too much about what she was doing she allowed the anger within her to well up. Allowed it to control her actions. Her feelings. She brought the homemade club down as hard as she possibly could across the girl’s buttocks.
There was a moment of hesitation. A moment before what had happened penetrated the mind of the sleeping girl. A second or two passed before the intense pain she felt made her fully awake. During that time Siswan watched in compassionless fascination as the stretch marks on the girl’s bottom disappeared beneath the redness that rose from deep within the skin.
With a suddenness that made Siswan take a step back the girl awoke, turned and screamed all in one go. She twitched off the bed as though her backside was on fire.
Within moments she understood what had happened and looked at Siswan with evil intent written in her eyes. She started up from the bed quickly. So quickly it almost took Siswan by surprise. The girl’s arms reached out towards her and her fingers sought to scratch. Siswan moved too fast.
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