by Jill Childs
Finally, exhausted, I closed down my laptop and opened my current notebook. I tried to write about what had happened this evening. What I thought I’d seen at the party and Dominic’s reaction when I confronted him about it on the way home. Then, finally, the puzzle of the missing emails.
As I finished and slid it back into the drawer, I thought of the story I’d read just that morning to Lucy. Hansel and Gretel. One of her favourites. I thought of the children, led deeper and deeper into the dark forest to be abandoned there but finding ways of using their wits, for as long as they could, to find their way safely home again – until the birds ate their carefully laid trail of crumbs and they were truly lost.
It happened by accident. People get careless, I suppose. They get away with something for a long time and they think they always will. Or perhaps they just thought that my mind was so shot, my memory so devastated, that what they did to me no longer mattered. However hurt I might be, all they had to do was wait a few months and I’d forget. Life without consequences. Was that it?
Dominic had a promising lead in Singapore, a wealthy businessman who might be in the market for a new investment analyst. Dominic was confident he might be able to land it. If he did, it could be the breakthrough he’d longed for.
He started heading to Singapore for weekends to court him on the golf course or over lunch. At first, it was only once in a while. Then, as their relationship progressed and he started to sense his client might be on the brink of signing, he was all over it, flying off every other weekend and just being there in the hope of catching him.
I tried not to mind too much. We missed him, Lucy and I, but I had help at home and I grew used to evenings alone in the flat, watching TV or curling up on the sofa and reading.
I’d started again on my library of battered Agatha Christie paperbacks. I couldn’t remember the ones I’d bought in recent years. It was like opening them for the first time, five or six months after I’d last read them. I was surprised all over again by the plot, the clues, the murderer.
That particular weekend, it was hot and sultry. I remember picking out a new summer dress – a fresh white cotton with splashy pink roses – and a jacket to protect me from the indoor chill of air conditioners. The amah packed a picnic and took Lucy to Stanley to play on the beach there and eat ice-cream. She was meeting amah friends of hers there, of course, but I didn’t mind as long as Lucy enjoyed herself.
I took a taxi down to Central to visit a hotel spa there and have my legs waxed and eye-brows shaped and a quick facial, a ritual to smarten myself up for the week ahead. Afterwards, I decided not to go straight back home but to take a stroll along the harbour front instead.
A slight breeze, tinged with diesel and rotting rubbish, blew in from the water. Street hawkers lined the street. Old men perched on low stools beside piles of newspapers and magazines. A man with a missing forearm, his cotton sleeve pinned back from the elbow, sat by a tray of cigarettes and lighters and sweets. On the corner, a refrigerated cart on wheels offered bottles of cold water and juice and slowly melting ice-cream.
The pavement beneath my feet glistened as if it too were sweating. The sounds of the Star Ferry punctuated it all – a low horn blast, the crash of the wooden gangway, rattling chains. And behind me, teeming in multi-lanes between the shopping malls and the waterfront hotels, ran traffic, always traffic. Buses and trams and cars. The air shimmered with heat and exhaust fumes.
To escape, I took the steps down into the MTR and was hit at once by the subway’s own particular smell, of metal and subterranean dust and chilled air. I took the train up to Mong Kok, one of the city’s most congested districts but home to a rather good Indonesian restaurant. We’d eaten there just the week before and I had a craving for another dish of their gado-gado with its crunchy peanut sauce and hard-boiled eggs and fried tofu.
I almost regretted it when I emerged at street level and saw the crush. The street was thick with shoppers, a sea of local Chinese people of all ages, families dragging along young children or carrying them proudly on their shoulders, bent elderly women weighed down by bags of local fruit and vegetables.
I struggled through, overwhelmed by the heat and press of bodies all around me, feeling suddenly very white and foreign and alone. Smells reached for me from the stalls on the far edge of the pavement. The slightly rancid scent of re-used cooking oil, frying snacks. The powdery smell of ginger and arrowroot leaking out from herbal medicine shops. The stink of fresh fish.
I was almost at the turnoff for the restaurant when I caught sight of a western man ahead of me in the crowd. Dominic? My stomach twisted. Impossible. He was in Singapore.
I blinked and tried to keep my eyes on the head bobbing some distance away, protruding above the Chinese shoppers all around him. I must be wrong. It was just a tourist, drawn to Mong Kok by the street stalls and cheaper hotels. I struggled to keep pace, craning to get a better look, bumping into the passers-by streaming towards me.
He turned off the main road into Argyle Street and I hurried to the corner to pursue him, fearing he’d already be gone. But no, there he was, more visible now in this less-congested road.
It was Dominic. I was right. He was wearing the shirt I’d picked up from the laundry for him just two days ago, the one with the white collar and light blue stripe. The tan cotton slacks the amah ironed and folded on Thursday night and set out for him to pack.
He surged ahead with long confident strides, heading up the steps of the shining Langham Place complex, with its floors of offices and shopping centres, and was swallowed in an instant by its doors.
I stood there, stunned, staring after him, a stone in the stream, gently buffeted by the people flowing round me as they hurried past. A flush of heat and sickness hit me and, for a moment, I thought I might faint.
I moved through the crowd to stand by a dress shop there. The mannequins in the shop window wore evening gowns with sparkling sequins, red and black. I pretended to look them over, taking in their blank faces and western features. All I could see was my memory of Dominic, striding into the complex with such purpose.
I took out my phone and dialled his number. It rang out, then went to voicemail.
‘Hi, darling. Just checking in to see how you are. Hope work’s going well. It’s terribly muggy here. Any better in Singapore? Love you.’
I stared at the screen until it went dark, then headed home.
I sat dizzily on the cold metal seat of the MTR, sliding back and forth with the rocking train. Maybe I’d misremembered? Maybe he was at a conference this weekend. There was a five-star hotel at Langham Place. I’d had dinner there with Becca, Kate and Celia and the rest of the girls, drank cocktails by the rooftop swimming pool. Maybe Singapore was next weekend and he’d forgotten to explain.
I was in the taxi back to Mid-Levels when my phone pinged. A text.
* * *
Just as muggy here, I’m afraid. Classic Singapore. Hope all well. Kiss to Lucy. D.
* * *
Kiss to Lucy. I stared dismally at the screen. Nothing then for me.
When I got home, I opened my journal and wrote down everything that had happened.
* * *
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I imagined Dominic in clean, crumpled five-star sheets in a King-sized bed inside the Mong Kok hotel. A bottle of champagne, empty now, on the side, with two used glasses. The remains of room service. The curtains open to the night view, reaching across the residential blocks of Mong Kok, the broad arterial roads, lined with neon, towards the distant harbour beyond.
I turned onto my front and buried my face in the pillow. The air conditioner rattled and buzzed but although the air was chilled, my body was hot. The empty space beside me, Dominic’s place, seemed vast. It’s about what’s best for Lucy now, he’d said.
But what had I done? When had it stopped being about us?
He’d lied so quickly, so easily. I thought of all the other weekends in the last few m
onths when he’d been away on business and come home tired and withdrawn. Too much pressure, I’d thought. Too much travel. Where had he really been?
I got up and padded through to the spare bedroom and sat at my desk. I lifted out the pile of journals from the drawer and laid them out, started to flick through them. They were my memory banks now. I trusted them. That was my handwriting, there on the page. My familiar turn of phrase. But the words inside, the days they described, were as unfamiliar to me as the journal of a complete stranger.
I was gathering them together to put them away again when something struck me. They should be identical, the same ring-bound notebooks I always used, bought from the same stationary shop. But they seemed different. I set two next to each other on the top of the desk and crouched to eye level. One looked thicker than the other. That wasn’t right. They should have the same number of pages.
I opened up the thinner one. Inside, a tiny scrap of paper clung to the wire binding. I opened it up and examined it, then checked the last sentence on one page and the first on the next. They didn’t flow. Something was missing. Had I torn the missing pages out? Or had someone else?
I scooped them together and took them through to the bedroom, pulled down an old suitcase from the narrow cupboard along the top of the wardrobe and packed them inside, then padlocked it shut.
I lay in bed for some time longer, staring at the wardrobe. What had been torn out? What had happened in the past that someone so wanted me to forget and to stay forgotten that they would go to the trouble of reading back through my journals and tampering them, destroying parts of my only route back into the past?
* * *
It preyed on me. The next day, I struggled to concentrate. Worry gnawed at me with sharp teeth. By the afternoon, I started to feel go mad if I didn’t talk it over with someone. Maybe I was overthinking it all, being paranoid. I hoped so. But as I walked round the flat, played with Lucy, tried to lose myself in painting as the daylight mellowed and began to fade, all I could see was Dominic in bed with her. With Fi. Good fun.
In the evening, I sent a broke down and sent an SOS to my closest friends, asking if they could meet me the next day. I needed to set it out for them and hear what they had to say. Maybe one of them knew something. Something they’d been reluctant to tell me.
We chose one of our old haunts, the lounge of one of Hong Kong’s grand old hotels, down by the harbour, all doormen and hushed, cooled interiors. I arrived early and settled into a seat by the window, overlooking the street below.
Outside, it was another world. The bright glare of the pavements, the heat and bustle. In here, the only sounds were the distant strains of piped piano music and the gentle tickle of teaspoons in china cups and saucers.
I ordered a pot of coffee. My hand shook as I poured it and then reached for the complimentary plate of floury biscuits. I nibbled a corner, then set the biscuit in my saucer, suddenly sick with nerves. I didn’t trust Fi. I didn’t trust Dominic. I couldn’t even trust my own mind. I was alone and I was frightened.
Kate and Becca arrived together, bustling up the carpeted steps, all energy, looking this way and that with quick, pecking movements until they caught sight of me and hurried across, smiles on their lips.
‘Caroline! So sorry!’
‘Traffic was a nightmare.’
Becca air-kissed me, engulfing me in rich, spicy perfume, then set down a tan leather handbag with designer monogram and settled herself in the chair across from mine. Kate plonked herself between us. A waiter appeared at once and Kate ordered a fresh juice, Becca a coffee.
Becca asked, ‘Is Celia coming?’
‘She said she’d try but she might be a bit late,’ Kate replied. ‘Yoga.’
Becca checked her watch. ‘I can’t stay long. Sorry. I’ve got tennis at eleven-thirty at the Club. You should come along, Caroline. We don’t see enough of you.’
The two of them prattled on for a while and I let it wash over me, chipping in now and then with exclamations and questions. I was glad of them. This was my tribe. We’d known each other a long time. Becca, from a family as wealthy as mine, whose early marriage had already ended in divorce. Kate, whose sister was the year below us in school, came from an old diplomatic family who took pride in working hard and earning what they had. Her parents had retired back to England and we often joked that Kate needed to find a wealthy bachelor to support her, as her sister had already done.
They were busy people and I knew how much effort they’d made to come.
‘Are you here for Christmas?’ Becca rattled on, animated. ‘I’m going to Sydney to see Rachel and the girls. Just booked my ticket. I know it’s a way off, but I can’t wait. Rachel’s booking us seats at the Opera House. You should take Lucy. She’d love Australia.’
I tried to imagine Lucy, still only two years old and just starting to talk, running across wild, open spaces in Australia, breathing clean air, living in a world where the people around her spoke English as their first language, somewhere she could belong.
Kate sipped her juice, her dark bob cascading forwards across her cheek. Her eyes were kind as they weighed me up.
‘So,’ she said, lowering her voice and signalling a change of gear. ‘What’s up, Caro?’
Becca paused too and leaned in closer.
I took a deep breath. ‘It’s Dom. I might be wrong. But I think something going on.’
They both looked shocked. That made me feel better at once.
‘Dom?’ Becca shook her head. ‘He adores you, Caroline.’
Kate put her hand on Becca’s wrist. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Tell us what’s worrying you.’
I gave them a rundown. Seeing him in Mong Kok when he was supposed to be in Singapore. The way Fi flirted with him at the party. The fact he hadn’t come right out and denied it when I’d challenged him that night, on the way home.
I didn’t say anything about my lost memories or the missing emails or pages torn out of my notebooks. That sounded crazy, even to me. And besides, I couldn’t be certain I hadn’t done it myself and forgotten.
In the silence after I’d finished pouring it all out, Becca’s eyes flickered to Kate’s face for a fraction of a second, then came straight back to mine. It was a minute gesture, but I caught it. I knew these women.
‘What?’
Becca looked down at her immaculate nails. ‘I shouldn’t say.’
‘What?’
Becca’s eyes slid sideways again to Kate’s. ‘Fi’s got a bit of a reputation, that’s all.’ She shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I’ve never heard a word about her and Dominic, I promise you. I’d have told you.’ She pursed her lips. ‘But if anything has been going on, I’d blame her, not him. You know?’
I turned to Kate. ‘What do you think?’
She lifted the glass to her lips and drank off the final inch of juice, then set down the glass.
‘I haven’t heard a thing about Dominic and Fi. I’d have said. You know that. But…’ she twisted a chunky ring on her finger, ‘Becca’s right. Fi has got form.’
I blew out my cheeks, feeling suddenly very sick.
‘What do I do? What if something is going on?’
‘You don’t know that,’ Becca said. ‘And even if it were – and I’m not saying it is – it’ll blow over, you know? Dominic’s crazy about you and Lucy.’
‘What about the Mong Kok thing?’
Becca pulled a face. ‘You might have been wrong. It’s possible, isn’t it? Couldn’t it have been some other tall, dark Westerner?’
I shook my head. I wasn’t convinced.
Kate looked thoughtful. ‘You’ve been talking for a while about Lucy’s education, haven’t you? About maybe taking her back to England for school. Why don’t you just do that?’
‘No!’ Becca, checking her watch, signalled to the waiter for the bill. ‘She can’t leave us!’
Kate shrugged. ‘I’m just thinking. This isn’t a great place to bring up kids, not anymore. Lots of people are movi
ng back. Dominic could re-invent himself in London. Either way, whether you’re right about Fi or not, it does make sense.’
I nodded, thinking it over.
‘Ladies! Sorry I’m late!’ Celia came dashing through the lobby towards us, her yoga bag bouncing from her shoulder. ‘Have I missed anything?’
Of the three of us, she was the one we knew least. Becca dropped a five-hundred Hong Kong dollar note onto the waiter’s tray. ‘My treat.’ She got to her feet to leave and turned to Celia. ‘Not a lot. Only that she’s thinking of going back to England!’
‘Oh no! That’s horrible!’
She dropped into a chair and started to chat. I was grateful that Becca had been tactful and not told the full story. Hong Kong thrived on rumours, in the future it would probably be best to keep my suspicions to myself.
As Celia chattered on, about life in London and the things I’d miss in Hong Kong, Kate sat quietly, her eyes thoughtful. She was still considering what I’d said, I could tell.
Later, when Kate made to go, she put a hand on my shoulder and leaned in to kiss my cheek. Her voice was an urgent whisper, so low I only just caught the words, her breath hot on my ear.
‘You might be right,’ she said. ‘Becca wouldn’t say but… well, get him away from Hong Kong. Soon as you can.’
Celia stayed on a little longer, gossiping about the party she’d been to the night before. I was barely listening. I realised how much I’d hoped that Becca and Kate would laugh at my suspicions, tell me how wrong I was.
The bitter taste of coffee rose in my throat. I wanted to go home. I wanted to write down exactly what we’d said, at once, before I forgot. I’d hide it away, under lock and key, in my suitcase. I might be losing my memory, but I wasn’t going mad. Maybe I’d been right all along.