High Pressure

by Sam Blake

  It had been such crap timing. Not that she could have chosen a good time to get mugged, it had to be said, but as she’d arrived in Thailand she’d had that moment of revelation she’d been waiting for – waiting the whole trip for. She hadn’t really known if it was the type of thing that actually happened to people outside her imagination, but she’d kept hoping. And when it had come, it hadn’t been romantic or epic; it had been more of a mental switch, a sort of knowing. And in the end it had actually happened on the overnight bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, which wasn’t exactly a cinematic setting, but somehow that hadn’t mattered.

  Sitting there on the top deck, she’d suddenly felt that she finally knew who she was.

  It had been past midnight. Outside, the night air had been hot and sultry, but sitting in the middle of the top deck in her shorts and T-shirt, she’d been chilled by the air conditioning, had pulled the fleece blanket the bus company had provided around her and curled up, tipping the reclining seat backwards. The ink-black sky had been full of stars and in that moment, half asleep and full of rice from the on-board meal, she’d suddenly felt whole, grounded, as if she was anchored to the planet and had found her place.

  It had been a strange moment, a quiet feeling of knowing rather than a blinding flash of realisation, a moment when she suddenly felt that she was ready to think about the next step, about taking her place in Empress College She’d loved Bangkok, had soaked up the history and culture, the food and the people with new eyes, had been a tourist for a few days before she went on to the job in the hostel in Krabi. She’d got her tattoo in Bangkok too – she’d found harmony and it was a moment that had needed to be marked. She headed on to Krabi, wishing she could stay longer in Bangkok. The busy seaside town was totally different from the Thai capital, full of tourists and backpackers … and then, that night, she’d gone out for a drink with some Australian girls, leaving early because she had to get up to get the breakfasts the next morning.

  And the last thing she remembered was pressure on her neck. She’d come to at the side of the dirt road and hadn’t been able to stop crying.

  When she’d got back to the hostel, the only thing she’d wanted was a hug. For the first time in just over a year she’d really needed to hear a familiar voice, to have a cup of tea. To feel safe.

  She’d changed the return flight she’d originally booked with the money she’d saved working evenings and weekends in the pub near home, had got the next available seat out of Bangkok for London. Despite their differences, right then she’d needed her big sister. She was family, and the anchor point Brioni knew she needed to recalibrate.

  Brioni adjusted her stance as the double-decker bus lurched again and pulled her phone out from the back pocket of her denim shorts to check her messages. She’d been in London for four days and her suitcase was still missing in action, the airport claiming it had been delivered to the luggage belt. Apparently ‘bag swaps’ happened hundreds of times every day in airports, and she just had to wait to see if whoever had accidentally taken hers returned it.

  Like she had to wait for her sister to get in touch.

  But the WhatsApp messages she’d sent Mar still hadn’t been answered – not since the first one last Sunday, the day after she’d been attacked. The same with Facebook. Brioni bit her lip, the muscles in her toned arms holding her steady as the bus pulled up at a red light. Mar’s first reply had been a bit weird, hadn’t sounded like her at all:

  Hope you enjoyed travelling. Really busy at the moment, catch up soon.

  Brioni hadn’t said she’d been attacked, just that she was coming to London and looking forward to seeing her. But Brioni had been away for just over a year – how busy did you need to be not to be able to see your little sister after she’d been away for a year? Brioni had said as much in her next message, trying at the same time to sound positive and upbeat and not at all hurt. But how long did ‘busy’ last when you didn’t have a job?

  Mar hadn’t even sent a sad face emoji when Brioni had messaged her about the lost suitcase.

  Whoever had it was in for a treat, though – all her clothes needed a good wash.

  The bus lurched again and Brioni steadied herself, checking the time on her phone. Her shift started at two. Today she was serving drinks at a reception in – ironically – the Irish embassy. Siobhan, her boss, had asked her specifically; the catering company she ran did all sorts of events, but she was keen to do more at the embassy and the more Irish staff she had on board, the better.

  Brioni was good with that. All the time she’d been travelling, and even now in London, when she heard an Irish accent it was like a bond. You said hello and asked where they were from and it wouldn’t take you long to find someone you knew in common. That was the way Ireland worked, the way Irish people worked; you kept chatting till you found the connection, because it was always there. That was how she’d got the job – almost straight off the plane – through the Irish expat mafia. She’d reached out to the friends she’d met travelling: a guy called Malachi she’d met in India. With the exchange rate from Thai bhat to sterling absolute shite, no suitcase and still no word from Mar, he had been a godsend.

  Brioni sighed, emotion rolling over her. Did Mar really not want to see her? They were totally different, that was for sure, but they’d been close growing up, had moments when they’d laughed till they cried. There had always been a bit of distance between them – maybe the eight-year age gap was the biggest problem – and Brioni had always felt that, compared to Mar, she’d never had the right words, that she’d never be as engaging and as beautiful. Mar had straight teeth and thick blonde hair. She could talk to anyone. She was like a gazelle, beautiful and sleek and perfect. Despite trying to hide it, Brioni had been the fawn whose legs were too long and wouldn’t work, who staggered when she needed to run, and who said all the wrong things. To make it all worse, awkwardness and lack of confidence made her physically sick with anxiety.

  Nobody – their parents, her teachers, her so-called friends – could see how insecure she was. But just because she didn’t have the right words didn’t mean she wasn’t bright. Brioni knew she had been angry for a while back then, resentful of Mar because she fitted in so well; everything was so easy for her. She, Brioni, was a clusterfuck. She was spotty and plump and weird. And she didn’t like people a whole lot.

  The minute she’d finished her Leaving Cert, she’d left the house beside the field in County Wexford, had left Ireland. She’d always needed her own space; stuff couldn’t go wrong when she was on her own.

  Well, she’d thought not.

  Brioni closed her eyes for a moment and let herself sway with the movement of the bus. Maybe she should have planned coming to London better, but she really hadn’t expected her messages and calls to go unanswered this long. Thank God she’d been able to get hold of Malachi; he’d answered her text straight away and given her a couch to sleep on that first night, and hooked her up with a job the next day, to tide her over. What had she done so wrong that Mar couldn’t do that?

  After being away for so long, finding her independence, it felt strange to need contact, to need Mar’s approval. Deep inside, Brioni knew that once she’d had a chat to her sis, she’d be ready for the next step, to take up her scholarship at London’s Empress college, and spread her wings among her kind – the maths heads and the nerds. But the big problem was, she needed to talk to Mar to be absolutely sure. Was the next step really college, or maybe trying London or New York to find a better job, or more travelling?

  Choices, choices.

  Brioni wasn’t even sure they really were choices, though. And she was pretty sure travelling wasn’t on the list. She licked her finger and rubbed a smear of grime off the tattoo on the inside of her wrist. London was so filthy, it was unbelievable. It was in her pores when she went home and took off her make-up, as black as the ink mapping the simple Buddhist symbol on her skin – a unalome, a beautiful spiral that flowed into a line running up the vein in her arm.


  Harmony from chaos.

  That was her all over.

  Chapter 3

  ‘Bri? Space buns?’

  Brioni felt her face heat as Siobhan ran her eye critically over her white shirt and black pencil skirt. She’d got changed as soon as she’d arrived at the embassy, had taken off her black eyeliner, swapped her bra to the cheapest white one she could find in Penneys – Primark, they called it in London; she’d never get used to that. Travelling with black underwear was purely practical – if the only place you had to wash your knickers was a sink, it was ideal – but it had its limitations when you had to wear a white shirt to work and didn’t want to look like a total slut. Penneys and a loan from Malachi had basically saved her life: a couple of black T-shirts, cut-off jeans and the white shirt and pencil skirt had cost less than thirty quid and were her entire wardrobe until her suitcase turned up.

  Siobhan narrowed her eyes. ‘Look, I can deal with the pink hair, but you’ve got to wear it down, death hawk just isn’t a look for staff. These guys are all academics in their dotage, they think anyone with a shaved head is a criminal.’

  Brioni took a deep breath, and smiled. She got it, she really did, but she’d taken ages this morning to part her hair and make the two topknots really tidy. It was way too hot to wear her hair down. But she wasn’t going to whine, she needed the job. She kept quiet as Siobhan shook her head.

  ‘And sleeves buttoned, please. No tats on show. This is a top-drawer event and we’re better than the competition. Attention to detail, always.’

  Brioni nodded again, thankful she was on the serving staff today. She’d been working for Siobhan less than a week, but offering to come up with a program to help Siobhan with the ordering – she hated figures as much as Brioni loved them, had secured her position. Her experience in the pub at home had held her in good stead, but everyone started in the kitchen, and Brioni couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  ‘OK, boys and girls, we’ve got around a hundred upstairs, champagne reception and then canapes. In this heat everything’s going to wilt, so we can’t plate early, we’re bringing everything out at the last minute. That means we need to move super-fast to get the whole room serviced, not just the greedy muck savages near the service door. Conor and Jamie, you’re on glasses, I don’t want to see any empties standing around. Bri, you’re on the main door, champagne and water. Niamh will make sure your tray is never empty. Are we good, people?’

  The acknowledgement came back to her in Irish, like a battle cry.

  Brioni smiled; she liked these people, the comradeship in doing a tough job in tougher conditions, the shared moaning about standing for hours, the heat, the rudeness of the clients. She’d been so unhappy at home when Marissa had left, a misfit, had felt as if she was living a life where everyone was sort of in the middle and she was an outlier, not even on the edge.

  She knew she wasn’t like her parents, or their idea of the perfect daughter – Mar had that role nailed. Brioni was the one who always said what she thought, which was usually not what she was supposed to say. She’d only been ten when their mother had died, had asked far too many questions about Heaven and worms. The priest could barely stand being in the same room with her. Which wasn’t a bad thing. He was about a hundred and ten, his hair dyed jet-black except for the pure grey roots. Why did a priest do that? Wasn’t it more graceful to go grey with dignity? He hugged too closely and his kisses were sloppy. She’d said that, too. And their dad had sent her to her room.

  She could still remember vividly the day she’d been in the local library and had found copies of Time and New Scientist. The heating had been on high as the rain had beaten down on the windows; she’d been fourteen, had sought a quiet corner and read about people who made her feel total wonder and jealousy – they were living a life, they had colour and things happened for them. They didn’t have to wear a brown uniform to a school governed by sadistic nuns, and do exams and trudge across a field home from the bus stop in the rain.

  She’d known then that she needed to start living her life, and their cold house, beside a field whipped by the sea on the County Wexford coast, couldn’t be it. Mar was up in Dublin, in Trinity College – the perfect daughter who wasn’t spotty and chubby and ginger. She was acing her degree and, when their father was sober enough, he’d beam, telling his friends.

  In the embassy kitchen staff loo, Brioni pulled out the piggies holding her hair in place. Their mother had called them that, the elastics she’d used to put her and Mar’s hair in pigtails before they went to school. Before the cancer had taken her. Teasing out her hair, layered in a sharp asymmetric bob, Brioni tucked the pink strands behind her ears. Siobhan was lucky; her ginger was dark, beautiful. Brioni’s natural colour was pale red, more strawberry blonde, with all of the sunburn issues and none of the impact. Pink was her colour now, sometimes purple. Once in Myanmar, blue. It depended on her mood and what she could get her hands on, or how adventurous the student hairdressers she found were. She normally got her hair cut for free in whichever city she’d arrived in. There weren’t many people prepared to risk theirs to a trainee’s creativity and trust that the talent was there, too.

  Brioni looked in the mirror. Mar would love this shade of pink – almost neon. She’d always been a proper girly girl, had worn skirts when Brioni had been in jeans, hated getting dirty.

  Why did Mar hate her? Why hadn’t she answered?

  No one talks about the pain of leaving your people, no matter how much of a misfit you are. She’d never felt so excited as when she’d got on the plane to India. That’s where she’d started. She’d always been fascinated by the blend of religions there when she’d been in school, and she needed to go somewhere warm.

  She’d quickly found her tribe. Travelling from job to job, discovering more misfits and adventurers and romantics and nerds, she had met others when they were vulnerable and messy, just like her.

  And Malachi was one of those people. She’d listened to his relationship woes deep into the night and he’d taught her tae kwon do on the beach. He’d responded as soon as she’d called from Heathrow, giving her space in his shared house and finding her a job, one that would tide her over until she could pluck up the courage to go and knock on her sister’s front door.

  What was going on?

  Her WhatsApp messages had the blue double tick telling her they’d been opened – but they hadn’t been answered. It didn’t make sense. And Brioni couldn’t wait any longer.

  Brioni took a deep breath. Things were different now; she wasn’t running away, she was running to. And one thing she’d learned when she was travelling was that when something needed doing, you had to do it straight away. Who knew what tomorrow might bring?

  She’d decided on the bus, she needed to find Mar when her shift was finished. She’d just have to keep her fingers crossed that she’d remembered the address correctly and brave her utterly obnoxious shit of a brother-in-law, She needed to connect, to feel as if she wasn’t totally alone in the world; everything would settle then, and she’d have a couple of months to get organised before term started.

  Thailand had shown her that she couldn’t drift forever. It was time to get real.

  Chapter 4

  As Marissa Hunt headed towards Selfridges, she could still feel her heart pounding. Had Steve believed her? She’d explained that Jacinta had been held up by some sort of security alert. He had to believe her; how could she know about it if Jacinta hadn’t called? She’d double-checked the news after Steve had left the restaurant. The media were only just picking up on whatever was happening in Wimbledon and Trafalgar Square.

  He’d acted all surprised to see her, had come in and laughed at the coincidence, like the loving husband. The restaurant owner had spotted his Rolex and his handmade shirts before he’d even got through the door, had brought him a glass of wine on the house. That had made her curl up inside; it made it look as if she was a regular customer and that the manager was looking after he
r friends. She’d stood up, trying to leave, but Steve had told her to sit down, to order lunch.

  ‘You’re too thin, you needed to eat even if your friend hasn’t turned up.’ She hadn’t dared disagree. He’d smiled to the manager as he’d come over to take her order, explaining that he couldn’t stay long but that he liked the restaurant, nodding to himself as he looked at the old Hollywood movie stills on the walls, the tiled floor and whitewashed walls. Marissa had sat on the edge of the chair, her thighs so ridged that the wooden edge cut into her through her white jeans. She’d smiled, forcing herself to appear relaxed, as if it was no big deal that he’d arrived.

  ‘So, who’s Jacinta? You’ve never mentioned her before?’

  Putting his glass down precisely lined up with the pattern on the table, Steve had looked at her, his brown eyes piercing. She knew that look. The manager had arrived with water and she’d smiled at him as if this was all totally normal.

  ‘I was in college with her, she was doing biochemistry, too. Her room was opposite mine in hall in first year. She’s from Bradford, she doesn’t get into London often, but she had an appointment in Russell Square this afternoon, so she got in touch to meet up. She’s working for a pharmaceutical company – I can’t remember which one.’

  Marissa stopped herself abruptly. It was too much information. It sounded as if she was covering up.

  He’d looked interested, his eyes on his glass, nodding. Not saying anything. She shrank inside. The silence was worse than the shouting. It was more dangerous.

  ‘She’s lovely, you’ll like her. Next time she’s down will we have a dinner party, ask Reiss and whoever he’s dating now, maybe?’

  God!

  She’d realised she was babbling then, trying to fill the silence.