Barnaby accepted the crab, still thinking about kiasu. The way Zhu had used the word made it sound like a philosophy, almost a guiding light.
‘Exactly.’ Flora jabbed the air with her chopsticks. ‘People laugh sometimes about Singapore. The way we’re so tidy, so well organized. The way we care so much about what we do. But that’s the point. We want to be the best. We want to win.’ She dabbed the corner of her mouth with a fingertip and then sucked it dry, eyeing a bowl of deep-fried bean curd.
Barnaby helped himself to slices of beef fillet bubbling in a black bean sauce. If kiasu helped produce food of this subtlety, he’d happily sign up for life. He grinned at Flora, trying to imagine how the pursuit of excellence would play back home. ‘You know England at all?’
‘London, very well.’
‘Portsmouth?’
‘Yes. But only from Mr Zhu.’
‘He’s told you about us?’
‘A little. I know he likes it there. He told me that.’
Barnaby looked at Zhu, who had got no further than a steaming mound of rice in a woven bamboo basket. He was peering across at Flora in a faintly abstract way, picking delicately at the rice. ‘Nice city,’ he said. ‘Nice place.’
There was a silence and Barnaby sensed at once that it was his cue to tell Flora about Portsmouth. Etiquette, at the very least, demanded it. He wondered where to start. ‘It’s an island,’ he said. ‘Like Singapore.’
Flora nodded, as vigorous as ever. ‘Big?’
‘No, five miles by three. Like this.’ He sketched the city’s outline on the tablecloth. ‘Pretty small. And very crowded.’
‘Many people?’
‘Two hundred thousand. Give or take.’
‘But beautiful?’
Barnaby thought about the question. Just occasionally, on windy days, the views across the Solent could be sensational but, if he was honest, those rare moments were a trick of the light, a sudden fusion of towering cloudscapes and the boiling green sea beneath, nothing at all to do with Pompey.
‘It’s ugly,’ he said. ‘Not like this.’
Zhu and Flora exchanged glances. ‘This is a hotel,’ Zhu said. ‘With money you can do anything.’
‘Of course. But I meant the rest of it, the island.’
‘Singapore?’ Zhu shrugged. ‘Singapore is mostly flat, just like Portsmouth. And wherever you go you see people.’
‘Just like Portsmouth.’
‘Yes. We live in a very busy place, Mr Barnaby. Maybe an ugly place, too. But we make it work.’
‘Kiasu?’
‘Exactly.’
Flora pushed her bowl of crab to one side and began to tell Barnaby what Singaporeans could expect from life in this bustling little republic. Work hard, pay your taxes, and you’d quickly earn yourself a nice place to live, good health care, clean streets, wonderful public transport, a safe environment, excellent educational prospects, and the satisfaction of knowing that you belonged to one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Singapore had the good fortune to be straddling one of the great international trading routes, she said. Not to take advantage of that would, in her opinion, be extremely foolish.
Barnaby listened to the endless list of accomplishments, a paean to civic virtue, wondering just how much of it she had to repeat every day. In her job it must have become a mantra, semi-religious, an hourly evocation that kept the uglier aspects of the human condition at bay. What about poverty? Crime? Injustice? Was there nothing that kiasu couldn’t erase?
‘Nothing,’ she confirmed. ‘We find a problem, we solve it.’
Barnaby had heard the travellers’ tales of Singapore. How spitting on the street or dropping litter or chewing gum attracted huge fines. How drug trafficking or murder could send a man to the gallows. As a result, according to one or two businessmen he knew, the place was both safe and eternally spotless, a rather spooky experience after surviving the menacing slum that parts of London had become.
‘I envy you,’ he admitted. ‘I envy your faith and your energy. Maybe we gave up trying to change people. Maybe that’s where we went wrong.’
‘You don’t believe in progress?’ Flora made it sound almost sinful, the breach of a Commandment. ‘You don’t think things can get better?’
‘I hope things can get better. In my country, I certainly hope things can get better. But there’s a world of difference between hoping and doing.’
‘You mean you’re lazy? In the UK?’
‘No, not lazy personally. We’re not idle. But we’re lazy in other ways, yes.’
‘What other ways?’
Barnaby was trying to gauge the direction this strange conversation had taken. There was something over-developed in her interest in Portsmouth, something that suggested an altogether less casual agenda. Did she want to settle there? Buy a nice little house in Old Portsmouth and make her peace with the traffic, the weather and the weekend drunks? Or was it something else entirely, something he’d yet to fathom?
‘We’re lazy,’ he said carefully, ‘because we’ve given up caring about one or two things that really matter.’
‘Like?’
‘Like the way we’re governed. Like the fact that we ought to have some input. Like taking control of our own lives.’
‘That doesn’t happen?’
‘No. Not locally. Not where it matters. In the UK everything comes from London. The laws that Westminster makes are the laws we have to obey. What Whitehall civil servants tell us to do, we do. Some people say that makes us puppets.’
‘And you agree with them?’
‘Yes, I do. But the scariest thing of all is that no one seems to care. That’s laziness. And it’s immensely dangerous.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s turning us into a nation of vegetables. We watch television. We try to earn a crust. And that’s more or less it. The kids understand that. Which is why we get so much trouble. Not that you can really blame them.’
Barnaby reached across, spooning a fresh helping of beef fillet into his bowl, slightly embarrassed by his passion and his eloquence. Most of the phrases were vintage Kate – he could hear her arguing the case for local government – but the stuff about the consequences was his own. Life in the UK had started to alarm him. People no longer talked to each other. Individuals no longer thought they could make a difference. In Singapore, perhaps because it was so small, that didn’t seem to have happened. Flora was right. A couple of million people had got it together. And made the thing fly.
‘Delicious.’
He lifted the bowl to his lips, savouring the smell of the black bean sauce. Zhu and Flora were talking in Chinese again, their heads together. Then Flora tapped her watch and reached beneath the table, producing a pen from her bag. She scribbled something on a piece of paper and passed it to Barnaby.
‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘If you like, we can meet again tomorrow.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Here?’
‘No, Dr Zhu will arrange for you to come out to Changi. I’ll meet you there. Ask for this department at the gate.’
Barnaby looked at the piece of paper. Changi was a name he knew. ‘Are we talking about the airport?’ he said.
Flora was on her feet now. She was wearing a yellow halter beneath the leather jacket and her midriff was bare. ‘No.’ Her hand was on Zhu’s shoulder. ‘The prison.’
Jessie Barnaby was standing by the tea-urn in the dining room when she felt the touch of Lola’s hand on her arm. She half turned, her mouth full of chocolate biscuit. Lola had been using the pay-phone in the hall and Jessie could tell at once that something terrible had happened. She followed Lola as she picked her way between the long tables, glancing at the big clock above the special-announcements board by the door. In seven minutes, they were both due back for another module one therapy session. Turning up late was guaranteed to throw them at the mercy of the group.
Jessie mounted the stairs, trying to keep up with her friend. The room they shared at
Merrist House was at the end of the top corridor. Lola kicked open the door, shaking her head, close to tears. By the time Jessie joined her, she was lying full length on the bed, a pillow over her face, sobbing.
Jessie knelt beside her, the threadbare carpet rough on her knees. She stroked Lola’s hand, telling her everything would be all right. She could feel the whole bed shaking.
‘What’s the matter, Lolly?’
Lola didn’t answer. Jessie fetched a toothmug and filled it with water from the wash-basin. At length, the sobbing began to slow and Jessie helped the girl to struggle upright, holding the mug to her lips. She took a single sip, then turned away her head, staring at the uneven row of colour snaps Blu-tacked to the wall. The sight of the shy five-year-old smile in the photos made her cry again.
‘Is it Candelle, Lolly? Is that what’s the matter?’
Lola nodded, wiping her nose with a corner of the sheet. Something about her mother. Something about the Social.
‘What have they done?’
Lola had a small dimpled face, framed by natural brown curls. Unlike more or less everyone else in the building, her complexion was flawless. When she was happy, Jessie had never met anyone so beautiful.
‘She was pissed,’ Lola was saying now, ‘out of her fucking head.’
‘Who was?’
‘Mum. She could hardly talk. I knew there was something wrong. I knew it. That letter …’
Jessie slipped onto the bed, cradling Lola’s head in her lap. Lola had shown her the letter in the kitchen after breakfast. It had come from Candelle’s father, a small-time thief, junkie and heroin dealer in Guildford. It was brief and spiteful and it had warned Lola that her mother had gone off the rails. Someone had to sort Candelle out before the poor kid died of neglect.
‘So what’s she done? Where’s she gone? What’s happened?’
‘The Social have taken her.’
‘Where?’
‘Into care. Anywhere. I don’t fucking know.’
Jessie bent to Lola, kissing her forehead, rocking her gently, trying to ease a little of the pain.
‘Maybe your mum’s got it wrong,’ she suggested.
‘Never.’ Lola shook her head violently. ‘The only time she tells the truth is when she’s pissed. You know that. You’ve seen it. Turning up here like that. The state of her…’
Jessie remembered the thin, wispy-haired woman who’d appeared in the drive last Sunday afternoon, barely able to stand up. She’d come to see her daughter, she’d told the lads on the five-a-side pitch. She’d come to tell her what a bastard Candelle’s father was.
‘Then maybe it’s for the best. Care’s not so bad.’
‘How would you know?’
Jessie ignored the dig. Downstairs, she could hear the thump of a door opening and then the scrape of chairs as the module one group gathered in the room below. After nearly seven weeks in rehabilitation, Jessie was no closer to coming to terms with the therapy sessions: the cursing, the screaming, the ugliness, the raw aggression.
She tore off sheets of tissue paper from a toilet roll on the window-sill. Outside, a grey dusk was settling on the trees across the valley. Lola took the offered tissues and began to blow her nose.
‘We have to go downstairs,’ Jessie told her. ‘You know how funny they get.’
‘Fuck how funny they get. They can get as funny as they like.’
‘I know, I know, but it’s best we get down there.’ Jessie pulled Lola to her feet and put her arms round her. ‘I’ll talk to my dad later. I’ve still got a phone call left this week. He’ll know what to do. He does Social cases all the time. He’ll sort something out.’
‘You think so?’ Lola was looking up at her. At twenty-four, she still had the eyes of a child.
Jessie hugged her again and moistened a finger, wiping away the smudged mascara. ‘I don’t know why you use that stuff,’ she said, coaxing Lola towards the door. ‘You’re lovely. You don’t need it.’
Lola sniffed, tilting her face to the mirror over the sink. ‘That’s what my mum always said.’ She raised a weary smile. ‘Silly cow.’
Liz Barnaby sat in her husband’s study, waiting for the phone to ring. It had been raining now for the best part of an hour, the wind driving hard off the sea. Mike Tully had promised to contact her at five. He was twenty minutes late.
A car splashed slowly past outside and Liz got to her feet, peering down through the window. Mike’s little maisonette was only five minutes away. Maybe he’d left work early. Maybe he’d decided to call round in person. The car drove on, rounding the corner at the end of the street, but Liz lingered at the window, her attention taken by the latest of the hand-drawn cards Jessie had been sending from Merrist House.
It had been addressed to Hayden. He’d got it only yesterday, minutes before he’d left for the airport. On the front, Jessie had sketched the face of the girl she shared a room with. All her cards were like this, little scenes from her new life, and it warmed Liz to know that the gift which had taken her to art college was still there. She had a real talent for freehand work, for capturing the essence of an individual or a landscape in a handful of pencil lines, and downstairs on the shelves around the kitchen sink Liz had circled herself with the half-dozen cards they’d received to date. It was still too early in the rehab programme to drive up there and pay a visit but this little collection of pencil studies, seemingly so simple, had bridged the gap between them. They were the real evidence that Jessie was getting better and, looking at them, it was enormously comforting to know that there were parts of her that even heroin hadn’t been able to touch.
Liz picked up the card, examining it under Hayden’s Anglepoise. The girl’s name was Lola and she came from Guildford. According to Jessie she’d had to weather more than her fair share of life’s storms. She had a little girl of five, called Candelle. Peering at the card Liz tried to work out how old Lola must be. Jessie had made her look like a child – big eyes, fetching dimples – but she guessed that her daughter’s instinct would have been to soften and smooth the face, in exactly the same way that she’d sought to protect more or less everyone else who’d drifted into her life. Including Haagen.
The phone began to ring. Liz lifted it, hearing Mike Tully at the other end. He was running late. He was very sorry. Maybe they could meet in the Pembroke at the end of the street? In half an hour? Liz began to suggest that he come round and have a chat at home but Tully was already listening to a caller on another line, whispering an apology to her before putting the phone down. The place had gone mad. He was rushed off his feet. Better make it forty-five minutes.
Liz arrived at the pub to find it empty. She knew the landlord well from her days in the cathedral choir and they chatted for a minute or two before his wife called him away to the cellar. He’d left a copy of the Sentinel on the bar and she began to leaf through it, killing time. Coping with Jessie had occupied most of the last eight months and only now was she beginning to grasp that there might be a life beyond the endless rounds of assessments and consultations. Finding a way back from Jessie’s heroin addiction, even at one remove, was a full-time job.
The door opened and Liz turned on her bar stool. She’d known Mike Tully for years, mainly through Hayden, and she suddenly realized that they’d never met alone. He was a small, broad, quietly spoken man with a neatly clipped beard and a bachelor’s dress sense. Straight from the office, he was still wearing a suit although out of hours he favoured old cords and slightly scruffy polo-necked sweaters, a relic, she assumed, from his service days in the Royal Marines.
He offered her a stiff handshake, then submitted awkwardly to a peck on the cheek, ordering an orange juice for which Liz insisted on paying. For a minute or two they talked about Hayden. The Imperial Hotel, his pet project, was only ten days away from its formal opening. The guest list had topped two hundred and Liz understood that his first job when he got back from Singapore was to set something up on the media front. Harry Wilcox had evidently promi
sed a modest spread in the Sentinel and Hayden had a couple of contacts in the local ITV station. With luck, said Liz, he might get something on the evening news. Tully followed Liz’s account without comment. Small talk had never been one of his talents.
Finally, when Liz ran out of news, he steered her to a corner table beneath the fish tank and asked her what had prompted the afternoon’s telephone call.
Liz, slightly uncomfortable at his directness, began to colour. ‘I don’t want any of this to get back to Hayden. Do you mind?’
‘Not at all,’ Tully grunted. ‘So what’s it all about?’
‘Jessie. I thought you might have guessed.’
Tully stared impassively into his orange juice while Liz told him why she’d phoned. Jessie was in a rehab centre, trying to recover from her drug addiction. The treatment, by all accounts, was pretty rugged but the real blessing was the fact that it kept her physically away from the city. As long as she stuck with the course, she wouldn’t be back in Portsmouth until early autumn, giving Liz a chance to sort something out.
Tully stirred.
‘Like what?’
‘Like Haagen, her boyfriend.’
Liz bent closer to him. Haagen was a waster, she said, a youth who’d turned Jessie’s head. Liz had mistrusted him on sight and everything she’d feared had come true. He was a drug addict. He was a thief. He was completely destructive, and amongst the things he’d wrecked was Jessie’s young life. For some reason, God knows why, Jessie had fallen in love with him and in a matter of months he’d turned her into a junkie.
Tully ran his finger along the edge of the table. ‘Is Jessie still keen on him?’
‘I’ve no idea. We don’t talk about him any more. She refuses to. Her choice, not mine.’
‘But do they still see each other?’
‘Not at the moment. The place she’s in is called Merrist House. Visitors aren’t allowed, not for the first couple of months.’
For the first time, Tully looked Liz in the eye. He knew Merrist House and Liz was right. It was tough. Bloody tough.
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