by Jane Bidder
Pick up, she prayed. Please pick up.
‘Hello. This is Joly …’
Frantically, she turned to the policeman again. ‘It’s not answering. Please. There’s another number I can try for this person.’
To her surprise, he smiled. ‘If you wish. I do not think it will help.’
He spoke as if he knew something she didn’t.
Somewhere, she had the number for the hotel. Yes. Here. On the pad of paper.
‘Hotel Kho Chang Kho. May I help you?’
Yes!
‘Please. I need to speak to Joly urgently.’
He isn’t here, she expected the girl on the desk to say. He’s in a meeting. He is not available. Then she realised. What if Joly himself had set her up. Of course. How stupid of her! He didn’t believe her at all about Georgie. He, Vanda, and Jonathan were behind all this. She was being arrested for a crime she hadn’t committed …
‘Hello?’
Joly’s voice, so normal, so assured, made her want to weep.
‘They’ve arrested me.’ She could barely speak. ‘I suppose this is your doing. I thought you believed me, Joly. I thought …’
‘Wait.’ He interrupted her. ‘What happened exactly?’
Now the words poured out of her mouth in terror. The market. The man with the limp. The scar down his cheek.
‘That was me,’ she said weeping. ‘I tried to stab him when I was still trying to save her. Remember I told you?’
Horribly aware that all this was being written down by the policeman opposite, she continued. ‘The driver said it was your housekeeper’s son.’
‘Joshua.’
It was a statement rather than a question.
‘But now they’ve got me here and I’ll never get home. I …’
‘Your time is up.’ The policeman brought his hand down on the phone, cutting off the call. At the same time, she found herself being hauled to her feet.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘To a cell until your case is brought to trial.’
‘But I need to speak to a solicitor first.’
There was a tight polite smile. ‘You have had your phone call. That is enough.’
Georgie had seen a film on television once about a teenager who’d been ‘slammed up’, as they called it, in some third-world country where no one was allowed a lawyer or fair trial.
He’d been forced to share a cell with several other men, many of whom hit or abused him. She’d been unable to finish watching it but Sam had been riveted. ‘It’s important to know what goes on in these places,’ he’d said.
Now, as Georgie was escorted through the airport – all those stares again! – and into a waiting car, she had a horrible vision of what lay in front of her. By the time the car had stopped – after zigzagging through the city past the floating market and all the other spots which she had once known in a different life – Georgie found to her embarrassment there was a damp patch on the seat below her. She had wet herself with fear.
The men’s face showed disgust as they pulled her out. It wasn’t necessary. She was disgusted enough at herself. Furious too. How naïve she had been to have come back. If Joly wasn’t responsible for this, Vanda and Jonathan certainly were. Someone had tipped off the police …
‘In here.’
She was being marched into a building with red-tiled floors. Past a desk manned by more officious men. Down a corridor. A door was being opened. Georgie braced herself. What kind of hell hole were they going to throw her in?
It was one room. No one else there. Just a mattress on the floor and a small window. She breathed a sigh of relief.
‘You stay there.’
And with that, the door was slammed shut. She was alone.
Without her phone or access to an outside line, there was no way of telling the children where she was, let alone Sam. They’d think the worst when her plane arrived without her on it.
Then again, would anyone be there to meet it? She’d told Sam the arrival details but would he have passed those to Ellie or Nick? How stupid to even imagine that her husband had forgiven her enough to be there himself.
In comparison, the stolen credit cards at the beginning of this nightmare had faded into insignificance.
Georgie’s stomach gurgled. She must be hungry but she didn’t actually feel it. There had been a bowl which had been pushed through the door a few hours ago. A disgusting mix of something which made her want to vomit. The water had been welcome, though. Now, as the early morning light streamed in through the window, she used the last bit in the bottle to wash herself. Thankfully they’d allowed her to keep her spare travelling underwear in her bag. Yet her accident seemed nothing compared with what lay before her.
Was this what Vanda and Jonathan and Joly had felt when they’d been thrown into prison? She could imagine Vanda’s voice in her head. ‘It was far worse.’
She could almost hear Vanda’s voice ringing in her head.
In some ways, she didn’t blame them. They wanted her to go through what they had.
Vanda was abused, Joly had said. Abused …
Georgie wanted to retch. At first she’d been relieved she was in a room on her own. Now the silence was making her feel mad. The heat was becoming unbearable. The flies were everywhere. What would happen next?
If Joly had really been on her side, he’d be here by now. If … if … The thoughts rambled round and round her head until she could bear them no more. Slumping down in a corner of the cell, she drifted off into an uneasy dream. Georgie was holding her hand. Telling her it would be all right. but Ellie was screaming. ‘Mum! Mum! Mum!’
‘Wake.’
Georgie woke to find herself being shaken roughly by a man in uniform. He wasn’t the same policeman as yesterday. He was younger. Harder in the face. Leaner.
‘This way.’
Once more, she found herself being frogmarched down a corridor. ‘I need to see a lawyer. It is my right.’
The man shot her a nasty sideways look. ‘You are not in England now.’
Another door opening. Another desk.
On one side, the same policeman as yesterday. On the other, two men. One dark. One blonde. She didn’t know the first. But the second …
‘Joly!’
The warning look in his eyes prevented her from falling into his arms with relief.
‘Are you all right?’ he stood up, taking care, she noticed, to keep a distance between them.
‘Yes.’ She tried to recover herself. ‘I mean, no. I didn’t do it, Joly. I thought you believed me. And the man in the market …’
Joly held up another hand. ‘Don’t say any more. It might not help.’ He gesticulated to a man on his right. ‘This is my solicitor. He is going to sort it out.’
The tall, lean, blond man stood up and shook her hand. ‘Mrs Hamilton.’ He spoke with an Australian accent. ‘Nice to meet you.’
He cast a look at the policeman on the other side of the desk. A sharp look. One that meant business. ‘As agreed, I should like some time alone with my client.’
It was the housekeeper who had tipped off the police, apparently. She had seen Georgie and guessed who she was. She’d found out about Georgina years ago, and been terrified that Georgie was going to recognise her son. So she’d packed him off to another shanty town where – as Georgie had seen – he’d got into trouble again.
Now Joshua was being held.
‘Naturally, he’s denying it,’ said the Australian who’d instructed her to call him Mac. ‘It’s his word against yours. Joly has a great deal of influence in these parts. He has managed to get you off the drugs charges by insisting that you didn’t know what was inside those parcels. But …’
His shrug said it all. Georgie’s hopes, which had shot up wildly, now plummeted to the ground.
‘If the murder …’
Georgie flinched as he said the word…
‘If the murder had been recent, we could use DNA evidence. But we have nothin
g left that belonged to the victim. Nothing that could link the two …’
Georgie felt a shoot of electricity. The box. The box which the police had taken away from her when they’d arrested her. The box with her mother’s letter and some small belongings from her sister.
‘It might help,’ said Mac doubtfully. ‘But we actually need something that Georgina was wearing when she died.’
‘Then that’s no good.’ Her head fell back into her hands.
‘Actually,’ said Joly from the corner. ‘I’ve just had an idea.’
He’d been so quiet that she’d almost forgotten he was there. ‘I couldn’t bear to let Georgie go completely.’
His eyes were wet.
Hating herself, she felt that old jealousy.
‘I pulled some hair from her after… after we found her.’ His hand went up to the gold chain around his neck. Taking it off, he opened the small box-shaped locket and withdrew a tiny clear packet. Inside were some strands of hair. Very blonde. ‘Don’t ask me how but I managed to keep them safe, even in prison.’
Tears were streaming down his face now. ‘I used to smell it. It still had her fragrance for a time.’
‘May I have it?’ asked Mac gently.
Georgie couldn’t stop crying now. Her sister’s hair. Exactly the same colour as her own. A reminder of what she had lost, without even knowing at the time, that she had it.
It was a thin hope. But the only one they had. There was a possibility, a very remote one, that the labs could do something. Not the police labs. Mac didn’t trust those. But he and Joly had connections …
Another night in the room on her own. But this time – did she imagine it? – she was treated with more respect.
At lunch time she was taken down a corridor into yet another room. Joly was waiting. His face was drawn. He cares, she realised. He really cares. Not just for Georgie but for me too. That was more than Sam.
‘Good news. Joshua has been told that his DNA matches some skin cells on the hair.’
He said the word ‘hair’ as if he wanted to distance himself from it.
‘It does?’
‘No. We just told him that.’
‘But that’s a lie.’
Joly sighed. ‘Don’t be naïve, Georgie. It’s how these things work. We might not even need to prove it in court. But the great thing is that it prompted Joshua to confess.’
His voice suggested he was furious with himself. ‘I should have guessed. The boy always had a thing for Georgie. She’d laughed about it. Said it was flattering for a thirteen-year-old kid to run after her like a lap dog.’ He groaned. ‘Even encouraged it by giving him things.’
‘But I don’t remember him being there.’
‘He wasn’t. Not during your time. His mother had sent him away to be with his father because he was too much of a handful for her. Apparently, according to his confession, he was coming back when …’
He paused as if trying to recover his composure. ‘When he found Georgie wandering in the woods.’
‘She’d run away because of us.’
He nodded. ‘Exactly. When he tried to kiss her, she lashed out at him. Then, scared, he … he attacked her and then …’
‘Then I appeared.’
Another nod. Tight lips. A slight wobble, indicating he was doing everything he could to hold himself together. Instinctively, she knew he couldn’t talk about this any more. His short, almost brusque words confirmed this.
‘Mac is next door waiting. I hope you have a good journey back.’
Her mind whirled in confusion. ‘They’re letting me go?’
‘Yes.’
She flinched at the lack of emotion.
‘Just like that?’
‘Please Georgie, no questions.’ He passed a hand over his face wearily. ‘Let’s just say I have still have some influence in these parts.’ Another wry smile. ‘I just hope this doesn’t come back and bite me too.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Confessions! I could tell you anything you want to know about confessions. One of the other kids taught me in my third foster home.
‘On telly, you see people saying “I didn’t do it”,’ he told me.
I already knew that!
‘But you don’t do it that way. Otherwise they can disprove it, see.’
No, I didn’t. But I was ten. Nearly a man. So I tried to listen carefully.
Everyone looked up to this boy. He was always stealing stuff and getting away with it. No one could catch him. If anyone was going to help me through life, he was.
‘What you’ve got to do,’ he added, ‘is say “No comment”. That’s what my dad taught me.’
I felt jealous then. This boy had had a dad who’d bothered to teach him stuff about life. Mine had just buggered off before I was born, leaving Mum and me in ‘the system’.
‘If you keep saying no comment, they can’t do nothing, like. Then you have to get your lawyer.’
‘How?’ we all asked. There was a group of us then, listening. But we got called right then to ‘supper’: bread and marmalade, which you wolfed down in seconds even though the foster couple swore to social that they gave us meat every night.
In the morning, I woke to find that the only possession I owned in the world – a photo of my mother – had gone from the wobbly cupboard next to my bed.
‘Have you seen it?’ I asked everyone.
Their faces went blank, to a boy. ‘No comment,’ they said.
That’s when I stabbed him. The one who had started all this. The one with the dad.
I stabbed him with a fork. A fork I’d been saving under my bed.
He was all right.
But I got sent to one of those juvenile places.
Been out for five years, I have. But it’s hard to change old habits. I might not stab. But I steal. Bags, cards, phones, identities.
I just can’t help it. It’s not my fault. It’s because I never had a dad.
Everyone needs one.
But like they used to say to me in the home, ‘Need doesn’t get.’
FORTY-EIGHT
She’d have to sign something, Georgie was told, to promise she’d come back for the trial. A witness statement wouldn’t be enough.
That wasn’t all. ‘There might be publicity both here and in the UK,’ Joly’s lawyer had warned.
Georgie gripped the sides of the plane’s seat with apprehension at the thought. But it had been the only way they’d allowed her to go.
And she had to get back.
‘Arriving Heathrow tomorrow,’ she’d texted Ellie. ‘Will explain all.’
She had to. There had been too many lies. It was time now to face the truth. To absorb the revelations she’d had while over here …
She’d had a sister … A twin! If only she’d known, they could have had time together. Special time to tell each other about what had happened to them since they’d been pulled apart. They could have gone, arm in arm. to their mother … Perhaps forgive her. To ask too, what had happened to their father …
‘Please note that the seatbelt sign has now been switched on. We will be entering an area of turbulence shortly.’
The pilot’s voice – not European – was silkily reassuring. Yet unlike her neighbour who began crossing herself, Georgie felt quite calm. In some ways, it might help if she never came back. Then again, she thought, looking at the baby across the aisle, wrapped up in a shawl against her mother’s chest, that wasn’t fair on everyone else in the plane.
It was time she began to think of other people now. Not just saving her own skin.
Slowly, the tablet which Joly had given her (‘to help you sleep during the first leg’), began to make her feel drowsy. When she woke, it was to see her neighbour looking much chirpier and paying for a bottle of duty-free perfume with a credit card.
Credit card.
The sight of the red and white plastic card began to bring it all back. That was how it started … Vanda and Jonathan had a lot to pay for.
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‘We have now landed at Heathrow airport. Passengers in transit …’
The stewardess’ chirpy voice broke into Georgie’s deep dream in which she was chasing Vanda and Jonathan, with the computer man in hot pursuit. All four of them were clutching credit cards, the same red and white design as the one with which her neighbour had paid.
The latter was heaving her small bag out of the luggage compartment above them. Other passengers were rushing past, keen to get out. Georgie’s heart began to race again. What would be waiting for her out there?
She’d deliberately not given Ellie her flight details. I need time, she told herself, to think. Joly had insisted on giving her money which would cover a modest hotel in London for a couple of nights. She’d use it as a base before working out what to do next.
One thing was clear. Ellie and Nick had to be told …
Feeling sick at the thought of them knowing the truth, she stood up to help the woman with her case overhead.
‘It’s all right, thank you.’ The older woman was flushed. ‘I can do it.’
Was she merely independent? Or didn’t she trust her? Did she look like the kind of woman who would take someone’s bag? Or murder her sister?
Feeling like a criminal, Georgie took her own bag and headed for security. Once more, her heart began to race. Supposing this was a trick? Supposing they refused to let her back into her own country …
But the man with the neat black haircut merely nodded. ‘Had a good holiday?’ he asked almost chummily.
Georgie could merely nod; too scared to talk.
Her bag was first out on the conveyor belt. That had never happened to her before. She’d have welcomed the delay if only to give herself more time to think. In Bangkok, all she had wanted to do was to get out.
Now it was time to face the music, she simply wanted to crawl into a hole. Everything she’d had had gone. Including someone she hadn’t even known she’d had.
Georgie’s mouth set as she passed through Customs and out into Arrivals. Forget the hotel in London, there was somewhere else she had to go first.
