by Jo Furniss
“Actually, we don’t,” Arnault said.
“We don’t what?” Amanda asked.
“Have rights. The police can question a minor without an adult present.” He shrugged. “Law of the land.”
Before she could think how to respond, the doors of the police station opened. Willow came racing out, down the steps, and into her mother’s arms. Josie walked behind, taking the steps in her own time. A third girl emerged. Unlike Josie and Willow, who were crumpled after the long night, this one was pristine. Her silky hair skimmed over brisk curves down to her waist.
“That’s Mae,” said Josie, when she reached Amanda. “She’s in the year above.”
Mae bounced down the steps, straight into Arnault’s embrace. He rocked back to lift her off the ground, her chopstick legs dangling from black shorts whose edges were frayed like the pubic hairs she’d barely had time to grow.
“What the actual fuck?” Erin looked to her fellow women one by one for validation—Willow, then Amanda, then Josie—before turning to confront her husband. “Seriously, Arnault? Right under our noses?”
Arnault turned Mae by the shoulders into a waiting cab, which drove off into a blushing sunrise.
Chapter 25
Enclosed in the elevator at the Attica, Amanda pressed her thumb to the console, but nothing happened. “It’s broken,” Erin said, waving her security tag over the panel. The lift ascended with a tremble, and the women stood in silence until Amanda and Josie got out at their apartment.
Josie flicked her considerable fringe from her face. Smeared kohl eyeliner made her look both waiflike and world-weary, badass and beaten. Without any prompting, Josie launched into her defense: she and Willow had gone to a party at the house of a boy—Rafferty—whose parents were away. “I fell asleep, and the others left me to go watch a movie in the den. I woke up to the police hammering at the door.” The officers had driven past earlier in the evening when a neighbor complained, but they considered it was just kids in the pool. That neighbor was always complaining. “But when an ang moh called at midnight to report her stepdaughter missing,” Josie said, “they smelled blood.”
“I was worried.” Amanda felt a spark of indignation. “And the police were doing their job.”
“They were determined to nail us.”
“They didn’t have to try too hard, did they? They’ll press charges against Rafferty for the weed.” Amanda winced internally at the word weed, which she had used perfectly naturally once upon a time, but now sounded stiff with age. “You’re lucky to get away with a warning.”
“They had nothing on me. I wasn’t in the den. They went through my phone, but as soon as they saw I don’t communicate with Rafferty—I literally don’t have his number—they lost interest.”
“Isn’t he Willow’s boyfriend?”
Josie shrugged one shoulder as if this was a matter of such triviality it deserved no words.
“Is there anything else I should know?” Amanda asked.
Josie isolated a rebel strand of curly hair from her dark halo and pulled it straight in front of her eyes. Tugged it out. “It would be better if Dad didn’t find out.”
“He’s going to find out. And he’s your father, he should know.”
“It would be better for both of us if he didn’t.”
Amanda kept quiet, creating space for Josie to fill. The truth was here if she could only locate the strand amid the mass of silence and pluck it out: What kind of man is Ed?
Josie’s eyes skittered, and for a moment it seemed she would speak. But then she muttered that she was tired.
“Are you scared, Josie?” Amanda heard herself say.
Josie wrapped the hair around her fingertip until the skin whitened. “I always win him around.”
“And how do you do that?”
A laugh caught in her throat, a strangely adult sound of resignation that Amanda felt sad to hear coming from a child. “Lifetime of practice.” And that shoulder roll again, as though the consequences were starting to weigh heavily.
“He’s going to find out, one way or another.” Amanda was pleased for once that he was traveling. It allowed time for things to calm down before he saw Josie. “I guess we can hold off until he’s home. I’ll explain it wasn’t your fault.”
“My fault?” said Josie, and she gave that laugh again. “It’s you he’s going to be mad with.”
“Me?”
“You know what you did, don’t you? When you called the police?” She was walking toward her room with Amanda rolling along behind her like a dropped marble.
“What did I do?”
“You ruined that family’s life.”
Josie’s door slammed, but her words circled Amanda along with the scent of rotting jasmine. An echo from Josie’s blog: her mother had ruined that family’s life. She’d angered her husband and then she’d died. The coroner recorded a verdict of suicide, but what was that except a best guess? A stranger couldn’t know what was in a dead woman’s mind. Or her husband’s. Amanda didn’t know, and she shared his bed.
She lay down on the sofa. Ed would land in Zurich and call when he picked up her frantic messages. The impotence that came with distance would anger him. She’d have to tell him something. A partial truth. Snippets from the evening zipped past, like moments on repeat. Molly saying, “Better safe than sorry.” The police sergeant: “There is no problem, ma’am.” Josie: “It’s you he’s going to be mad with.” And Erin: “Seriously, right under our noses?” This final scene played again and again. Right under our noses?
Erin knew about Mae. Otherwise, she would have said something like, “What are you doing with that girl?” But she hadn’t been surprised, only annoyed that he was showing her up in public. Right under our noses.
What a hypocrite. Amanda punched a cushion into place. Erin was only concerned about keeping it quiet long enough to get out of the country with her dignity intact. Never mind poor Mae—and Willow! And now that Josie was pissed off with Amanda, it would be harder to have their talk. And Ed would come back like a Fury; the wind was still whistling through the kitchen window from his last fury. He’d ask why she hadn’t had the glass replaced; the apartment was going to wrack and ruin.
But what’s the point in carrying out repairs when a demolition is in progress?
Amanda wrestled with her limbs until she got comfortable. It felt like seconds later that her phone rang, but the room glared in the morning light. She pressed the mobile to her ear.
“Have you heard?” Erin’s voice lilted with the same glee as when she’d pronounced Ed an abuser. Given their similar circumstances, Amanda thought there should be fellow feeling between the trailing spouses: flailing spouses. But, instead, they could be two passengers in an aircraft that was plummeting to the ground, and they’d just noticed there was only one parachute.
“Have I heard what?”
“About the photos?”
Amanda’s hesitation was enough.
“I’m on my way down,” Erin said.
Amanda slipped into clothes and pulled a brush through her hair. Josie’s room was empty, but she answered Amanda’s text right away: I’m down by the pool. Amanda peered from the living room window and picked out a sliver of a girl lying on her distinctive beach towel. When the lift chimed, Erin marched into the kitchen and accepted a glass of water. “You might want a stiff drink when you see this.” She laid her device on the counter and spun it around so Amanda could see. “Willow saw this today. The photo was posted anonymously.”
Amanda picked up the phone. The photo showed a girl tangled around a boy on a bed. She had one hand up to shield her face and a knee raised in defense, but there was no mistaking the identity—it was Josie.
“Taken at the party?” Amanda said.
“There are more.”
Then a photo taken from a different angle: Josie lying across the bed with both legs over the side, the boy hunched between her knees. Where the first image might indicate fooling around, this on
e was graphic and unequivocal. Amanda shut down the phone and spun it back to Erin.
“Where were they posted?” she asked.
“On the chat forum that Josie set up herself.”
“The one on the dark web?”
“Not anymore. She moved it. It’s just on a normal . . . hosting . . . I don’t know . . . site.”
“So the whole school might have seen them?”
“The forum has been active in the past few hours, yes.”
Amanda got her own phone, tapped in the website—Sexteen—and found the offending post. She scrolled past the photos and read a handful of comments—but when she felt the hot nausea of carsickness, she shut off her device.
“She’s going to be mortified. Do we know who the boy is?”
“I’m not sure you’ve quite grasped the worst of it.” Erin placed one fingertip on her phone and slid it back across the countertop to Amanda. “Look at the boys.”
Amanda hadn’t noticed much beyond Josie. She scrolled back to the first shot of the girl wrapped around a fair-haired boy, their skin honeyed by lamplight. And then that lurid picture when he was between her knees . . . except—she glanced up at Erin’s sardonic face—the boy kneeling between Josie’s legs had dark hair. Two different boys.
“Now do you want something stronger?” Erin asked.
Oddly, she heard in her head a snatch of a song Josie often played: “Stronger Than Me.” Amanda knew she should be the stronger one, just as Amy Winehouse said, because she’d been on this earth longer than Josie. And she understood why a girl would do this to herself. She’d been there, mired in the belief that she had one thing to offer, one thing in her control, one thing that would get attention. She even had the photos in her safety-deposit box to prove it. The inviting warmth of a man’s spotlight was all too tempting for someone outside in the cold, the way she’d felt after her parents’ scandal. Trying to gauge her value, she had sold herself cheap. And now she heard Josie’s voice: I always win him around.
“Are you going to tell Ed?” Erin asked.
“Can I speak to Willow?”
Erin snapped upright. “Willow wants to take a break from Josie. She finds her . . . a negative influence.”
“But Rafferty is Willow’s boyfriend. It was his party—”
“That boy in the picture, the blond one? That’s Rafferty.” Erin slid off the barstool and drained her glass before heading to the lift. “Maybe I’m jaundiced by my own messed-up marriage, but if you want an explanation for Josie’s behavior, I’d suggest looking closer to home. Promiscuity—lack of self-respect—is a classic sign of abuse. I know it’s hard to imagine you could be living with someone who’s capable of such a thing, but look at Arnault. I did not see that coming.”
“I’m sorry about Arnault.”
“It’s okay. I’m going to destroy him.” Erin’s fingers tore at an eczema patch, a prominent wristbone straining through her skin as though a tiny bald head were trapped inside. “He’ll be working to pay me off until he’s bones.” The lift doors closed.
Amanda’s phone rang, sending a jolt through her insides.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ed’s voice was a small, hard vibration of air, an arrowhead coming her way.
“I left you messages—”
“You didn’t mention drugs and arrests. Fuck, Amanda!”
She hesitated, hearing incongruous cowbells and yodeling—the quaint soundtrack of the Zurich airport sky train that she remembered from their last ski trip. This time it didn’t make her smile. “I wanted to tell you in person, when you called. How do you know?”
“Josie, obviously. We don’t keep secrets in this family.”
“She asked me not to say anything!”
“I knew something was up as soon as I heard her voice. She told me everything.”
Everything? How much of everything?
“What were you thinking, calling the police?” Ed said.
“She went missing. What else was I supposed to do?”
“She’s not a baby.”
“And nor is she an adult. She could have been preyed on by some man—”
“What?”
Amanda started telling him about the happy couple—Arnault and Mae—but Ed interrupted: “Where is she now?”
“At the pool. I’m sure she’s got her phone if you want to call.”
“Just checking she is where she says she is. I have to see a client this morning, but I’m heading straight back.”
Amanda closed her eyes. It used to be that Ed cutting his business trip short was a pleasure; the moment he stepped out of the lift felt like that magical hour around dusk, when the tropical air nuzzled her skin and good times were about to roll. But now his presence seemed more like the midday sun: harsh, unrelenting, volatile. She didn’t know where she wanted him—at home, where he wasn’t a danger to women in hotels, or away, where he wasn’t a danger to Josie. Or myself. Bad things had happened to the last woman who got between Ed and his daughter.
“It’s the first rule of living in someone else’s country,” Ed said. “You never get a fair deal from the police.”
He would be home soon. She couldn’t avoid him much longer. She put Ed on speaker and made placatory noises while finding her overnight bag. She packed for three days. Added outfits for Josie too. Then transferred cash from the belly of the ginger jar into the zippered pocket of the bag. She thought of her frozen embryos. She could feel them jostling in their tubes, too full of energy to rest, like puppies in a pet shop pawing the glass. She heard their little mewls and yaps.
“Are you there, Amanda? Are you even listening?”
“I’m here. I’m listening.” She zipped up the bag just as the bedroom door swung open and Josie marched in.
“Is that him? I’ve been trying to call.” Josie took the phone from her hands. “I just heard that Raff’s father got a call from the headmaster. The police are pressing charges. Possession with intent to supply. Mandatory custodial sentence. So they’ve gone—the whole family.”
“Gone where?” asked Amanda.
“To England. Packed their bags overnight and got the first flight out of Singapore.”
No one spoke. The phone broadcast sounds from far away. Train doors giving exaggerated sighs as they had to open and close yet again. Ed’s voice was a low rumble: “Now do you get it?” Amanda assumed he was speaking to her. As did Josie, who dropped the phone on the bed and left the room. “Fuck, Amanda. You ruined that family’s life.”
Chapter 26
Camille’s hand shook as she reached for the mouse to put her computer to sleep. She didn’t want anyone in the press office to read the screen over her shoulder; this Reuters News report needed to stay off their radar for a few more minutes. “But you must retract the quote, Ruth,” she said into the phone, keeping her voice low but steady; whispering would only attract attention. When Ruth demurred in her little-girl tone, Camille felt her own growing harder. “Because it’s not true, that’s why. The quote is inaccurate and damaging. And we were off the record.” When the journalist continued to object, Camille could think of nothing else to do except slam down the phone. So she did that. Then she stood outside Josh’s office door and hauled in a deep breath. She had to tell him. Better he found out from her than someone else. She rapped three times.
“Wait!” Josh shouted from inside. “Unless it’s Camille, in which case, get in here.”
He already knows.
Camille went inside and closed the door. She sat on a red nylon chair at his desk, flinching when he thumped the coffee machine. It gurgled and he hit it again. He used language she never expected to hear from a diplomat, then went to the window, rubbing a coffee capsule against his thigh as though he might absorb caffeine that way.
“Ruth Chin,” Josh said at last. “Reuters News Agency.” His voice could have cooled the midday sun.
“I spoke to her last week.”
“The Straits Times just called. They want a statement in res
ponse to a story Reuters published a few minutes ago, in which the British High Commission demands that the Singapore government upholds UK standards of human rights for maids. Direct quotes coming from this office.” Josh hurled the coffee capsule across the room. Camille heard it bounce off the office door. “This is a storm of shit. A tropical typhoon of brown stuff. I have to brief the high commissioner in five minutes. In turn, he has been summoned to meet the foreign minister. Tell me that Ruth Chin plucked this quote out of the air and we can demand a retraction.”
“I just called her, and she says no retraction.”
“I’ll deal with her editor,” he said sharply. “Tell me it had nothing to do with your involvement with HELP.”
“I gave her general quotes about foreign influence in domestic affairs before I knew she was working on this story. At the same time, she asked me for a contact at HELP and I put her in touch with the lawyer—”
“You spoke to Ruth Chin about HELP?”
“Off the record—”
“No such thing as off the record.”
Camille pressed her lips together. Josh retrieved the coffee capsule, which he slotted into the machine, then stroked a flashing button. This time, the machine didn’t dare defy him.
“You promised me,” he said, watching brown stuff fill his cup. “I made it quite clear that your activities at HELP are incompatible with this job. But you used this thing with Ruth Chin to push your own agenda—”
“She misquoted—”
Josh held up one flat hand, and Camille fell silent. “Go home.”
“I’ll call Ruth again—”
“You’re suspended until further notice. Go home.”
“We were off the record. She has to honor that—”
“There is no honor, Camille.” Josh took his cup. “No honor at all.” The phone on his desk rang and he swore. “It’s the high commissioner. Go on: out.” She scurried from his office to a soundtrack of her boss groveling. “We’ll have to ride this one out, sir,” he was saying. “Even if I could get a retraction, which I doubt, we have to consider that it might draw more attention to the story . . .”
