The Trailing Spouse

by Jo Furniss

  Amanda flushed as though they’d already stepped into the sunlight.

  “But no fussing, do you hear?” Laura strode off toward the restrooms. “And I have to be at the airport by five.”

  Later, Laura had her boarding pass printed and no luggage to check in, so they walked straight to passport control.

  “Can I visit the ship sometime?”

  “The cabins are tiny.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Laura pulled her daughter into a hug that consisted of bumping breastbones.

  “Of course you can visit. Get yourself sorted out first. We’re leaving for Bangladesh in the morning, should be interesting. You could join us in Dhaka when you’re ready?”

  Amanda nodded.

  “You have more strength than you imagine.” Laura moved toward the security officer, brandishing her boarding pass.

  “Mother?”

  “I must go—”

  “Do you hate Dad?”

  “I don’t like him. But for some reason I keep loving him.”

  “Do you regret having a child with someone you don’t like?”

  Laura came back and placed a cool palm on Amanda’s cheek. “You’re a consolation, never a regret.” She replaced her hand with an equally cool kiss. “And anyway, you can make the most of regrets. They’re a marvelous incentive to change. Thank you for coming with me today, to put my mind at rest.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Amanda thought about her mother’s regrets all the way back to the Attica. She imagined how she must have spent months gathering proof of her father’s financial irregularities, which included siphoning off funds from charitable organizations. How she must have known that public opprobrium would rain down—that her name would be stained along with her husband’s—and she must have foreseen the loss the family would suffer: home, security, status. But she did it anyway. And she did it alone.

  For the next two hours, Amanda went methodically through the apartment. Every drawer, every inch of wardrobe, even Josie’s underwear drawer. She went back over two years’ worth of business trips and looked for corresponding cases of women missing or killed, raising a few more question marks. The facts were organized in her mind, but she still hadn’t found anything that counted as evidence. She had the key card from the Pfannenstiel Hotel in Zurich, but that was circumstantial. There was one last place she hadn’t searched. A set of keys in a drawer in the bureau had a spare for Ed’s downtown office. Amanda called a taxi.

  Traffic backed up in the evening rush hour as they passed Raffles Hotel, lit up like a wedding cake. She directed the driver to let her out; she’d move faster on foot. Cutting through the tropical courtyard, she reached North Bridge Road and strode between angry brake lights toward the Central Library—Josie’s favorite haunt—using the landmark to orient herself to a side street where Ed’s office was located. A night guard barely registered her as she slipped through the automatic doors. She took the lift and followed the dimly lit corridor. She tried two keys before the third slipped into the lock with no resistance.

  She let the door click behind her. Strip lights blinked on like a drunk person waking up. The office was simple but stylish, a cross between a psychiatry practice and a top-end car showroom. Two tan leather sofas faced each other across a table laden with monochrome photography books. On the wall beside this arrangement was a huge print of the picture Amanda had found on the phone in the maid’s room: a blue sky broken by the dark blur of a propeller. She pulled on a pair of latex cleaning gloves and lifted the frame to peer behind, as though it might hide a safe. When the wall was blank, she felt slightly ridiculous. It’s not The Pink Panther, she thought.

  On the opposite side of the room stood a simple trestle table with an iMac and an Eames chair, also in tan leather. Amanda nudged the mouse and the computer came to life. She tried variations on his password until the screen cleared. She was drawn to Photos. She double-clicked and software whirred to life, taking its time to load. As she squinted her eyes, the flower icon turned into an aircraft propeller. Then fragments of women filled the screen—images from the hidden phone. The lips and skin and pores of other faces. She swallowed a rock that had appeared in her throat. She recognized one of these women.

  The small tattoo on an expanse of skin; a lavender-colored flower that made Amanda think of orchids by the pool. She clicked Get Info to find the date of the photo, then checked her list: it matched her notes for Laureline Mackenzie. On the missing girl’s Facebook page, she found an image that had been used in the media: a gang of schoolgirls with arms thrown high to reveal matching graduation tattoos.

  Amanda moved the arrow to the toolbar and shut down the computer.

  She was wrong.

  The tattoo wasn’t a Singaporean orchid. It was an Australian one. Like her friends—and like the photos on Ed’s computer and the ones he’d hidden in their helper’s room—Laureline Mackenzie had tucked under her arm a Cooktown orchid, the national emblem of her home state of Queensland.

  Chapter 36

  Amanda flailed on the cross-trainer until she was light-headed with a vertiginous sense that she might dive through the window into the morning sun and land in a flower bed, surrounded by orchids. She caught her breath on the hard sofa, her bottom leaving a heart-shaped stain, then she went for water. The wrist monitor showed her heart still racing. She needed money, her own money, the profit from her London house. She could ask Ed to authorize a transfer. And put him on full alert. No, as her mother pointed out, she was capable of taking what she wanted.

  Using online banking, she checked the maximum ATM withdrawal amount for her account: $3,000. With Ed out of the country, she could get away with it for a few days and pay off the buyers of her bags. Or buy flights for her and Josie; screw those grasping women, she needed to look after herself now. She navigated to their joint account. Her thumb went to her lips, and she tugged at a hangnail, leaving a fuchsia rip. The balance had fallen by half a million dollars. She refreshed the page. It was true. Half a million dollars had disappeared from their account. She tapped to see the statement: the money had been transferred the previous day to a numbered account. Offshore. Unidentified.

  She slapped the laptop shut. Her body prickled with adrenaline. She paced by the lift until it arrived, and then she enjoyed its thrilling free fall. Half a million dollars. Along the path to the swimming pool, she slapped away the orchids’ slack pink mouths. How could he do that? She wanted to sink underwater until her lungs screamed and spots appeared before her eyes.

  “Madam!”

  She had marched past a man in a suit before she registered him as Raja.

  “You cannot swim!”

  At the deep end, a worker with a long pole poked at a mass floating in the water.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s another dog, madam.”

  “Dead?” It was such a stupid question that Raja didn’t answer.

  Amanda trailed chlorine back to the apartment. Josie watched the activity at the pool from the kitchen.

  “Whose dog is that?” Amanda said. “They’re going to be devastated.”

  “It’s a Bernese.” Josie turned away. “Gets walked by a maid three times a day. The pest-control people should be more careful.” Amanda watched her count ten grapes into a bowl. She filled a glass with steaming hot water and squeezed in lemon juice, before downing the cloudy liquid in one gulp.

  “Good for the digestion,” Josie said, through contorted lips.

  “What are you struggling to digest? That handful of grapes?”

  Josie picked up the bowl and made to leave.

  “I’m sorry, don’t run off.” Amanda watched her climb onto a high stool, and then got herself a glass and pressed the lemon for the last of its juice, topping it up with hot water. “The trick is to do it on an empty stomach. Then follow it five minutes later with a shot of espresso. Goes through you like an enema.”

  “Spoken like a pro.”

  �
�Being thin was considered one of my achievements back in the day.”

  “What were the others?” Josie bothered a grape with her front teeth.

  “Being rich. Being popular. Being engaged to other rich and popular people.”

  “How many times?”

  “Engaged? Not that many. The proposals dried up after my parents lost their money.”

  Josie spat a seed into the bowl. “Weren’t they really rich, though?”

  “We thought so, but it was mostly on paper. They made a show of being philanthropic when that was in vogue. Set up a charitable foundation. I met Bono. Then my father was done for fraud and I went off the rails.”

  “How?”

  Amanda sipped at the sour water as she considered the nights she couldn’t remember and the ones she’d rather forget. Even though she’d been older than her stepdaughter at the time, her exploits now seemed tame compared to Josie’s. “I subconsciously forced my parents to look after me.” She clattered ice cubes into her glass. “The partying dried up along with the money. I spent my trust fund on a house when I realized my father was dipping into that too.”

  Josie put her hand to her bowl of grapes but found there were none left.

  “I don’t know why I’m talking about this,” Amanda said. “I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. I was given more than most kids get in a lifetime. Except”—she looked in the cupboard for a mug, but it was empty, and when she opened the dishwasher she closed it again on the smell—“except I’d been sent to a school where they taught deportment and polo and they held balls where boys wore white tie and talked about their handicaps, so I wasn’t qualified for real life. They bred a poodle and then expected me to be a—” Her hand flapped around in the air, grasping for a conclusion.

  “Pit bull?”

  “And now I sound like a spoiled cow. Which I was. Am.” Amanda closed her eyes for a second and tried to regroup. She’d been rattled by the sight of that poor creature in the pool.

  “Your parents were caught up in their own drama,” Josie said. “Mine were the same.”

  Josie never mentioned her mother. A chink opened between them, a shard of light.

  “We’re both only children, aren’t we?” Amanda nudged.

  “Parents say they should stay together for the kids. But mine tore each other apart. I tried to get them to stop, act as the go-between, but I couldn’t. They literally tore each other to pieces.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But they were fighting because of me, weren’t they? Neither of them would leave because they wouldn’t leave me.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that—”

  “I trapped them in misery. If they hadn’t had me, they could have walked away. And my mother would still be alive. So it is, it is my fault.”

  Amanda was stunned by the logic.

  “But you’re different,” Josie went on, looking at the distant ships. “You don’t have to stay. You could walk away at any time.”

  Amanda moved around to stand at the end of the counter, putting herself in Josie’s eyeline.

  “But I don’t want to walk away from you,” she said.

  Josie got off her stool and walked past Amanda—their arms almost brushed—to reach the sink and rinse her bowl.

  “You should, you know,” Josie said. “You should go.”

  “Why?”

  She laid the crockery on the draining board, then her face lightened as she pointed through the glass. “The cockatoos are here.” Amanda followed her gaze to see white flashes between palm fronds. Without the raucous squabbling that accompanied the flock, it was like glimpsing angels.

  “You know they’re not indigenous to Singapore?” said Josie. “Just pets who escaped. So why do they hang around where people might catch them? It’s like they’ve got Stockholm syndrome.”

  “Maybe they’re laughing at us? All that screeching could be laughter.”

  Josie shook her head briskly. “They’re scared. In their heart, they know they’re pets.”

  “Are you okay, Josie?” Amanda asked. “You can tell me anything. I’m not a sweet innocent. You won’t frighten me away.” Once again, she had an urge to lay a reassuring hand on the girl, but her hand hovered as though trying to work out if an electric fence was switched on. There was always a tension, an invisible force field that prevented her from reaching Josie. She turned away and laid both hands flat on the cold window, on either side of the hole that Ed had smashed. She spoke instead to Josie’s reflection. “If someone is hurting you—anyone at all—you can tell me. Even if it’s your father. Even if it’s Ed.” When Josie’s gaze didn’t budge from the birds below, Amanda forced herself to stop staring, to look away and give her space. There was a long silence. Amanda steeled herself; clearly, she had to ask her straight out. Has Ed ever touched you? Inappropriately?

  When the cockatoos swept out of sight, Amanda turned back to the kitchen, but Josie was gone.

  Chapter 37

  When Collin returned Camille’s Skype call, he was framed in an Instagram-worthy shot, lying on sand with a sunset bleeding into the sea.

  “Tough life then?” Camille said.

  “We hiked to Tai Long Wan. What’s up? I had missed calls.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “A new friend.”

  “The one from Tinder?”

  “Turns out we have mutual friends from work. Small world.”

  “Are you in love?”

  “It’s our third date, and shut up. She’s right here.” He turned the phone to show a woman with hair the same color as her Ray-Ban lenses, smooth and shiny, so long it covered her bikini top. “I’m hardly listening to your conversation at all,” she said in an international-school accent. “You guys carry on.”

  “Camille, this is Sao Lai. Sao Lai, this is my nosy sister, Camille.”

  Both women said, “Pleased to meet you.”

  “So why all the calls?” Collin said.

  “I need you to come to Yangon.”

  “Oh God . . .”

  “I got the outward clearances and float plans from the port authority. They sailed to Yangon three times in the months before they disappeared.”

  “And what does that prove?”

  “Edward Bonham was in Yangon as well.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My boss told me. He’d been keeping tabs on Bonham in Singapore, and then Bonham surfaced in Yangon too.”

  “That doesn’t make Bonham sound like someone you should trust.”

  “I know. That’s why you’ve got to come and help me.”

  “I’m not going to Yangon to look for ghosts.”

  “But my boss—”

  “Isn’t your boss going to fire you if you act any crazier?”

  “It’s not crazy—”

  “It is!” Collin’s outburst sent Camille’s view of the sunset flying. When the phone settled again, she saw that Sao Lai had laid a comforting hand on her brother’s forearm. She heard him apologize and promise to be back in a few minutes. He got up and strode down the beach. He had a look on his face like an end-of-their-tether parent taking a child for a time-out. “Camille, I don’t know what to say anymore. What do you think you’re going to find in Yangon? It makes no sense.”

  “It makes sense to me.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more about it. It upsets me, don’t you get that?”

  “You pretend not to care, but you do.”

  “Of course I care! I let it eat me up for years, just like you. But I don’t want to waste my life. Before I know it, I’ll be thirty, and you know what they say about turning thirty?”

  “You have to stop blaming your parents.”

  “Exactly. So I’ve let it go. I quit the booze. I’ve got an interview that could mean a serious promotion. Like, life-changing. And this woman”—he glanced back down the beach—“you know how they say you just know when something’s right?”

  Camille’s smile dragge
d tears into her eyes.

  He shrugged at the quaintness of it.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “That’s a relief. I thought you were melting down.”

  “No, I get it. Because that’s how I feel too. I just know.”

  Collin swore under his breath and looked out to sea.

  “This Yangon connection . . . I feel like I’m on a conveyor belt, you know what I mean? It’s showing the way, and I just have to do the legwork. Everything—the paperwork from the port authority, Edward Bonham, the information from my boss—all of it leads to Yangon. I’m going to Yangon, whether you help me or not.”

  There was a long silence, during which she heard the hiss of waves as they drowned in the sand.

  “Good luck, Cami.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then . . . enjoy your date.” She saw a final few seconds of sky before Collin ended the call. She let the phone idle in her hands until the screen went dark. The paperwork from the port authority was laid out in chronological piles, which she gathered up and slid inside a manila folder. She took this to the filing cabinet. Her fingers continued to another section where she’d collated reams of documents relating to helpers. She plucked out her notes on Awmi. The printout of the photo she’d taken of the pill bottles belonging to Edward Bonham slipped onto the floor, and she retrieved it.

  Maybe she was crazy. Chasing secrets and lies. Maybe she should do as Collin had done—get counseling and lock the whole issue behind a door. But she’d tried that before, and it worked for a while, until the handle started rattling, like a scene in a low-budget horror movie. No, she was different from Collin. Same same but different, as they say in Singapore. She’d tried shutting it down; now she would try another tack: confronting it head-on.

  She closed the filing cabinet and went back to her phone. Collin wasn’t the only one with work opportunities. Earlier that day, Sharmila had emailed an intriguing offer: the chance to work as a paralegal, preparing cases involving foreign domestic workers for the International Labour Organization. It was tempting, especially with her BHC job in jeopardy, but Camille sent a polite refusal. Like Collin, she was on the mend. She’d promised to concentrate on her job and she would. This suspension had turned out to be a moment of serendipity, time she needed to sort her head out.