Maya perches on the edge of the copper roll-top bath and softly wipes James’ skin, olive brown and bruised, with a sponge that looks like soft honeycomb.
‘Ow!’
‘Sorry, baby, I’m trying to avoid the cuts, but some do still need cleaning. There’s dirt and mud. I’m not sure they looked you over well enough.’
‘They stitched my eye; they would have said if anything else needed it.’
James speaks gingerly, almost through his teeth, so as not to tear the cracks at the edge of his mouth.
‘But this looks nasty, there’s still dirt in some of the cuts!’
Maya gives a sigh, unhappy with Dr Wong’s ‘first-class’ team. Her brow is sweaty and her cheeks are pink. She took off James’ jumper and her thick cargo trousers, thanks to the steam she worked up cleaning him in the bathroom, so she leans over the bath in her lace-trimmed marl vest and knickers. Worried and exasperated, and trying to remember to be relieved. But she’s tired too.
‘I’ll be fine. I can’t face going out there right now.’
He looks up at Maya, one eye purple and red and swollen shut, while old-fashioned needle-and-thread stitches hold his straight dark brow together. Maya tries not to show the horror she’s feeling as she looks at him; her love, back from a traumatic and violent night he hasn’t yet told her about.
Maya rests the fuzzy, honeycomb sponge on top of the copper taps, dries her hands on a white waffle towel that’s hanging on the radiator and walks over to the window.
‘Uff!’ she says, opening the latch to let in some air. She gently unpeels a slat, cautious so no one sees her in her underwear, peeping out to see more people gathering outside than when she last looked. A white news truck with red letters on it pulls up. Maya knows there will only be more arriving as time goes on. She shuts the slat with a slam.
At least they don’t know he’s right here.
*
At the Police Office Xiengthong Group – a modest white building with brown shutters and not much in the way of security – James was taken away, fingerprinted, swabbed and interviewed. Maya sat nervously on one of the plastic chairs in the waiting area, smiling occasionally at the woman in a beige shirt and trousers sitting behind the desk; anxious that James might be being accused of something; wondering if he had a voice, if he could even speak – if he could even see – or if he needed her to help him. Thinking of how to contact the Foreign Office or speak to the British Ambassador in Vientiane.
What do people do in these situations?
‘It’s all taken care of,’ nodded the officer at the desk, with small teeth and a pretty face. ‘Phone calls being placed.’
Maya wasn’t allowed to be in the room to hear James’ statement, but her panic was abated by the noisy hauling in of a local man with wet, wavy hair to his shoulders and a moustache, flanked by officers with machine guns. He too had a bloody and bruised face.
James hadn’t been flanked by officers with machine guns. This was heartening.
Even more heartening was when the most stern of the police officers walked James back into the waiting area with the plastic chairs and pressed his passport into his hand and patted him on the back.
Maya stood up and flung her arms around James, to another wince.
‘We’ll speak again when the ambassador arrives,’ said a translator with large gold-rimmed glasses. ‘But for now you go back to your hotel and get some rest, Mr Miller.’ She gave him a sympathetic nod.
*
‘It’s getting busier out there,’ Maya says as she pads back to the bathroom. ‘Shall I see if someone from the hospital can come here? I don’t think they cleaned you up as well as they should.’
‘It’s fine, they were focusing on getting samples and stuff first. Cleaning later.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘It’s fine, really, they did enough.’
James sounds more irritated than anything but looks up at Maya in the doorway and tries to calm himself.
‘I’m hungry more importantly.’
Maya smiles, her shoulders relaxing a little. ‘I’ll go out and see if I can get some food, maybe some antiseptic cream. There isn’t any in our first-aid kit. I mean, what kind of first-aid kit doesn’t have—’
‘No. Don’t go yet,’ James says through his teeth.
Maya stops and sits down on the closed lid of the toilet. She looks at James as he moves his hair to the side, as he did that first day Maya saw him walking down the platform at Hazelworth station. When she was a stranger to him and she could only dream of being away with him; comfortable enough to bathe with him; the person who would make him right again. If she can, that is.
Maya nods. ‘It can wait. I might have a cereal bar squirrelled away somewhere… I’ll look in a bit.’
She gives him a reassuring smile and turns to reposition his passport, hanging next to her on the radiator, trying to dry out the pages that got so wet she doesn’t know how. She takes the sponge from the taps and plunges it into the bath again and holds it gently to James’ forehead.
You’re back.
Water trickles from the large holes of the sponge, down James’ face, his straight nose swollen and bloodied at the bridge.
I was so worried.
‘What happened?’ Maya whispers.
‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘Start with last night. You left me. Here, in the bath.’
James looks mournful, and sinks back, low into the hot water.
‘Why did you go? Why did you want to be away from me?’
‘I didn’t…’
Maya turns on the tap, to top up the bath with hot water, busying herself while James has a moment to think.
‘I had a job offer, when I went to Skype Brooke. A pretty fucking amazing job offer too.’
Maya smiles acceptingly.
‘I needed to think about it, I…’
She spares him. ‘I know, I know about the job offer.’
‘You do?’
‘I checked your email when you didn’t come back to the hotel. I was so worried…’
James’ puzzled face looks as though the whole debacle with the job offer, his dilemma about whether to accept it or not, was all a lifetime ago, as he struggles to remember the minutiae of what happened before It happened last night.
‘I was too worried to tell you. I didn’t want to cause problems, to rock the boat. So I went for a walk, to take some pictures, mull it over.’
Did he see me and Jon?
Maya takes a deep breath and exhales towards the ceiling, steeling herself for what’s to come.
‘So I went back to the internet cafe, I emailed Kaye-French and I turned it down.’
Maya sponges James’ chest. ‘I saw that too.’
She lets him carry on.
‘I went back to the market, to take some more shots: the colours and the children and everything, they were so beautiful. I needed to remember that it was the right thing to do, turning it down… That I wanted to keep travelling. Keep seeing these amazing things. Keep having these mind-blowing experiences.’
Maya reaches for a dark brown bottle and squeezes a teardrop-shaped blob of shampoo into James’ hair, gently making a lather with one hand.
‘I was taking photos of the night market when, through the lens, I saw her. I saw Manon Junot. I thought I must be going mad, so I looked up. I was sure I saw her – with a man – but I lost her in the crowd.’
James’ voice wobbles and he holds his breath and plunges under water, to rinse his hair, to gather himself.
‘No no no! Don’t get your stitches wet! They said not to if you can help it!’
James rises but doesn’t care. He just continues.
‘I couldn’t see her, in the crowd of the night market. So I looked at the last photo on my roll, I figured it must have been a picture with that woman in it, so I scrolled back and zoomed in. And it bloody was! She was even wearing the clothes they described on the news. But they were dirty, she didn’t look well.’
Maya nods, wide eyes encouraging him to go on.
James ducks under again and rises back up, his hair now slicked back, water sloshing onto the tiled floor.
She strokes his exposed forehead, trying not to touch the cut next to his eye.
‘By the time I’d looked back at the picture and was sure it was her, I’d lost them. So I went running through the night market, trying to find her again. It started to rain, it was chaos, and people were packing up… People were appearing and disappearing out of nowhere.’
Maya remembers the fat drops; her hair still smells of its residue.
‘I’d seen she was with a man. But they didn’t look right, they didn’t look like a couple. She looked like a child with a grown-up, a parent – she was so small and so skinny. I searched in the direction I thought they were most likely to have gone and I couldn’t believe it, I saw them up ahead.’
Maya inhales a brief gasp before talking. ‘It was her James, you found her.’
‘Yeah, and I followed her. I followed them.’
‘Where to?’
‘Down by the river, right near where we finished kayaking. She saw me following and looked wary, like she was scared of me, not him, so I thought I might be being ridiculous, and I almost turned around. She put her arm around him, as if to tell me to go away, so I hung back. Pretended to take photos. But I could see fear and this weird look in her eyes. Like a catatonic, lifeless look. It wasn’t right, and I thought if it was her, if she was Manon Junot, then this wasn’t something I could walk away from. I shouldn’t have walked away from it.’
‘You didn’t walk away, you rescued her!’
Maya turns off the tap and lets the steam roll up and over James’ wounds, sweat and salt helping cleanse him. Her cheeks glow pinker as she leans in.
‘What did he look like, the man? Was it the guy from the police station?’
James shrugs. He didn’t see the man being brought in under armed guard, flanked by a formation of men with machine guns, shortly before James was allowed to leave.
‘He was older than us, about fifty? I dunno. Dirty. Curly hair, wet with the rain, or maybe it was greasy. And this moustache.’ James both sweats and shivers, as he draws a moustache on his face with his fingers. ‘I followed them along the river. It must have been for hours. Through the thick trees. I kept tripping on roots and vines. I went all along the bank we kayaked past, I couldn’t believe it. It was getting darker and darker…’ James eases his palms over his face to galvanise himself as Maya leans on the edge of the bath, elbows out, her chin on her flat hands. ‘I was having to follow quite a way behind them so they didn’t see me. She looked back a few times to check I wasn’t there.’
‘Maybe she was checking you were there?’
James raises his eyebrows and his stitches crinkle.
‘Maybe…’ he winces, through gritted teeth.
‘So where did you end up?’
‘It was dark and I was tripping over the tree roots. All these roots were everywhere. And I was so worried about getting back to you. I knew you’d be going crazy and be so worried – I’m so so sorry. But it was Manon fucking Junot!’
‘It’s OK, it’s OK. I survived.’
Now isn’t the time for Maya to tell James that it was the most frightening night of her life too.
‘So I walked, kind of slowly, knowing I could be losing them. But I didn’t want the twigs or branches to snap, and in some places it was really quiet, you couldn’t even hear the river – when the rain stopped, it was total silence. But I had to keep up too, to not lose them. I didn’t know where we were heading.’
‘You’re so brave.’
Maya gasps, thinking about what might have happened to him – what did happen – and the hideousness of the notion of life without James. The insight into it last night was horrific enough.
‘They stopped at this brick hut, really small, must have been halfway to the waterfall we went to, and a light went on inside, so I sat against a trunk trying to listen. Wondering what the fuck to do. Trying to catch my breath, get some energy. I was knackered, to be honest.’
Maya strokes the curve of James’ arm. ‘Poor baby.’
‘So I sat there for ages in the damp and the dark. Mosquitoes buzzing in my ears. I could feel all these things sucking and biting me…’ James points to tiny circles of blood on the skin around his ankles. ‘I needed to hear whether she was being held against her will, or whether she’d chosen to go missing. I needed proof before I went charging in there. I still couldn’t believe it was her. What if she’d just wanted to check out? What if she just wanted a quiet life and everyone had got the wrong end of the stick?’
‘No, of course not. Of course that wasn’t it.’
‘Well, I didn’t know what to do. But I remembered her family; her mental health. She didn’t look like a happy woman, or a woman in love, or a woman who might have chosen this – she was thin and dirty. Her eyes looked both alert and dead at the same time.’
‘I saw them,’ Maya concurs. ‘As you put her on the trolley at the hospital.’
‘So I sat and listened and wondered what to do. Tried to rest to get my energy up after the kayaking and the walk, but I could feel the leeches; the rain was making me shiver. I thought “What are you waiting for?” There was no right time. It was dark, they turned out the light, and I couldn’t see anything above the canopy of the forest. So I waited for the moon to get higher, so I had my best chance of light, but it just wasn’t showing through. Maybe it had peaked. I couldn’t work out what time it was. I couldn’t see my watch. It was pitch black.’
‘You need a new watch. We should have kept our phones!’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter now.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I told myself to stop being a coward.’
‘You are not a coward.’
‘She needed me. You needed me. So I knocked on the door.’
‘What happened?’
James grits his teeth. ‘He opened it and just punched me, right in the face. Smashed my glasses and my eyes. He must have known I was coming.’
Maya cries as she dabs James’ less swollen eye with the sponge, bright pink and red where blood has congealed around a smaller cut.
‘My baby.’
‘She was there, sitting on the floor, chained to a little bed, like a kid’s bed. She looked neither afraid nor relieved.’
James winces.
‘Ow!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I was on the ground, I fell back even though the guy was smaller than me, but he was strong, so I had to get back up and fight. I couldn’t leave without her. By then I had no choice.’
‘Why didn’t you come back, call the police?’
‘Another few hours to get back to town? I don’t know what might have happened. I had no choice. He was feral and angry and holding her captive. I had to fight. I’ve never had a fight in my life.’
‘I know…’
‘But I was taller than him. I was younger than him. I hit him, Maya. I hit him, and he was punching me back. But I kept hitting until he fell back on the bed and I had enough time to get her out.’
‘Shhh, it’s OK, the police have him. I saw the man you described, he was dragged into the police station. He’s locked up.’
James takes a little comfort from this, and continues.
‘She put up a fight too – tried to kick me away – but she had no strength. She passed out on me as I carried her, she was flimsy but also heavy, it was weird.’
‘Shit.’
‘And all the time, as I was carrying her back – in the dark, and I couldn’t see – I thought I was about to get it, a blow to the back of my head. I was just waiting for it, waiting to be struck – all the way back to town.’
James sinks underwater again to cleanse his sorrow.
‘It’s OK,’ Maya says with a smile, pushing him back up with a hand pressed to his hair-smattered stomach. Stroking his swollen nose with her finger. ‘You did it. You found Manon Junot! You rescued her, and now her family can hold her and hug her and get her the help she needs. You did it, James. This will be news all over the world soon.’
James looks to Maya, horrified. ‘I can’t go out there. I just want to sleep.’
‘That’s fine, you sleep. The ambassador might be hours, we don’t know. I won’t let anyone talk to you until you’re ready. I’ve got your back.’
James shuts his eyes in relief and the swelling of his closed eye seems to subside a little, as relaxation creeps over his face.
Maya grabs the towel above the passport, also warming on the radiator, and holds it, crisp and taut at each end.
She changes her tone. ‘It wasn’t the right thing to do you know.’
He opens his eyes – or tries to – and looks at Maya.
‘What wasn’t?’
‘Turning down the big A-list wedding. I mean, Hugo Linden and Ashley Jolly want James Miller to photograph their wedding?! Film director Hugo Linden, who must know shitloads of camera people, cinematographers, set photographers – and they want you? It’s amazing. You were trying to convince yourself that staying here, with me, was the right thing to do. When it wasn’t.’
‘May—’
‘It’s OK. I accepted it for you.’
‘What?’
‘I emailed her back. Brooke. Must have been a couple of hours later, pretended I was you.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, “Sorry, had a moment of madness, but rethought it and if it’s not too late…” kinda thing. Said, “I’d really love to do it – where do I sign?”’
‘You did?’
James’ face brightens.
Maya nods.
‘What did she say?’
‘She messaged right back. Said, “get your arse on a plane asap”.’ Maya looks up at the clock. ‘There’s still time – although hopefully even a supermodel diva like Ashley Jolly would understand you being waylaid…’
James rubs his eyes. ‘Wow.’
‘I’m sorry I held you back. I know it’s what you want. Not this self-indulgent trust-fund backpacking malarkey.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘It’s OK, I get it.’
James looks up sheepishly at Maya, through his one good eye. ‘I don’t want to go back without you. But I don’t want to hold you back either.’
Maya lets go of the corners of the towel and lets it fall to her lap. ‘We want different things, James. I thought this would be a good idea, a great thing to do: go travelling, get it all out of my system before we went home, I got a dream job with my diploma or something, and maybe we tried for a baby…’
James exhales across the bath, towards his crinkled toes, causing a ripple in the water.
‘But I could see you flinching every time I mentioned travels – or our life after it – but it’s OK.’
‘It’s not that I didn’t—’
‘It’s fine, I totally understand. I am a bit full-on…’
Maya stands up from the closed toilet seat and perches on the bath’s edge. She opens the towel out again, so James can get out, get some rest. So he can go home.
He looks up at Maya’s freckled face, sees the tension in her knuckles as she clutches the towel corners taut. And he knows he has to be brave again.