Guillaume’s brown eyes, rimmed with long curly lashes, were the first things that Sienna saw the following morning. He was propped on one elbow, watching her. And although Sienna was aching head to toe from sleeping on a stone floor, the sight of Guillaume seemed to numb the pain.
‘You look even more beautiful than you did yesterday,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘Even when I thought you were a goddess.’
Sienna laughed, but suddenly felt self-conscious. She hadn’t showered in … god, it felt like weeks. She didn’t have make-up on and she hadn’t straightened her hair. She was certain she didn’t look beautiful. She was fairly sure she looked like a bag lady.
Guillaume was dressed only in his jeans. His hair was messy and his chin was scratchy, but it didn’t bother her today. In fact, it was kind of turning her on.
Around them the jungle was also waking up – birds flitted around the trees and it sounded like the elephant was having breakfast somewhere nearby. It really was paradise. It almost seemed a shame to leave, but she knew they had a long walk ahead of them – back to the bike and then on to a village. Hopefully they’d find someone to fix the problem by lunchtime.
Sienna threw a sarong over her shoulder and looked for a place to freshen up. She found a puddle of water trapped in the stones and splashed some on her face.
‘I can’t get enough of you,’ Guillaume said, watching her dry her face.
She turned to face him and suddenly their lips were together again, his hands caressing her. She clutched at his hair, wanting him – needing him.
‘I don’t want to leave,’ she whispered. ‘I want to stay with you in Shangri-la.’
He smiled. ‘This isn’t going to end when we leave here. I’m going to feel exactly the same way about you tomorrow and the next day and … I meant what I said.’
Sienna nodded. ‘I know.’ But she was starting to come down from the euphoria of the night before. As heavenly as things had been last night and as hot as he still looked this morning, Sienna got the feeling that a relationship with Guillaume definitely had a shelf life. A week would be an eternity for someone like him. Once they left Shangri-la everything might lose its special aura. And there was no escaping the fact that they lived in separate countries.
Neither of them could repeat those three important words either – it was so much harder to say I love you in the daylight. Even the whole gilded cage metaphor seemed a little lame now. They stood for a moment looking at each other, an awkward silence between them.
‘Ready for breakfast – un café et un pain au chocolat?’ he said, eventually.
‘A latte for me, thanks,’ she smiled, playing along.
‘Sorry, we’re out of milk, so I’ll make you an espresso,’ he said, handing her a bottle of water and a piece of chocolate. ‘The espresso is caffeine-free and there’s no pastry on the pain au chocolat. You know – because it’s healthier.’
‘How very thoughtful.’ She smiled.
Sienna ate the chocolate, took a sip from the bottle and then handed it back to Guillaume. ‘Delicious. You’re a good cook.’
Guillaume smiled. ‘I actually am, when I have the ingredients. Maybe I’ll show you some time.’ He put the bottle into the backpack and collected the rest of their things.
‘How long do you think it’ll take to find help?’ she asked.
Guillaume held up a hand. ‘Shh – can you hear that?’
Sienna stopped and listened. She could hear a whining sound, and it was getting louder. ‘The bike tour!’ she cried.
Guillaume climbed onto the roof of the temple and pulled Sienna up with him. From there she could see glimpses of the track. Something was definitely heading in their direction. Now that it was closer it sounded more like a bus. Either way, it meant they weren’t going to have to walk out of the jungle after all.
Sienna felt weirdly sad as the bus approached. ‘We’re saved,’ she said, half-heartedly. ‘So why do I feel like we’re being invaded?’
Guillaume put his arm around Sienna. The two of them stood and watched as a van pulled up at the ruins and a gang of tourists filed out – not a big group, but big enough. Their loud voices rang through the jungle, their eyes taking everything in, like they had just discovered the temple. Sienna felt violated. She knew she was being silly, but she felt like the ruins were her special place. This was her Shangri-la.
‘I guess we better make our peace with the enemy or we’ll be walking back to town,’ Guillaume said, climbing down from the temple roof.
He put out his hand to help Sienna down but she shook her head. She wasn’t ready to go just yet. ‘You go. I’m just going to stay up here a little while longer. Call me when we need to go?’
From her vantage point she studied the visitors as they tottered around the ruins. One guy in particular, with his shirt neatly tucked over his slight paunch, kept drawing her attention. And it was only after she’d watched him for several minutes that she realised with a sudden surge of guilt that he looked just like Daniel. As the guy studied the stonework, completely oblivious to her presence, she thought of her boyfriend, in Singapore, completely unaware of what she’d been up to.
Daniel had taken care of her for a year, put up with her moods and her whims all without complaint, and she had thanked him by cheating on him. She’d been unfaithful. There wasn’t really any other way to look at it.
She cringed at the thought of how flattered she’d been by Guillaume’s smooth talk the previous night. How easily she’d dismissed Daniel from her mind. How much she’d enjoyed being with Guillaume. How impulsive she’d been!
Why? Was she so weak that she couldn’t keep her knickers on? She sighed. Maybe it was the setting – the ancient ruins, the jungle, the sunset – that had swept her away. She wasn’t really sure about anything anymore – including Guillaume.
There was only one thing she was certain of – she couldn’t talk to Daniel about it. He would never, ever forgive her. She’d return home to find the contents of her drawers emptied from the balcony of their thirty-second floor apartment.
For almost an hour Sienna stewed in her confused guilty state on the rooftop, as the tourists explored the ruins. And it was only when the visitors finally started filing back into the van that she put Daniel to the back of her mind again. She would have to work out what to do later. She reluctantly joined the end of the group. Guillaume had gone quiet by that stage – also lost in thought. Sienna could tell he was stressed about whether he’d find his bike, as the van driver hadn’t seen any motorbikes on the way into the jungle. ‘I’m going to be so pissed off if it’s been stolen,’ Guillaume eventually grumbled, as they sat down.
Sienna patted his arm to reassure him but he didn’t even seem to notice. His eyes were glued to the window. They stayed there as the van bounced over potholes and groaned to get over hills. Sienna counted the creeks as they crossed them, remembering they’d walked through two on their way to the ruins. By the time the van crossed the third creek, there was still no sign of the bike. Sienna tried to keep Guillaume’s spirits up.
‘Maybe someone moved it off the road, where it would be safer,’ Sienna suggested.
‘Or maybe it’s been stolen,’ Guillaume groaned, putting his head in his hands. ‘We’re never going to see it again.’
Sienna squeezed his hand. ‘It’s only a motorbike,’ she said. ‘You can replace it.’
‘No, I can’t,’ Guillaume snapped. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’
Sienna dropped his hand and turned away. ‘Look, Guillaume, I’m disappointed, too,’ she said. She felt a strange affection for the rusty old bike – it had, after all, been partly responsible for her epiphany. Not to mention all the clothes she’d bought at the markets, the shoes, make-up, toiletries that had been on the bike. All she had left was the halter-neck dress she was wearing and the diamante flats on her feet. ‘Anyway, I thought you liked Cambodia for its contradictions,’ she said sarcastically.
Guillaume ignored her. He rested his head on the window and closed his eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, all right? You don’t understand.’
Guillaume just looked away and closed his eyes to go to sleep. Sienna wondered why she was even bothering. He was the one who’d been out of his mind on drugs, getting them lost in the jungle. It wasn’t her fault that the bike was gone – it was his. She had lost everything – again – because of his selfishness.
And then she remembered the one thing that she definitely couldn’t afford to lose – her passport. She had no idea where it was. Had Guillaume put it in his backpack when they left the bike? She opened it up. She found the sarongs, a chocolate wrapper, the water bottle, and a couple of mints lying in the bottom of the bag, along with Eddie’s travel journal and a few condoms tucked into an inside pocket. But no passport.
She felt sick. She had no idea what would be involved if she had to replace a passport in Cambodia. She unzipped the front pocket of the backpack, praying that it would be there. Amazingly, there it was, safely tucked away with her mobile and purse.
Sienna breathed a sigh of relief. She kissed the passport, put it back into the side pocket and then pulled out her purse. She counted her money and then ran her finger over her credit cards. It seemed so long ago that she’d last used them. She felt like she’d been stranded in the jungle for a month. She put her purse away and pulled out her mobile. It was strange how she hadn’t missed it. Normally she felt like she was missing a limb without it. Now that it was in her hand, she was desperate to text someone, anyone. She’d turned the phone off to preserve the battery while there was no signal the day before. She turned it on, hoping that maybe they were getting near civilisation again, but there was still nothing.
Sienna dropped the phone into her lap and pulled out Eddie’s travel journal. She figured she might as well see if there was anything in Guillaume’s theory about Eddie leaving them clues until the mobile coverage kicked in. She flicked through the pages scanning the stories for a message. It was mostly the photos that kept catching her attention, though. She turned a page to find a picture of a temple torn from a magazine. The temple was surrounded by a moat and bathed in soft light. ‘Angkor Wat at Sunrise,’ the caption said. She flicked through the next few pages, where there were more pictures of the sprawling stone temple.
In one picture there was a group of monks in orange robes standing by the moat. ‘Buddhist monks at the reflection pool,’ the caption said. ‘The end of a spiritual journey.’
So those guys I keep seeing everywhere are monks, Sienna thought. They seemed to appear in the most unusual places, and she’d noticed that they always looked serene.
Sienna turned another page. A blank page stared back at her. So the temple and the monks were presumably the last thing Eddie had written about before he left. She flicked back to the picture of the monks. Maybe Angkor Wat held some significance for Eddie. She turned the corner of the journal page, so she could ask Guillaume when he woke up.
As the van trundled along, Sienna looked out the window, watching the small villages and rice paddies go by. She couldn’t remember where they were headed, but she hoped it would be a town big enough to have a hotel with a hot shower and a mattress. She was beyond hoping for a pillow menu – any kind of bed would be okay at this point.
As they rumbled into what looked like the outskirts of a proper town, Sienna’s phone sprang to life. She picked it up, excited that she was at last in contact with the outside world – until the phone started receiving all the messages she’d missed while she’d been out of range. They appeared one by one on her home screen. There had to be at least thirty of them, all from Daniel.
She felt sick as she read the most recent one.
Sienna, I’m worried! Are you safe? I know you’re mad at me, but text me. Please!!!!!!!!
Yours forever, Daniel.
Sienna felt another acidic wave of guilt surging through her belly as she read the last line. She and Daniel always ended their texts to each other like that. But it felt like more than just an ordinary sign off now. It seemed like an accusation. It was a reminder of his commitment and of her failure.
She’d been trying to keep him out of her mind while she was in the van, but now he was back with a bullet.
Sienna turned the phone over so she didn’t have to see her boyfriend’s name, but her stomach was still twisted in knots, unsure of how she felt about him and no idea of what was going on with Guillaume. But she had to tell Daniel something – at least to let him know that she was safe.
Hi Daniel, she started. I’m safe and well. Have been out of range, sorry. On my way to…
Sienna leant over to a woman across the aisle. ‘Excuse me – where are we going, please?’ she asked.
‘Back to Siem Reap,’ the woman replied in an American accent.
‘And is that a safe kind of place?’
The woman nodded. ‘Sure, it’s safe enough.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ Sienna smiled and went back to her text.
On my way to Siem Reap – very safe place.
Yours always, Sienna
She reread the text and then sent it.
The woman across the aisle introduced herself as Barbara. ‘You haven’t been to Siem Reap?’ she asked.
Sienna shook her head. ‘I’ve just come from Phnom Penh.’
‘Oh, I loved it there. Did you go to the Russian Market? And the Genocide Museum?’
Sienna nodded as Barbara went on about the many other places she’d been in Cambodia. Normally Sienna found other people’s travel stories rather dull, but she was glad to have a distraction.
‘So what should I see in Siem Reap?’ Sienna asked when Barbara paused to draw breath.
The woman’s jaw dropped open. ‘Are you serious?’
Sienna shrugged. ‘Sorry, I’m not a very good tourist. And I have a rubbish guide.’ She nodded to Guillaume who was slumped against her shoulder.
‘You ever heard of Angkor Wat?’ Barbara said. ‘Some people call it the eighth wonder of the world.’
Sienna’s eyes widened, thinking of Eddie’s journal. She nodded enthusiastically. ‘I know it.’
‘That’s what everyone goes to Siem Reap to see,’ Barbara said. ‘It’s actually just one of the temples in a massive park of temples. It’ll take you a couple of days to see them all, but it’s worth it. Make sure you get there early to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. It’s really quite … spiritual.’
Sienna nodded. ‘Thanks. I’ll do that.’ She was going to ask more about Angkor Wat but she heard a message ping on her mobile. Sienna slowly turned over her phone.
Thank you for your response. I am so glad you are safe. Where are you staying? Yours forever, Daniel.
Sienna turned to Barbara again. ‘Can you recommend any good hotels in Siem Reap?’
The woman smiled, obviously enjoying her new role as tour guide. ‘We’re staying at the Angkor,’ she said. ‘It’s got a nice swimming pool and a wonderful buffet breakfast. Make sure you try the dragon fruit.’
‘Thanks. I will,’ Sienna said and went back to her phone.
Staying at the Angkor,
Yours always, Sienna
She burned with guilt, writing her sign-off. What on earth was she going to do about what had happened the night before? She hoped the text would be enough for the moment to satisfy Daniel. She put the phone back into the backpack, nudging Guillaume as she did so. He stirred, opening his eyes and fixing her with a smile that completely paralysed her. Sparks of confusion and doubt shot through her brain.
‘I’m sorry I was so grumpy before,’ he whispered, putting his arm around her. ‘It’s not your fault my motorbike was stolen.’
Sienna’s annoyance melted. The hurt she felt over their disagreement vanished when she looked into his apologetic eyes. Daniel found it almost impossible to use the word sorry. Sienna always seemed to be the one apologising for something – putting the butter in the wrong part of the fridge, forgetting which countries were involved in which world wars, being too sexy when they were out, not being sexy enough when they were home. Daniel, on the other hand, could never admit a mistake. She realised that he hadn’t even said sorry for leaving her in Cambodia. Guillaume, on the other hand, certainly made plenty of mistakes, but he knew when he was wrong. Sienna’s heart ached with uncertainty again. How was she ever going to sort this mess out?