And she’s already planning Jeremy’s memorial. She tells me this on the flight to Heathrow as we drink, at last, a glass of decent wine. It’ll be a celebration, of course. Jeremy would hate anyone to be gloomy. She’s going to work out a playlist of his favourite songs and dig out masses of old photos of their life together, all their postings around the world. Will I help her? It’ll bring back old memories.
I thought my torture had ended, but it seems the rack is being screwed tight, all over again. My heart sinks, but how can I refuse?
Manak, Ngotoland
WANG LEI’S BODY is not found for days. It’s a safari tour that discovers it. Nobody knows he’s Chinese because his face is missing; the hyenas got there first.
Chika hears the news by bush telegraph. Nothing goes undiscovered for long, even in the middle of nowhere, for it’s all somewhere for those who inhabit this seemingly empty landscape. Apparently there’s not much left of the body either, but Chika puts two and two together. He’s not a stupid young man; after all, he’s survived by living on his wits.
One of the workers got spooked by the Englishwoman. She’d shouted about reporting it to the authorities and he’d panicked. Wang Lei was the boss and was somehow responsible. Maybe that was their thinking, if they thought at all.
Whether he’d been shot or hacked to death nobody would ever know. Nor whether he was in fact the boss; maybe he was just a middle-man, a cog in the wheel, visiting from the big city. Was this a small outfit or part of a larger organization? Who cared? Life is brutal, for men as well as elephants, and whoever killed him melted away, back into the bush.
Assenonga, West Africa
THE BABY SLEEPS through most of the flight to Africa. The woman in the next seat tells Lorrie how lucky she is, to have such a placid little cutie-pie. And she’s only a week old? Wow.
Lorrie gazes at this infant, who’s hers but not hers. Who looks Chinese but then all babies look Chinese, don’t they? Who’s sleeping peacefully but who’s facing God knows what on this planet, which they’re flying over in the dark. When Lorrie raises the blind a few inches, however, she sees the sky is blood-red, for they’ve leapt forward in time. A new day is dawning and eight hours of her baby’s future have already been swallowed up, lost for ever.
Desperation drives people to do the boldest things, but Lorrie is a desperate woman. She has to find Mr Wang Lei. Why did he never turn up, or respond to her emails? He can’t bail out now. Todd will be home in four days. Her crazy plan has exploded in her face. She had imagined all sorts of disasters, but not this.
Maybe Mr Wang Lei is ill – he’s in hospital with malaria or some obscure African disease and is too weak to communicate with her. Maybe his wife has decided to fly over from Beijing, to join him. Or he’s flown to Beijing to pick her up and fly on to Texas, so they can collect their child together. But if that’s the case why hasn’t he emailed to tell her, or the clinic, about this change of plan? In the past he’s always replied promptly to her emails but since she’s informed him about the birth there’s been silence.
Lorrie has lied to the clinic about this. She’s said he’s been delayed, and will be arriving soon to pick up his child and sign off on the paperwork. They’ll be wanting their fee.
So, of course, does she. Urgently. What’s he playing at? He’s a stranger, he’s Chinese; she has no idea of his motives. If only she could email his wife but the lady has always used her husband’s address, Lorrie has no idea how to get in touch directly with her.
Of course she’s angry with Mr Wang Lei but she’s more bemused – and very, very frightened. She’s flying to an unknown continent – she, who’s only left the States once, for a vacation in Acapulco – on a mission which has every chance of failure. And if that’s the case, her marriage will be destroyed and her children’s future in ruins. She can’t even dare to think about this possibility. Probability. She has to keep her nerve.
She’s still bleeding heavily – is it seeping through to the seat? Her stitches are hurting. And in her arms lies this tiny human being who needs her with the ferocity of utter dependence and who she cannot dare to love, although of course she already does, with equal ferocity. She’s this baby’s mother, she’s carried her for nine months and, with excruciating pain, has brought her into the world. And, so far, there’s nobody else in this world to care for her. Lorrie thinks: Oh my little darling, my cutie-pie, what a beginning.
All she has is an address in Assenonga, the city in West Africa where Mr Wang Lei has his business. This is where he’s based much of the year, and where he was supposed to be staying when the baby was born. No doubt the clinic had his Beijing number but Lorrie didn’t dare contact them before she left the country in case they suspected something had gone wrong. Which it so has, on a scale beyond her imagining. She has to concentrate, hard, on keeping her nerve.
And now she’s in the arrivals hall, struggling with baby and carrycot and bags of bottles and diapers and all the paraphernalia she never thought she’d have to buy. Unexpectedly, in the past few days, she’s become a full-blown mother; she has to catch up with herself.
A kind man heaves her suitcase off the carousel. He’s big and black. A few brief hours and Lorrie has stepped into another continent. She’s in Africa, surrounded by Africans. They heave mountainous bags sealed with masking tape. The noise is deafening. Families are reunited with hugs and shouts, the children clinging to their mothers’ legs. Men in uniform stand around, holding rifles.
If only Todd were here! He would take care of everything, he always does. He’s not just her husband; he’s a military guy, he’s travelled the world. He’s experienced greater dangers than this. But she’s alone. She has no idea what language they speak here, she has no idea about anything.
The baby starts crying. One of the soldiers mutters into his walkie-talkie. Lorrie stands in the great echoing hall, her heart fluttering. Just for now she’s still in a place she recognizes – in airport limbo, sealed off from the outside world, with washrooms and a money exchange and notices in English. Nothing can harm her here; not yet.
But sooner or later she must leave this sanctuary and step into the unknown, with just a piece of paper to guide her.
Assenonga, West Africa
LI JING SITS in her dead husband’s apartment. She’s never been able to imagine his African life and now she’s arrived in Assenonga, his home-from-home, there are few clues to his occupation. Sure, there’s his clothes in the cupboard and a pile of shirts on a chair, fresh from some laundry. On his desk there’s an ashtray filled with stubs, and some loose change. But the apartment is featureless and sparsely furnished – a TV and settee, a dining table and four plastic chairs. It’s a corporate rental in an apartment block of no doubt similar corporate rentals, somewhere in this bewildering, sweltering city.
The police have come and gone. Their chief said they would be back in the morning. He said they had no idea why her husband’s body had been found two hundred miles away in the middle of the bush but that they are pursuing all lines of enquiry.
Thank God Danielle came with her. Jing couldn’t cope with this alone. She had expected her husband’s colleagues to have appeared and offered support, but she doesn’t know who they are or anything about them. So far the only person who’s helped her has been a man from the Chinese embassy, who says he’s trying to trace the location of her husband’s office. This is proving difficult. Jing can offer him little information; all she knows is that her husband was involved in the export business. Maybe he had no office and worked from this apartment. Her ignorance is humiliating. Does it stem from laziness or fear?
No, it’s more than that. She realizes, with startling clarity: my husband kept me in a box. The words go round and round her head. I know nothing and it’s not my fault. He kept me in his marble box and he didn’t have to bind my feet because the bondage was invisible. Is this fair? She doesn’t care. He wanted a simple village girl he could control. He was a control freak! I didn’t even k
now this phrase until now. He controlled my emails. He bought a holiday home without telling me. He arranged for our surrogate baby – ‘Leave it to me,’ he said.
What’s happened to the baby? she wonders. Is she born yet? Jing has no idea, the past few days have been so chaotic. Lei’s computer is gone; she has no way of finding out. She really is stupid. Maybe her husband despised her, but he’s dead now.
Li Jing sits in the arid room, the air conditioner humming. Since she arrived, two days ago, a strange metamorphosis has taken place. She had expected to be plunged into grief but her emergence into the African sunshine has had the opposite effect. The freezing smog of the Beijing winter has lifted and her depression has gone.
She’s free.
Why isn’t she feeling guilty about this? But she feels nothing but liberation. Maybe she’s traumatized. Maybe she’ll feel differently tomorrow. She mustn’t tell Danielle. Even the cynical Danielle, who disliked Lei, would be shocked.
For Lei is not only dead, he’s been brutally murdered. A bullet was found in his body, which is still at the police morgue. What was he doing, alone in the middle of nowhere? What exactly was his work? Jing remembers the muttered phonecalls, the connections to powerful business interests. It made him a fortune, that’s for sure.
He kept me in my box to protect me. Maybe that was it. She must think the best of him; the poor man’s dead.
Her mobile rings. She jumps.
‘Hey, babe, you coming back soon?’ It’s Danielle, phoning from the hotel. ‘Shall I send a cab? I’ve booked us into the spa – body scrub, citrus detox, the works. You need to pamper yourself, sweetheart.’
Jing has remained behind in the apartment in the hope that, once Danielle left, the floodgates would open and she would surrender to grief like a wife. But she remains unmoved. I never loved him.
‘What did you say?’ asks Danielle.
‘Nothing,’ says Jing. ‘No worries, I can walk to the hotel. It’s not far.’
‘Yeah, but is it safe?’
‘You think I’ll be eaten by a lion?’
They’re in the commercial area – hotels, office buildings. The airport is nearby. They could be in Beijing; they could be anywhere.
‘Don’t be a dork,’ says Danielle. ‘This is Africa, darling. It’s not lions that’re the problem, it’s frigging people. Rudi says we should have hired a bodyguard.’ Rudi, her husband, has travelled the world and knows a thing or two. He’s been phoning to check up on them since they arrived. ‘This country has one of the highest crime rates on earth.’
Jing’s thinking: Maybe he wanted to control me because he was so inadequate. I’ll never tell a living soul this, not even Danielle. I might have been a virgin but I do know how it’s supposed to happen. Not the hopeless thrusting and limp, damp failure. She’s blushing, even thinking like this. But now she can admit the truth. Maybe, one day, I’ll meet a man who can satisfy me.
‘Are you there, doll?’ says Danielle.
‘I’m here.’
‘I’m just worried about you, you’ve been ages.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Listen, I’m coming to collect you.’
‘It’s OK, I’m leaving.’
Just then, the doorbell rings.
Jing freezes. She switches off the mobile.
The doorbell rings again.
My husband’s been murdered. It’s only now that it sinks in – truly sinks in. Lei has been involved in criminal activity, of course he has. Why did he never tell her what he’d been doing? It all makes sense; she should have realized it long ago but she’d never dared to put it into words. Stupidity … blindness … self-preservation … Whatever it was, she’s been living in a fantasy world.
How could she have been so simple? Where did she think the money came from? Whoever they are, these people, they tracked him down, and now they’re coming for her. They know she’s here, cowering on the settee.
Jing breaks into a sweat. She picks up the mobile, her hand trembling. Who can she ring, the police? What’s their number?
It’s strange, how things slow down. As she sits there, clutching her mobile, she notices how the light is fading. Outside, the sky is flushed crimson. Lights are illuminated in the apartment block opposite. Is this how her husband felt, before he died? That his life was unravelling, the memories coming thick and fast, and yet his body was as heavy as lead?
Jing sees the egrets, stepping through the stream; she sees her grandmother, clucking at the hens.
Two yellow birds are singing in the green willow tree,
A line of egrets is flying up to the blue sky.
Looking out of the window
The snow lies on the western mountains for a thousand years …
This is the last sight she’ll see, and the last words she’ll hear. She must concentrate on their beauty with every muscle in her body. For now someone’s banging at the door.
Jing jumps up and rushes into the bathroom. She locks the door and stands pressed against it, her heart pounding. It’s dark in here; there’s no window. If she stays very still, perhaps they’ll go away. What can they do with her anyway? She knows nothing.
Her legs buckle and she slides to the floor. She’s seen this in films, people sliding down like this. I’m in a movie, it’s not really happening. I’m an actress, they’re actors!
She’s wet herself. This isn’t a movie, it’s horribly real. Suddenly she’s seized with fury. How could Lei let this happen to her? Why did he need to make so much money? She would have been happier with a modest life. She hates their apartment, stuck up in the sky with no friends around. Her mother’s been turned into a monster. Money’s brought nothing but misery and now she’s going to die.
Jing doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there in a heap. Time has both speeded up and frozen. She holds her breath, listening for any sound of movement in the other room.
Silence. All she can hear is the air conditioner humming.
Finally she climbs to her feet. Softly, very softly, she opens the door.
The lounge is dark. Night has fallen. Even in the gloom, however, she can see that the room is empty. She looks through the bedroom door. There’s nobody here.
She doesn’t dare switch on the light. Not yet. Taking a breath, she goes to the front door and opens it a crack.
The corridor is empty. Whoever was here has gone. Maybe there was a gang of them; maybe they’re coming back. She must grab her handbag and get out of here, fast.
Just then she sees something lying on the floor.
It’s a baby’s bonnet. A tiny, cotton, baby’s bonnet.
Jing, puzzled, picks it up. As she steps back into the flat she notices a piece of paper lying on the floor. Somebody must have slipped it under the door.
She picks it up and switches on the light. It’s a letter, scrawled in pencil.
Dear Mr Wang Lei, please contact me urgently. I have brought you your daughter. I’m staying at the Novotel Hotel, Nelson Mandela Street, Room 114. Yours, Lorelei Russell.
Part Three
Marlborough, England
THE MEMORIAL IS held in the Swan Hotel, Marlborough. This is Jeremy’s home town, a place as alien to me as Africa. I’ve entered a time-warp. It’s hard to believe that these UKIP matrons and puce-faced colonels are actually my age; did they really live through the seventies so hilariously unaltered? There is, however, a hint of Jeremy about some of these old buffers. Not my Jeremy, but the Jeremy I first knew in the Triumph Stag days. This makes him feel disconnected from me – he is disconnected, this day is nothing to do with the two of us.
I have, however, had a hand in organizing it. Bev has loaded countless albums onto my lap and sat on the arm of the chair, snuggled against me, pointing out various photos as she turns the pages. Some albums belong to his mother and show Jeremy as a child. These touch my heart but they’re not daggers in the way the later ones are daggers – the photos of his marriage to Bev, which she has recorded in exhausting d
etail, first as photos and later on her computer. She says she finds this therapeutic, part of the grieving process.
The weird thing is that she seems to have forgotten that he’s a cunt – an elephant-murderer who’s betrayed her and their marriage. I’ve long ago realized that Beverley’s a fantasist but this self-deception is breathtaking. She seems to have reinvented herself as an impresario in widow’s weeds, preparing a show for the public – a show, she says, that will have laughter and tears and some great music, the soundtrack of their life together. She’s told nobody the truth and has sworn me to secrecy. This is Jeremy’s day and she’s going to give him a memorable send-off. In other words, her round-robins are about to hit the stage.
Six months have passed since we flew back to England. To be perfectly frank, Beverley needn’t have told me to keep my mouth shut. I’ve done it anyway, out of shame. My children and the few friends who know about my love affair have commiserated with me about my loss and I don’t want to admit the truth. It would be too humiliating, to confess to such a spectacular disaster and cope with their reactions. So, yet again, Beverley and I have been weirdly bound together. Jeremy is our dirty little secret.
I haven’t seen much of her, anyway, these past months. I’ve been working hard, setting up an online picture library. Days pass when I don’t think about her at all. Apart from the memorial arrangements, the catering and guest list and so on, we’ve reverted to our separate lives. I suspect that she’s as sick of me as I am of her. But there’s something else lurking underneath: a thrumming resentment – even hostility – that arises when people have exposed too much of themselves to each other. It doesn’t just happen with sex.