Colin Cotterill - Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach

"Shh," said Mamanoy, and blushed immediately.

I smiled.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"No problem," I replied.

Once paranoia sets in, it's hard to keep it under control.

"We knew they'd be looking for a mother, father, and daughter, so we went in different directions," said Noy. "We came down Highway 41. After Hua Hin we started traveling at night on back roads to avoid highway cameras. We'd find small resorts like yours to rest in in the daytime. We'd drive past, remove the plates, then drive back. We didn't want anyone reporting our registration details. We only stayed at places that didn't insist on seeing our IDs. On the day we came here, we'd been driving all the previous night. We'd stopped at two resorts where they said they had to write down our citizenship card details. They said it was the local regulation."

"Well, you're here now," I said. "And I don't want you pulling any more stunts like today. Now think back. Did you do anything in Pak Nam to draw attention to yourselves?"

"No," said Noy.

"Tell me exactly what you did there."

"We waited for the passenger truck and realized we didn't have money. We'd given your mother the last of our cash for the room here. We hadn't taken the car because we couldn't buy petrol."

"Where was the last place you used your credit card or ATM?"

"Hua Hin."

"That's four hundred kilometers away. Technically they could have traced you to there. All they'd need is someone at the bank to check the records. Either way they'll probably have assumed you were heading south. So, since Hua Hin?"

"All cash."

"We underestimated the costs of food and petrol," said Mamanoy. "We should have taken out more. Enough to get us to Malaysia. We hoped we could use the ATM today and be on a bus before they could trace it."

"So in Pak Nam, you tried the ATM and it was down. You tried to get money on your credit card, but they needed a guarantor. The bank phoned us. At no stage did anyone note down your card number or ask for personal details?"

"No," said Noy.

"Good."

"Not at the bank."

I gasped.

"Somewhere else?"

"I did send a letter EMS while we were waiting to be delivered back here."

"How did you pay for that?"

"We didn't. I told the manager I'd left my wallet at your resort. When we arrived, I borrowed the money from your mother. We'll pay you back."

"I hope you didn't put your actual name in the sender box."

"I left it blank on the EMS form."

"Good. The post office can track that. That's why it costs extra. When the power comes back on, they'll type the details onto the computer."

I was getting as paranoid as them. I mean, who was going to hack the post office express delivery details?

"Tell me you didn't give this resort as your return address."

"Of course not," said Noy. "I put c/o the post office."

"Well, that's something, I suppose."

"Mair!" I shouted. I could hardly hear myself. There was a backhoe twenty meters away digging an escape channel for the flooded river. The local administration had decided my vegetable garden would be the perfect spot for it. Mair was on the veranda of her hut surrounded by creatures like some kindly lady in an old Disney animation. The three dogs were wrestling with her. Sticky had taken an immediate liking to little Beer and seemed to be unaware of how diseased she was. Even antisocial Gogo was tag-teaming with Mair. The monkey lounged on the rattan table above them, unpeeling tiny lady finger bananas. A toad hopped unimpeded across the deck. Two daring parakeets sat on the railing opposite, waiting for dropped bananas, and a whole parliament of ceiling lizards hung above, ever hopeful that the electric light might be switched on. The paraffin lamp attracted, then fricasseed any insects that made it through the drizzle.

"Mair!"

Gogo growled. The others ignored me.

"Yes, child?"

"Do you have the number for your friend at the post office?"

"Nat? Of course I do."

"Can I have it?"

"It's in my phone."

"Where's your phone?"

"Phuket."

"Phuket?"

"I'm assuming so. I contacted the gibbon rehabilitation center at Bang Pae. I'd taken some pictures of Elain here, and I wanted them to see her. See if they'd agree to take her on."

"So naturally you put the phone in the envelope so they could take a look."

"There's probably a way to send the pictures separately, but I couldn't for the life of me get them out. So I'll let them sort it out in Phuket."

"Did you, at least, turn it off?"

"The phone? Naturally. Do you think I'm completely useless? I'm sure animal activists will be able to work out how to turn on a telephone."

Sticky was mating with Mair's foot. He had an impressive erection for a young fellow. I had to turn away.

"Mair, I think the dogs are getting too excited."

"Well, somebody didn't take them for their evening walk, did somebody?"

"Mair, I'm a little bit bogged down here with stuff."

"I forgive you, darling."

"Have you seen Captain Kow around?"

She twitched.

"No. Why should I have?"

"I just want to talk to him."

"He won't tell you anything."

I tell you. Weird is a difficult concept to get your head around. If I ever wanted to waste a few years on a Ph.D. I'd probably look at signs in early life that point to the inevitability of Alzheimer's. Mair had always been that fringe character. Like me, her school and university mates had liked her, I suppose. She was funny, friendly, but too odd to join those cliques that linger later in life. The old school network didn't have a seat for Jitmanat Gesuwan. Her communist jungle years put her in touch with like-minded outcasts, most of whom sought respectability once the armistice was agreed.

Mair never really lusted after respectability. That's what I'd loved about her. Her joy. Her total disregard for Thai etiquette. Not caring what people thought of her. She'd been so unlike all the other mothers. She'd turn up at parent-teacher meetings in shorts and a T-shirt and boots. Unmade up. Unadorned. Unencumbered by shallow considerations. No show at all. And if the headmistress said something stupid-and they all did and everyone in the hall would know it-it would be Mair's hand in the air.

Mair's voice saying what everyone thought. Damn, I loved her at those meetings. I didn't care that I was the daughter of the odd woman. I'd push it to its limits. My trademark dark brown nail varnish, for example. If anyone else had tried that, they'd be dragged in front of the discipline mistress. But me? I was "the daughter." I needed tolerance. They probably had teachers' meetings just about me. I was top in most subjects, so the mother-daughter relationship hadn't retarded me at all. It just made me culturally dubious. If Mair had been Chinese or farang- a white foreigner-the faculty would have had no problem at all in labeling me. Ostentation was commonplace in foreigners. My defect lay in the fact that I was Thai, born of Thai parents from a long, inexhaustible line of Thais. They put the accident of me down to my mother. Neither of us fit. We'd gone our own ways. Me, into the unquenchable fascination of study. Her, into-wherever she was now. She came back to visit us on Earth from time to time, but I knew she had a happier place. I just wondered whether I was headed there too.

The monkey, aka Elain, climbed down from the table and started to pick imaginary ticks out of my mother's hair.

"I've rented a room," said Mair.

"For what?"

"Our Burmese school."

"Mair, we don't have-"

"Don't worry. It was only a hundred baht a month."

"Oh? What type of room can you rent for cheaper than a three-pack of toilet rolls?"

"Well, when I say room, perhaps I mean space. It's the unused back corner of the ice works down at the docks."