Emily Barr - The Sleeper

‘This is astonishing,’ he said. He was on his feet, pacing the room. ‘Then we must get out there and find her. You have brought me the only good news I’ve had in a very long time. I will help you at every stage. I’ll do anything. Funding, whatever it takes.’

‘You – at least I presume it was you – went to a police station with her and she retracted a statement she’d made about drug smuggling,’ I told him. His eyes widened.

‘My God, you are good. If you ever want a job, come to me, seriously. You know about it?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘So you’ll understand how sensitive this is.’

‘Yes.’ I was bluffing, but he was barely listening.

‘She flew to Bangkok.’

‘I want to go out there,’ I heard myself say, again. ‘And search for her.’

He was not looking at me. He was frowning, thinking.

‘Would you? Would you do that? If we could do it ourselves, without involving the police, we might not scare her off. I can’t imagine why she’d go back there. Unless she might not have gone of her own accord. If Jake were at large, if he’d somehow got her under his control. Then, perhaps, I can see why she’d be in Bangkok. When the user of your passport took that flight, do we know if she did it alone?’

‘No idea.’

I was desperate to ask about Jake but I did not. I wanted Leon to think I knew more than I did, so that he would trust me properly.

He sighed.

‘Iris. Come out for a drink with me. Let’s get away from this office and do some proper planning.’

I smiled at him, sensing that, at last, things were moving.

‘OK,’ I agreed, ‘but I’m only on soft drinks today. I overdid it a little last night.’

I woke the next morning stretched out across my hotel bed. I was going to fly to Bangkok: Leon and I had booked my flight last night. He had persuaded me to have one glass of velvety red wine with him, in a little bar in the City, and we had discussed everything.

I had an idea, now, of who Jake might be. Even if Sam had not managed to cross Falmouth to post me the diary (and I was sure, in fact, that he would have thought better of it and gone to the police), I would still be able to go to Bangkok and look for her. I yawned and stretched, luxuriating in the fact that I was not hung over any more. I needed to call Alex.

There was a knock on the door, and I staggered across the room to answer it. It was, I noticed from my phone, half past nine. I had not slept this well for years.

‘Some post for you, madam,’ said a young man, and he handed me a Jiffy Bag. I thanked him, wondering whether he wanted a tip, and put the kettle on before I ripped the envelope open. Sam had scrawled my name and the hotel’s address with a thick marker pen.

The book was a battered hard-backed diary, black and thick, dirty along the edges of the pages. I sat down on the edge of the bed and began to read.

part three

Lara’s diary

March 21st 1999

Sydney

Jake is back!! I can hardly bear it – it’s so wonderful and so tinged with terror. I just want to touch him and look at him.

Nearly time to leave Australia. He arrived this afternoon, from wherever it is he goes in between things, and so this morning, to while away some time, I went and picked up my letters from the poste restante. I wasn’t going to bother, and now I wish I hadn’t. One from Mum, a nasty little postcard from Olivia, and a letter from Leon and Sally, written by Sally.

I dashed off a quick reply to Mum.

I’m in Sydney for a week or so, because I needed to renew my Thai visa , I wrote primly. It is a lovely city and I look forward to coming back for longer one day, but for now I need to get back to Bangkok for my job . That will keep everyone happy. That is the sort of thing golden Lara would have written.

The job I am claiming to have would come with its own visa, but no one would bother to think about that, except perhaps Leon.

I can’t wait to get away from here. Australia is too clean! I need to get back to Thailand. At least I have Jake with me now – it means things are moving.

I wish Dad would tell me whether Mum knows (his part of) the truth or not. Her letter has made me feel really down. I envy other people their motherly mothers. My life would be totally different if I’d had one who would talk to her children as if they were not little inconveniences she vaguely recognised. Imagine a mummy-ish mother who treated school plays etc. as something she actively wanted to go to! She is the person who could have made Olivia and me tolerate each other, but she never bothered to try. If Mum had been open to any sort of meaningful interaction, I would never have had to court Dad so much, and I would not be here now, doing this to bail him out.

So all this is her fault! If I told her that she’d just say ‘Oh, is it? Sorry,’ and drift away.

When we write our little letters, are we both leaving the huge thing unsaid, or is her innocence genuine? ‘Things have been difficult with Dad’s business,’ she said in today’s letter, ‘but onwards and upwards!’

Yes – things have been so difficult with Dad’s business that he asked me to pay him back for my private school, which of course I never asked to go to. And that is what I am doing. Mum can’t know about it or she wouldn’t have written that. Would she?

I ripped up Olivia’s ironic postcard of Buckingham Palace. She didn’t even apologise, just wrote something like ‘I hope you’re having a good time’, which was her at her very friendliest. She’s not going to be hearing from me any time soon, or indeed ever again.

Anyway. The family are on the other side of the world, which is the best place for them. Tomorrow is the day. The thrill of it makes me alive in a way nothing else has ever done.

Now I must go because Jake is waiting for us to go out for some low-key food and a couple of beers. I will force myself to eat even though I am not remotely hungry. I’m too excited to be hungry.

Tomorrow I will be in Thailand. Trip number four. Maybe I should have stopped after three. This seems to be pushing my luck a little, but I know I can do it. I am good at this. Fingers crossed …

March 22nd

Bangkok

It’s hot. Muggy. Smelly. I love it.

I did it. My writing is terrible because my pen is trembling all over the place again. I actually did it.

This is the most incredible high. I want to sing and dance all the way down the Khao San Road. I want to climb on to a precarious corrugated-iron roof and throw my arms up and yell at the heavens. No one beats me. I beat the system.

I wish I could tell Olivia, just to shock her. She would never believe it.

I did nothing that was visible to the outside world. I just did the exact same thing that everyone around me was doing. Then I got a taxi to the Khao San Road to hide amongst the backpackers, and checked into an anonymous fleapit guest house. I was in the café reading a book and drinking my third Coke when Jake arrived, hugged me, told me I was wonderful, while Derek (looking worse than ever – he’s taking that wild hair, wild beard backpacker disguise to its outer limit, I feel) picked up the jacket and vanished. Mission four successfully completed. I was completely calm throughout.

Every time, there’s a part of me that wants it not to work. I couldn’t do it otherwise. If I was desperate to hang on to my normal life and to go home and carry on being the golden bloody girl, I would not be able to keep my head and channel the icy cool. I would be living like every other dull backpacker does round here, treating the world as my playground and thinking I was being original or different.

I can’t believe that, at last, I get to be bad. I remember how I would watch the scary crowd at school, the people who didn’t go to lessons if they didn’t fancy it, who didn’t bother with homework, who fought and swore and shrugged at the consequences. And I knew that I could have been one of them. For some reason, I wasn’t. It was there, deep inside me, and now it is out.