Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I break the rules on a scale none of those idiots at school could ever have dreamed of. And now I need to put this book away (Jake would go crazy if he knew there was a paper trail) and go out for some serious celebratory drinks.

Bangkok – I love you.

March 25th

I sent almost all the money home. I am, depressingly, the good girl after all.

It’s strange just to be hanging out in Bangkok like every other traveller. In a sense it feels completely safe, but it’s also a bit of a comedown. I haven’t got the energy to do any more sightseeing. Today Jake and I stretched out a ‘full English breakfast’ in the best people-watching café, playing Scrabble and watching the passers-by. I like to look at the extremes: at one end, the teenagers who are away from home for the first time, wide-eyed and scared, still wholesome. You can almost see them filing away their first impressions for transmission home. When I see them, I want to get up and follow them around for a few weeks, to watch what happens as they settle in.

At the other extreme, there are the casualties. These are unnerving, and for different reasons than the obvious ones. All I see along here are the white people, the privileged travellers, and the ones who are the hopeless addicts make me flinch. With their wild beards (every casualty I have ever seen has been a man) and their crazed eyes and the clothes they’ve obviously been wearing for years, they are a little reminder of the fact that it can go wrong.

Anyway. I beat Jake at Scrabble and he pretended not to be annoyed. Then he told me our next trip is in three weeks’ time.

‘I’ve got stuff to take care of,’ he said. ‘So, babes, I’m going to have to leave you to it for a bit. Get yourself to a beach. I got you a mobile phone. I’ll call you when we need you.’

I was a tiny bit annoyed, but I hid it. I can do a few weeks on a Thai beach – it’s not really something to take umbrage at. In fact, I just love him calling me ‘babes’. No one in London would ever have done that. I was never a babe type, back there. Head girl Lara has gone, for ever. She is dead. In her place is a lawbreaking babe with a Thai mobile phone.

March 27th

On the bus out of Bangkok

Jake has gone away. I don’t want to know any more than that. I know that I am brilliant at my role, and my job ends there. It is odd how it makes me glow inside when they tell me they’ve never met anyone who can carry it off like I can. What a strange thing to have a talent for.

My brand-new phone is tucked away in my bag. I will keep it charged and hidden, and I must check it several times a day. Other than that, I am on holiday. I miss Jake, but there are not many things in life that are better than being on a bus with a hefty crime novel, watching the Thai countryside fly by, being aloof whenever anyone looks like they want to talk to me.

This is a tourist coach (at the cheapest possible end of the tourist scale), and everyone on it is a backpacker like me.

This bus is heading for Krabi, and from there I’m going to get a boat to Koh Lanta, and go to a beach and read and chill out. I don’t care if I don’t speak to a single person.

My backpack, devoid, as far as I can tell, of all dodgy contents, is tied to the roof with everyone else’s bags. As this is a cheap bus, it rattles along with its windows open and no air conditioning. It’s hard writing on it.

I think I’d get away with it, if anyone found this book. I’d tell them it was fantasy, and they’d look at me and believe me. Plus I don’t think I’ve actually said it.

A man across the aisle keeps trying to talk to me. I can’t be bothered, so I’m going to pretend to be asleep.

March 31st, I think

I’m lying on the beach, thinking about Jake. We have no future, and that’s one of the things I love about us. We barely have a thing to say to one another. It’s brilliant!

When I first met him, all naïve and hurt by Olly, I thought differently. My mind instantly started to try to fit him into what was expected of me.

A handsome Australian: what a great souvenir, I thought, to bring home from my trip. A handsome Australian husband, perhaps. That would have shown them.

Then, when I realised what he was about, I had to make adjustments to the narrative. That was liberating. He is definitely and hilariously not husband material. This is an adventure we’re having together, and soon, very soon, we’ll both move on. That is the most exciting thing of all. We are only about sex and business, and only for as long as it suits us both.

We met on the Khao San Road. Where else? I was on my own, newly arrived from London and utterly shaken. Dad was apoplectically furious with me for leaving, and even more furious with Olivia for making me go. I was single and on terrible terms with everyone. I knew no one on this entire continent, and had not a clue how to navigate things. I’d bought some clothes from one of the stalls earlier that day so I might blend in a bit, and all I was planning to do was to sit in a café and read a book, perhaps with a beer. That would have been an achievement.

And then I looked up, and he was watching from across the street.

He walked straight over to me, and stood there and smiled.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Jake.’

I couldn’t help myself. I smiled back. ‘Lara,’ I replied.

We walked along the road next to each other, and that was it. That night, that actual night, I discovered the joys of sex, and realised what I had been missing in my boring relationship. He is thirty-three, eleven years older than me. I adore his Australian accent, his curly hair that falls into his face all the time. I love the way he looks at me. I love the way he makes me want to break the rules, to be bad for him. We are not soulmates. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

April 2nd

I’m sitting in bed, under my mozzie net, writing this. Today I made a friend, Rachel. This makes me very happy.

I still haven’t heard from Jake, even though I check my phone all the time. I didn’t really expect to, because I don’t want to know about the transactions etc. That is utterly not my department. My three weeks off come with the understanding that there’s a big job on its way.

All the same, he’s my boyfriend, and I wouldn’t mind the occasional hello. I sent him a text to say I was here and he hasn’t replied. I hope he’s OK, because it occurred to me today that anything could have happened and I wouldn’t know.

There’s nothing I can do, though, but wait.

I know there’s an internet place up on the main road, but I’m staying away from it. I don’t want to read emails and send postcards or anything like that. I just want to lie on the sand and read.

Koh Lanta is a bigger island than I expected – there’s one the boat passed on the way called Koh Jum which was smaller, and loads of very alternative-looking people got off there, so I might move on and see what that’s like in a bit. I probably won’t, though, because that would require momentum and packing, and I’m enjoying not doing those things.

I’m staying at the south of the island, eking out my budget as best I can.

I’ve sent home thousands and thousands of pounds now. Money that I earned by risking my life. Dirty, filthy junkie money. He must know that, really. Only Leon has thought to question my job at the ‘American bank’. It’s much easier for Dad if he takes it at face value.

He even said ‘wherever you’re getting it from’ in his last letter. Bastard.

Anyway. Koh Lanta. I’m staying in a wooden bungalow, very shackish, that I reach by climbing hundreds of steps up the rocks above the sea. It looks out over the water, and across to the land at the other side of the bay. In the night you can see the lights of the boats, fishing boats out on the water. It’s warm and still up here. When I switch the ceiling fan off it gets so hot, sometimes, that I wake up in the night slippery with sweat and hardly able to breathe. That is the only time the anxiety creeps in.