Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I love living like this more than I can ever say. Whatever happens in the rest of my life (and I have a pretty good idea now of the way I’d like it to go – more of that in a minute), I know that it will never get better than this. This has been my turning point. Talking to Rachel today was the first time I felt I just wanted to hang out with someone and relax. I felt the tension drift away.

I come with no baggage, here. Travellers all dress the same, in the clothes you buy at the stalls. The baggy trousers, Thai Coca-Cola T-shirts, flip-flops. I’m a million miles away from the privately educated uptight London girl who avoided trouble at all costs.

So, things could go two ways for the new improved me. I might get caught this time. Then I would just see what happened. It would be horrific, I know, but I almost don’t care. I’d rather that happened than that I went back to the life I used to have. If I were caught, I’d be in the papers and they’d pardon me because I’m young and female. Everyone at home would be astonished. My dad would feel terrible, and he would be mightily embarrassed in front of all his ‘contacts’.

Alternatively, I stop. And I stay in Asia, and I get a sensible job, in Bangkok or Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. I could live out here and travel around. The more I think about it, the more I want to do that. For the first time, I don’t want to be caught crossing the border. That is slightly worrying. It means there is too much at stake.

April 3rd

I’m sitting out on my little rotting balcony now, in the early morning, and I can see Rachel bustling around her own shack, checking if the sarong and bikini she hung up last night are dry.

Rachel is my new friend. She’s from New Zealand. A couple of days ago we had a ‘friendship at first sight’ moment, actually quite like Jake and me with our ‘lust at first sight’. Sometimes being a backpacker is like being a four-year-old. When you’re four, you go to a playground, walk up to another child and say ‘I’m four,’ and they say ‘So am I,’ and you’re friends. It’s like that. I saw Rachel, liked her, and we started talking, and so we became friends.

She’s tall and slim and gorgeous. I’m looking across at her now, wishing I had her bone structure and her long hair. She looks like a French film star or something, and she’s funny.

She’s just turned round and smiled at me and asked why I’m staring. She even said, ‘Are you writing about me?’

We met right here, when I was standing on my balcony early in the morning a couple of days ago, looking out at the sea. I woke earlier than this and went out to watch the fishing boats in the pinkish glow of the sunrise. I was standing there in just a baggy T-shirt and knickers, gazing and thinking, when she said, ‘Morning!’ and it shocked me so much that I screamed.

Then I laughed because I felt stupid, as she was just on the next balcony, a few metres away, doing exactly the same thing as me. Standing there looking out at the sea.

‘I’m Lara,’ I told her, though I am never that forward. Normally I keep the wall up for as long as I can.

‘Rachel,’ she said.

‘Australian?’

‘Kiwi.’

‘Oh, sorry, is that a faux pas?’

‘Yeah. It would have been if I was incredibly precious and chippy.’ And just like that, we were friends. We went to breakfast together, lay on the beach together, and chatted when we felt like it, swapped novels, said nothing when we felt like saying nothing. She found an unlikely little Scrabble set on a shelf in a bar, and we’ve played over and over again. We’re very evenly matched.

I’ve never had a friend like Rachel before. Which, I can now see, is because home life has been so constrained, so uptight, so miserable that I never managed a proper friendship. How pathetic.

She doesn’t have an idyllic home situation either, though she hasn’t said much about it. I haven’t told her the tawdry story of my boring boyfriend either – the thing that brought me out here – but I will.

And now the sun is getting stronger and I need to put some cream on, and a hat, or I’ll get burned. Rachel’s setting off from her bungalow, heading down the steps towards mine. I might suggest we halve costs by moving into one of them together.

April 6th

I keep the phone on a splintery little shelf that I can only reach by standing on my rickety chair, and although I still switch it on and check it twice a day, more and more I don’t actually want to hear from Jake.

I wish I could stay here for ever. No one can reach me. There are no letters, no cards, no emails, and only Jake has my phone number. Nobody from the wider world has the faintest idea where I am.

It is strange to live in a world in which my own parents, Bernard and Victoria Wilberforce, depend on filthy money procured for them by their corrupted favourite child. Just so they can keep up appearances in suburbia. They might not know where their money comes from, but they should ask. How could they let me be doing this on the other side of the world? How can they not care? It makes me wonder if they even like me at all.

I always pretended I wasn’t their favourite, even though nothing could have been more obvious. Olivia told me they loved me better than her hundreds, probably thousands of times, and I always denied it because I was hardly going to say ‘yes, of course they do’. Now I am far enough away. I have no idea why, but Dad always appeared to hate her. No wonder she turned out so vile.

I will never forgive Dad for that day. He took me aside, into his study, a room we were rarely allowed to go into. It smells of stale cigarettes in there, because he smokes with the window slightly open and thinks that means it’s ventilated.

We sat at his stupid shiny desk, and I remember that it was so polished I could see my face in it, though I pretended I wasn’t doing that.

‘Lara,’ he said. ‘Look. I’m going to tell you something that I need you to keep to yourself.’

I assumed he was going to introduce me to some girlfriend. It flashed through my mind that she must be pregnant, if he was reduced to telling me about her.

But instead he said: ‘My business. The wine trade. It’s not doing quite as well as I’ve led people to believe. I’ve got plans in place and we can do fine with a few provisos that I won’t go into. But for the moment it’s lurching rather closer than I’d like towards, well … bankruptcy, I suppose. That’s what I’m looking at. Your mother has an idea that things are difficult, but of course one goes through difficult times as a matter of course. This is not like that.’

I remember holding my fingertips on the polished table and watching them meet their reflections. That was because I could not think of anything to say.

‘I know you’re job-hunting, but you’ll find one soon, won’t you, darling? You’re qualified in an excellent profession.’

‘Yes. I’m sure.’

‘You girls had expensive educations.’

‘Right.’

And that was when he told me his backup plan. The thing he would do if I didn’t, somehow, help to bail him out of his mess. He said that Leon had helped him so far but that he couldn’t ask him for any more. He mentioned life insurance. I knew what he was implying.

I hated him. I had only ever hated Olivia before. A whole world opened up before me in that instant. He was vulnerable and needy and pathetic. I didn’t have to court his approval any more. I could hate him. That meant I didn’t have to behave like a terrified sheep, always anticipating what would please him and what wouldn’t. New pathways appeared, shimmering in front of me.

I muttered something.

‘You have no idea what it means to me,’ he said. ‘My Lara.’

I should have told him to go ahead and top himself. He wouldn’t have done it. Businesses collapse all the time. People deal with it, without threatening their twenty-two-year-old daughter with suicide unless they magic up some cash.