Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I worked as a waitress in a chain French café near Victoria for as long as it took me to save a chunk of cash, and then, instead of giving it to him, I flew to Bangkok with a backpack.

He was apoplectic. I didn’t care. He could have topped himself then, but he didn’t. And then when Jake made his proposal, I realised I could solve everything.

April 8th

Rachel has moved into my hut. We are sharing a double bed, tucking our mosquito net into the mattress around us at night, creating our own little fortress.

We have plans. I need to stay around here, away from London. This is where I want to build a life.

Rachel needs some money. She was talking about going home to NZ because she’s almost out of funds. I’m paying for things for us both while I try to convince her otherwise. And my desire to stay here, and her need for cash, have made me come up with a plan. I told it to her today, in the bar.

‘We’ll go to Singapore,’ I said. ‘It’s not far from here. We can fly there from Krabi, I’m sure we can. Then you can get a teaching job. You can teach English, or work in an English school, or whatever. I’ll find work too. We’ll work hard and share a flat in Singapore, and save our money. Then we could go to Nepal and live in the mountains for a while.’

She agreed that that would be an excellent plan. We are both going to look into it.

She is the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t think the idea of living on a Nepalese mountain is silly and weird.

April 10th

Oh fuck.

Rachel came up to the hut earlier than me this afternoon. I was still on the beach, half dozing while wondering when I was going to hear from Jake. I was fantasising about throwing the phone into the sea. I had left this book out on the bed, without thinking, and she must have picked it up.

You should never read your friend’s diary. It will never lead to good things. I can imagine her opening it out of curiosity, starting reading, then carrying on, and on, and on as she began to realise the truth.

By the time I got here she had read every word and packed her bags.

‘Drugs?’ she said, as soon as I was close enough. Her face was savage and she looked completely different. ‘You’re a drug smuggler?’

I tried to reason with her. I said, ‘It’s because …’ but she didn’t care.

‘You send money back home, yeah, I know. I read it all, Lara. Your dad, blah blah. I knew there was something you weren’t saying and in the end I just thought, well, I’ll read that book you’re always writing in, and then I’ll know. You carry terrible things across borders, you stupid girl, and you send the money to your dad. That is more fucked up than anything I’ve ever heard in my life.’

Those were her exact words. I will never forget them. She was right.

I asked where she was going. She said she would get her brother to send her some money, and she was going home to NZ. Then she stopped speaking to me. She just walked past. I didn’t move out of the way, so she stepped up on a rock beside the path to get past me.

April 15th

No sign of Rachel. I look for her all the time.

Jake called. Finally. With news.

We’ve got a ‘project’ on. For the amount he’s paying, I can surmise that it must be something major. I have to meet him in Krabi in three days’ time, which means I need to start thinking about leaving Kantiang Bay.

I’m not sure I’ve got the nerve to do it any more. I told him that. He scoffed and said there was no way I was backing out.

I could just run away. He would recruit someone else.

If I do it, it would be the last time, and it would set me up for a new life. I will find a job in Singapore on my own, and I will write to Dad and tell him there’s no more cash coming from me. When I’ve saved up, I’ll go and rent a house in Nepal, exactly as I planned with Rachel, and I’ll write to her and tell her where I am, and perhaps one day she will turn up, walking around the mountainside.

Or I could start that process without doing this job. I could walk away right now. I could catch a plane from Krabi tomorrow, and go on from there, and Jake would never find me. He wouldn’t even try. I wouldn’t have any money, and I’d have to find a job quickly, but that wouldn’t matter. I would manage, because people do.

The money he would pay would buy me a house in the Himalayas outright: I am sure it would. However, it is mad and wrong on so many levels that I cannot begin to imagine what I’ve been thinking of. Have I really done that four times already?

Got to go. Someone’s coming up the steps.

Later

I was terrified when I saw her. I thought she’d come back to tell me off. I accused her of having gone to the police. I was waiting for them to come and arrest me.

In fact I must remember to keep this book properly hidden. I should actually drop it into the sea, and I will. I’m going to lob it off the balcony, straight out across the rocks and into the water.

She says she needed to go away and think about things. She’s different with me – I keep finding her staring and not speaking. But she says she missed me and she couldn’t walk away leaving things like that. We had to talk.

There’s a bonfire on the beach tonight, and as ever when that happens, people have appeared with guitars that they have magicked out of somewhere. Right now some local boys (I think) are playing and singing ‘American Pie’. Rachel and I are about to go down and join them. I could completely manage a load of drinks and a drunken singalong.

Later still (a bit drunk)

We sat down by the water’s edge in the hot night air and we talked. If anyone came close we stopped, but mainly I’ve just spent four hours drinking and talking to Rach. I told her everything, every single bit of it. Dad’s business, Olivia/Olly, the lot.

She wanted to know how I do it. I told her about the trance, the way I am completely confident, acting like the head girl. I told her how I spend the flights reading or writing or watching a film, absolutely in control and perfectly calm. I told her about the icy cool that descends when I see the right bag on the conveyor belt. I described how I wheel the trolley, or carry the bag on my back, right through Customs in the absolute certainty that I look conventional beyond question, without feeling the tiniest bit afraid.

And then I described the high, the amazing, all-encompassing joy of having got away with it.

I started to say that I was considering not doing this last one. At the same time, she started to say that I should, that I should do it one last time since I was so good at it. She asked if she could fly with me, just so she could watch what I do. Then we would be in Singapore together, and we could start our new lives as long as I promised my smuggling money would be mine, not Dad’s. We talked about Nepal. She loves that idea as much as I do. I can see the two of us living on a mountainside. It’s something I’ve always dreamed of, and we could actually make it happen. The money I’ve made out here could have set me up for life, but instead I’ve given it all to my dad so his friends don’t have to know his business went wrong. Rachel says it’s my turn to get something out of it.

I’m going to do it.

April 16th

I’ll miss Jake. I’m unbelievably excited at the prospect of seeing him. I want to rip all my clothes off in preparation, and it amazes me that Rachel can’t see that in me. Perhaps she can. She’s had a boyfriend, but I can’t quite work out if it was a boring Olly-boyfriend (I’m laughing now at how much O is completely welcome to him!) or a Jake one. From the way she talks (bitterly), I think her heart must have been in it.

Anyway, I’ll miss him when Rach and I start our new law-abiding lives in Singapore, working towards the mountains, but I’ll find someone else. I don’t want to be a part of his world in the long term. He’s been amazing, and now I know never, ever to settle for someone safe and dull. I’ll always thank Jake for teaching me that. I’m going to hold out for the next person who makes me tingle from head to foot, who makes me unable to think about anything but sex.