Emily Barr - The Sleeper

It hits me again. Guy is dead. The love of my life, the man I adored, is gone. His children have lost their father, his parents their son, his wife her husband. I have lost my future. And it happened because of me.

When I got here, I pictured myself as someone else, a puppet, skulking in the only city I thought I might be able to disappear into, escaping from the bad guy. That stopped working quickly. Now I have no idea. I’m on borrowed time. Something is going to have to change.

I scratch at my hairline. This thing is so hot. I hate it more every day but I don’t dare take it off. Even at night I have it on the pillow like a shredded octopus, ready for emergencies. It stops me going in the sea to cool off.

And now I have run out of money.

I would like to ignore her. She should not be a part of this: it has nothing to do with her at all. But I have to let her find me. I have no money, no peace, nothing at all. I have lost literally everything I had, everything I was. I am half feral.

I left the city because it was sucking me in and I was going to do something terrible. She says she has money. That is all that matters. She has money and she is the only one to have come this close. I can trust her. I have to trust her.

I take a deep breath and tap the screen.

So, I type. You found me. Tell no one else. No one!

I do not write his name. I cannot begin to think of him. But it is Iris who has found me, not him. She must know, by now, that it was him.

I write down a plan. It takes many private Twitter messages. I end by saying, Backup: if things go wrong, go to Food Street .

It is a gamble. But I have no choice: I have enough money left, if I barely eat, for five days. She will be here in three.

chapter twenty-seven

Iris

She had been right about Koh Lanta. I shivered as I stood on the bungalow’s balcony, trying to shake my terror. This was where Lara had met Rachel, and Rachel had died because of that. Kantiang Bay was a place I had read about days earlier in Lara’s diary; and now I was here.

It was as idyllic as she had said. The long beach curved around the bay, with rocks at either end, and palm trees, and restaurants and guest houses at intervals. At the end where I was standing things were relatively built up, with café leading to café and guest bungalows in every available space. Further along I could see a luxurious resort, where people were carried around on little buggies and the villas were distant from each other, with manicured gardens.

Rachel was dead. I had checked and double-checked that. I had even sent an email to a man I thought was her brother, and received a coldly annoyed reply very soon afterwards.

Who is this? Please leave my family alone. My sister took her life three years ago. Kindly do not email again. Philip Atkins.

It could be fake, of course, but I thought it was not. Rachel had not been executed, but pardoned and sent back to a New Zealand jail, where she had killed herself. There was plenty online about it, if you accessed the New Zealand press. Jake, however, was not mentioned anywhere, after the briefest note of his pardon. He, like Lara, had disappeared into thin air.

He would have wanted revenge. He must have come to her and got it. Yet she (I presumed) had written to me on Twitter, terrified. She was hiding out, and she was scared, and she was imploring me not to tell anyone. She was in danger, and I knew I had to protect her; though as far as I could see there was no chance of Jake following me anywhere, because he could have no idea who I was.

Though he could, of course. I realised that he would know my name, because of my stolen passport. There were two Iris Roebucks in Thailand, and I was one of them. That made me conspicuous.

The person who had tweeted me from her account might not, of course, have been Lara at all. It could have been Jake, monitoring her communications. It could have been Rachel: anyone could have written that email from her brother. Words on a screen were not in the least bit trustworthy. I had no idea whatsoever what I was walking into, and I could not tell Alex what I was doing because I knew he would tell me not to.

Lara, or whoever I was meeting, had picked a difficult spot, a place that would involve a hike over rocks across inhospitable shoreline, to the south of the main beach. If it was a trap, there would be no way out; but I was going anyway. I was feeling rash.

There were people lying on the sand, basting themselves. A perfect-looking family, blond and tall, were playing with a frisbee, the little children running to retrieve it whenever it went wide, apologising cutely to sunbathers. A man was out in the water, doggedly swimming across the bay. The place was busy with holidaying Westerners.

I had never been very good at climbing, and I kept stubbing my toes as I made my way over the rocks. It was horrible terrain, particularly in this heat. My phone was tucked inelegantly into my bikini bottoms, and I wished, as soon as I had gone too far to be able to go back, that I had worn a T-shirt, because although it was glorious compared with the sleety February I had left behind, I was now beginning to feel too hot.

I splashed through a little pool between the rocks. The water was so hot that it almost scalded my feet and I jumped out quickly. My toenails were still lilac: I remembered painting them beside the fire, conducting an agonised conversation with Laurie in my head. It seemed a lifetime away. The varnish was chipped now, disappearing.

I rounded the headland, and the rocks flattened out into a very narrow stretch of stony beach. This place was perfectly secluded and almost unreachable. My heart was pounding, and I knew that this was it: I had come here and I, like Lara, was absolutely vulnerable.

There was a figure sitting on a rock, her face turned in my direction, unsmiling. And it was me.

I was waiting for myself. This woman was my height, though skinnier than me, and she was wearing my sort of clothes. I had never got around to sorting out my two-tone hair, and neither had my double. Her hair was a little longer than mine, and it was dark at the top and blonde at the ends. I had done that on impulse, months ago, and semi-regretted it ever since.

For a moment we stood at opposite ends of the tiny beach and stared at one another.

When I spoke, my voice came out quietly.

‘Lara?’

She stood up. I saw her face properly. It was actually her.

‘Iris.’

I could not help myself. I wanted to stay cool and collected, but instead I dissolved into hysterical tears. It was Lara’s face, under my hair, on a scrawny, underfed body. This was Lara Finch, my friend. It was Lara Wilberforce, terrifyingly competent young drug smuggler. It was Rachel’s friend and nemesis, Jake’s girlfriend, Leon’s goddaughter, Guy Thomas’s illicit lover, Sam’s faithless wife.

She was at my side.

‘Iris,’ she said. ‘Oh my God. It really is you. I can’t believe it. It was the passport, wasn’t it? I’m so sorry about the passport. Did anyone follow you?’

‘No. Everyone thinks you’re dead. Everyone.’

‘I know. I lost my mind reading the coverage.’ Her voice was wobbling. ‘They think I killed Guy. How could I …’

‘I don’t. I never thought you did for a moment. I worked it out, Lara. Sam found your old diary and he didn’t know what to do with it, so he gave it to me. And as soon as I read it, I knew it was Jake. What happened? He found you on the train and set you up? How did you get away?’

She frowned slightly. ‘What?’

The sun was burning the top of my head, radiating off my hair, carving, I felt, a pink strip where my parting was. And then I heard somebody behind me.

‘Hello, girls,’ he said, warmly. ‘Fancy seeing you two here!’