Emily Barr - The Sleeper

‘You have to run. Now, Lara. Come on. We’ll get into a taxi and go all the way to Bangkok.’

‘Seriously. Can’t. He’ll find me. Police will believe him. Everyone thinks I killed …’ I cannot say his name, not now. ‘We have to do it properly. I know how to do it. I’ve thought for days. About it. I tell you what to do. You’ll do it?’

I tell her my plan, making a superhuman effort to get the message across. She looks terrified. I leave without waiting for an answer, and stagger back to my table, to my jailer.

‘I was about to come and check up on you,’ he says. ‘I’m glad you’re back.’

I nod and close my eyes.

chapter thirty-five

Iris

I did not want to do this. I had spotted her tweet about being held hostage, and although she had deleted it instantly, I had seen it being retweeted as a screen grab. It would make the news. That meant that Leon would, at some point, see it too. Now that I was aware of the state he was keeping her in, I could see why it was so vague a cry for help.

She was skeletally thin. Her skin was dull and pitted, her eyes lifeless, and I could see that being halfway coherent as she spoke to me had cost her all her strength. As soon as she had the wig on, nobody – not her parents, not Sam, not even poor departed Guy – would have recognised her as Lara Finch or Wilberforce. He had disguised her by destroying her.

I remembered the Lara who had come to my house at Christmas. She had been full of life and sparkle. I remembered us talking about mince pies and the way we would use our skills in a post-Apocalyptic world. Now she had lost it all, lost her verve, herself, everything.

And that was in spite of her efforts to throw up as many of the pills as she possibly could. The man had caught her, and he was killing her. He would destroy her as surely as he had murdered Guy Thomas.

Her idea was crazy, but I was tempted by it. It would give the man exactly what he deserved.

I called Alex. He still did not pick up. There was no sign of the local police anywhere. I did not have time to stop and worry about it. Olivia answered straight away. I knew it was early morning for her.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Lara tweeted something. Was it her?’

‘Yes. She sent me a Twitter message saying where she was and I found her. I saw her. I managed to speak to her while she was throwing up in the loo.’

‘You saw her again! And?’

I wondered how to answer that.

‘She’s alive. Not in a good state. Not at all. But look, Olivia. She asked me to do something that is completely insane. I need a second opinion before I do it.’

I explained the plan. Olivia thought about it. When she spoke, she sounded stronger than I had ever heard her.

‘If you don’t mind taking the risk,’ she said, ‘then I think you should do it. Give the bastard exactly what he deserves. If it goes wrong, we’ll rally round for you. You won’t be going into it alone. I promise you that. We’ll make sure you’re OK, no matter what.’

I found the area Lara had sent me to, eventually. It was surprisingly close to the tourist streets, but I supposed that made sense.

I tried not to be self-conscious as I loitered around, doing my rubbish best to look like the kind of person who did this sort of thing. The street was dingy and narrow, a place to hide in even in bright baking sunlight.

A skinny cat came and rubbed itself hard, viciously in fact, on my legs. A bird screamed somewhere above me. There were potholes in the road, and a pavement only down one side of it. I could feel eyes on me, and I wanted to turn and run. Instead, I walked slowly, stopped for a moment, walked slowly again, stopped again.

I had as much cash as three cashpoints were prepared to give me. I hoped it would be enough.

I walked around that street for twenty minutes, and I was about to give up when the man approached me.

‘You want to buy something?’ he said.

I nodded, afraid of sounding too English if I declared ‘Yes! I do!’

‘What you want?’

I bit my lip, and when I spoke, my words accidentally came out in the voice of a Radio 4 newsreader.

‘Do you happen,’ I asked him, ‘to have any heroin?’

chapter thirty-six

Lara

The airport is small. I lean on Leon’s arm, acting even more idiotic than I actually am, exaggerating my druggedness to try to get him complacent.

I know I have made a stupid plan with Iris. She might have been arrested by now. I could have sent her, like poor, poor dead Rachel, into the black hole of Asian prison. Of all the things to do, I have sent the woman who has shown herself to be my best friend in the world to buy drugs in Thailand.

I wish I’d put the word Krabi on that tweet. I wish I hadn’t written it. I hope no one saw it. But if I’d said where I was, then somebody might be here at the airport to look out for me, just in case. I look around, focusing on people in uniform. There are a lot of them here, but they’re probably airport security. Airports always have people in uniform.

My legs buckle beneath me. That was genuine. The beer and the pills have not reacted well. I am getting worse and worse.

We stand in a check-in queue. Leon looks at me a lot but we do not speak. I am not sure I would be able to say a single word. He puts his suitcase flat on a luggage trolley and sits me down on it. I pull my legs up, like a child.

‘Something she ate,’ I hear him saying to someone. That is a lie. I have eaten nothing, for ages.

Then we are in the departures lounge. It is small, with lots of chairs in rows, and I am leaning on him and forcing my legs to walk. There is a shop and I know what I need to do, and I try to practise the words in my head. I need to say them. I have to go into that shop and buy something. Anything. I need to be carrying an airport shopping bag because that is an essential part of the plan. I cannot quite formulate the words, but I will do it. I will do it before we leave this lounge.

Leon leads me to an area where hardly anyone is sitting, and pushes me down into a chair. He is next to me. I lean my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.

‘Lara! Sweetie! You just need to walk on to the plane, darling, and then you can get back to sleep.’

I let him pull me to my feet. I lean heavily on him, and force my legs to walk. We go to the front of the departure hall, and through a door. Leon shows someone our boarding passes, explaining: ‘My wife’s had a bit of food poisoning, I’m afraid,’ and we follow the crowd down stairs, around corners, and out into the hot sun, which immediately makes my head hurt.

On the plane, I slump against the window and close my eyes. I know I have messed this up, but I can no longer remember why, or what I was supposed to do. I was meant to say something, and then I fell asleep and didn’t do it.

‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘You sleep it off.’

I wake with a jolt when the wheels touch the tarmac. I cannot focus on the tannoy announcement, but I know it will be saying we have arrived.

A small part of my brain recognises that I am in Singapore, the place I never, ever wanted to revisit. Last time I was here … In this state I cannot even articulate it. Rachel was with me, and then she went for ever. Her life was gone.

Slowly I remember my half-baked plan. I twist in my seat, wondering whether Iris is on the aeroplane, but all this does is make Leon look away from his paper and notice that I am awake.

‘Singapore,’ he says gently, and he pats my knee with his hand. I am too dopey even to wince. ‘But only in transit, OK? Nothing bad is going to happen here. We’ll be out before we’re even in.’

‘Not going out of the airport?’

‘Almost. As good as. Sadly this shitty little airline takes us to some dump called “the budget terminal”. We can’t transfer from there: we have to go through immigration, transfer to the airport proper and check in there. It’s irritating, sure, but c’est la vie .’