The Postcard Page 5

  ‘Just being here is amazing!’ Maya shouts back as she lets an old man with a long grey beard twirl her around. She and Josie laugh, until Josie gets her heel caught in the chiffon overlay of Maya’s dress...

  Gah!

  *

  With booming momentum, the kettle drums crescendo as fire-eaters hail the entrance of the bride and groom in the ballroom, for the final part of the party. Jeremy, uncharacteristically sheepish and smitten, leads his bride in. Gone is his cream and gold brocade frock coat and matching turban from earlier and now he stands with ravaged red stubble and an Armani tux. With a proud face and a sweaty hand, he leads Priyanka onto the dance floor in her four thousandth outfit of the celebrations: a bronze and gold Elie Saab gown that hugs her cartoon-character curves and fans out into a fishtail. Maya thought Priyanka’s pink ceremony sari couldn’t be beaten – at every costume change Maya has gasped and thought Wow. That the last incarnation of Priyanka couldn’t possibly be topped. Now, as guests gawp at the happy couple, beyond the men roaring out flames, Maya thinks Priyanka might just be the most beautiful woman in the whole world.

  Her beauty makes Maya think of Nena, and she wonders how big Ava is, yearns for the smell of her skin, wonders what she’s doing right now. Is she curled in her mother’s neck or bouncing in her vibrating chair and letting out a gurgle? She feels a stab in her stomach, right at the point Josie falls into her, and puts the blow down to the impact.

  ‘SORRY!’ Josie bellows in Maya’s ear, as she regains her balance and returns to whooping and dancing, flitting between a twerk and the Bollywood-worthy moves Priyanka’s friends busted out earlier.

  Champagne overspills from her bottle onto Maya and the grand ballroom’s dance floor.

  Not the Erdem! You’re battering the Erdem!

  Maya looks down at her dress, relieved that the dark florals hide a multitude of Moët, further relieved to see people clearing the dance floor at the behest of staff in colourful kurtas, politely asking guests to make way for the bride and groom’s first dance.

  It’s a timely opportunity to move Josie along.

  ‘Come on, lovely, they’re about to do their thing,’ Maya says, slipping a hand around Josie’s waist and guiding her off the starlight-flecked floor.

  Josie teeters, as Maya leads her to the side to watch and props her up, not sure how Josie can stand up in those heels, let alone do the running man in them. Dominic approaches, to take over, and rolls his eyes at Maya with affection.

  A DJ in a white tux and black bow tie fiddles with his laptop. Men in colourful sherwani frock coats and matching trousers raise their beaters in the air above the kettle drums and pause.

  Maya looks around. It is as if the room has frozen in time as she studies her surroundings to see everyone pausing for this pivotal moment. Jeremy Laws, London’s biggest advertising cheese and serial shagger, is finally settling down, deigning to marry the most beautiful woman in the world.

  At last.

  The lights go down. The room still holding its breath. Paused, but for the couple in the middle. Sweeping strings and the warm sound of Etta James rise while Jeremy takes Priyanka in his arms and five hundred hearts swell across the ballroom as the guests all come back to life.

  Maya feels that sharpness in her stomach again, and looks up. Beyond Jeremy and Priyanka she sees the figure of James in the shadows, standing across the dance floor, as he takes the last reportage shots of the night. Despite not knowing anyone at the wedding other than James, Dominic and Josie, Maya hadn’t wanted to get in James’ way while he worked, so she had ensured that while he was tailing Jeremy and Priyanka around dressing rooms, boats, elephants and palaces, she kept a respectful distance. She chatted to ancient ammus, exchanged pastry and pudding tips with chefs in the kitchen (gulab jamun was definitely going into her repertoire) and met many interesting people, who had flown in, from London to Lahore, New York to New Delhi, Manchester to Mumbai. If Maya felt nervous or alone, all she needed to do was look around, to find Jeremy and Priyanka, and there she would see James. Studious and beautiful, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he concentrated on getting his shots. His camera his shield and his comfort blanket, glad that no one would be looking at him. Except perhaps Maya. Her glances and supportive smiles had powered James on to the point at which they could start their trip properly. Knowing that when Jeremy and Priyanka’s first dance finishes, when the diva stops singing, that James can clock off and they can just be.

  *

  Through a gap in the newlyweds, James’ lens lands on Maya. His heart swells to see the woman he loves, clapping and clasping her hands as she looks on at the happy couple. He looks through the lens, to truly see her, but the star lights and dry ice obscure his shot, so he focuses on Jeremy and Priyanka again, getting the final pictures he hopes no one else can.

  As the last note fades and the guests erupt into cheers and applause, James lowers his camera and loosens the thick silk of his black bow tie. Maya locks eyes with him across the dance floor and smiles as he strides over to her, shattered and relieved.

  ‘At last,’ he whispers, as he holds Maya’s cheeks in his palms and kisses her. They press their foreheads against each other’s.

  ‘Baby, you did a brilliant job,’ Maya says, trying to stay on her tiptoes.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I know so. Now let’s enjoy the rest of the night. Have a drink. Drink to the year ahead.’ Maya peels her forehead away from his and places a kiss on his lips.

  ‘Great idea,’ James answers, unbuttoning the stifling collar on his white shirt. ‘You know it’s not going to be like this forever…?’

  Maya furrows her brow. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Palatial bedrooms, boat trips on the lake, feasting like royalty, free bar, endless chana…’

  James looks a little serious for a second. Maya shrugs.

  ‘What are you on about? It’s going to be even better. You. Me. Peace and quiet. Incredible India. It’ll be amazing, just the two of us…’

  Around them, colourful cloth fabrics rise and swirl, dancers twirl, and Maya and James follow the parade of guests out to the terraces for the firework finale, to see in the New Year over the lake.

  8

  Manon examines her reflection in a small, rectangular compact mirror. Her blue eyes are circular, like saucers. Her pale nose has a pink patch of sunburn in the middle of it. Her wispy, mouse-brown fringe sits higher than usual, pushed back through exasperation and weariness.

  I need to rest.

  She lowers the compact but keeps clutching it as she looks around her, to see if she can find a green patch of grass to sit on among the dry, brown brush. The lush green banks she has seen on her travels are nowhere near this part of the river and she laments to herself while she slumps down to sit. She opens her backpack to find the stale boule of bread so she can take a nibble, aware that it will make her mouth even drier. She looks out ahead of her. The river is wide, brown and strong. She glances left and right and wonders which way is China, which is Vietnam. She lost her bearings days ago.

  A little man, dressed in navy blue and brocade, removes his hat and sits down alongside Manon. He looks up at her in anticipation, waiting for her to offer him a morsel.

  ‘The satellites can see you, you know. They can see you not sharing.’

  ‘But you don’t need food to exist do you, Monsieur? Not like I do.’

  ‘I might.’

  The small figure is so close that she can see beads of sweat starting to form around his hairline. The steamy riverbank is too hot for thick trousers, wool coats and heavy, jangling medals.

  ‘Well, would you like some of my boule?’ Manon asks, hoping he will say no. She’s so hungry she doesn’t want to share, but she’s scared of the small man’s wrath.

  ‘No, you eat it. You get the dry mouth. You drink in the river water and catch dysentery. I’m fine thanks. I’ll watch and I’ll laugh and the satellites will catch every moment of it.’
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  ‘Leave me alone. I offered you my bread, what more do you want?’

  ‘I don’t want your stale bread.’

  ‘So why are you here? Why are you following me?’

  ‘I’m here to guide you, Manon. Make sure you choose the right path.’

  ‘I did choose the right path, didn’t I?’

  Napoleon Bonaparte gives a wry smile and the eerie face from her childhood frightens her once more. She looks back to the river.

  Manon has a thought. Perhaps her mirror will make the man go away. If she looks at him in the mirror, he might dissolve, he might evaporate. She puts her boule on her lap. She doesn’t want to rush eating it anyway; she’s so hungry, and has so little money, she doesn’t know where her next meal will come from. So this she will savour. Her little mirror experiment will help prolong it; it will help defer her gratification.

  She opens the compact again and examines her face. It looks passive yet demented, beautiful yet distorted. She angles the mirror to her companion, sitting on the dry brown brush next to her in his little white jodhpurs and small black riding boots, and tries to find his reflection in it at the same time as banishing her own.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asks the soldier, suspiciously. ‘You’re scheming!’

  Manon can’t see him in the mirror, but she keeps angling it anyway, as she strains her neck to search.

  ‘Trying to confuse the satellites?’

  Manon can hear the acerbic voice, but she can’t see the little man now.

  Perhaps he isn’t there. Perhaps I am confused.

  Manon moves her head and tilts the mirror, aware that she can no longer see him at all, neither in her peripheral vision nor the mirror. She stands up with cautious feet, so she can search more thoroughly. She spins around. The view in the mirror blurs as she sees the riverbank, she sees reeds, she sees the Mekong, the sand and the dry brush behind her, all spinning spinning spinning…

  A frightful face appears over her shoulder, magnified in the mirror.

  ‘BOO!’ bellows the man, as mischievous as a hobgoblin, his contemptuous eyes filling the frame.

  ‘Argh!’ screams Manon in alarm, before slumping back down onto her bony bottom.

  To triumphant cackles and chuckles, Manon realises she has been outwitted. He is still there. The satellites are still watching. This nightmare isn’t going to go away.

  Manon angles the mirror back to her own face, hoping to seek comfort in her reflection. Hoping her mother’s eyes stare back at her, as calm and reassuring as they were when she was alive. She looks at her own wide, terrified eyes in the reflection of the compact mirror, only to see that they are bleeding.

  9

  January 2016, Udaipur, India

  Maya wakes with her cheek pressed against a soiled sheet. Bloodstains from hotel guests long departed permeate in brown circles of varying sizes. Her alarm call is no longer the sweet chirrup of a kingfisher on the lake, it’s now a wild pig scavenging in what sounds like a corner of her room. She rubs her eyes and sits up, looking around the rickety furniture and threadbare furnishings. To her relief, there isn’t a pig in the corner of the room.

  Through a tattered curtain hanging on a piece of elastic, Maya sees James on the other side of the long, open window, sitting on the veranda drinking tea. Or at least that’s what he asked the kindly hotel worker for.

  ‘Gross,’ he mutters to himself, as he spits the tea out onto the hotel gardens. The wild pig looks up at the tea trail quizzically, then looks down again, continuing to rummage through litter in a neglected corner of the plot.

  Maya stretches and walks out onto the veranda in her olive-green slip, checking no one else is in the gardens beyond their little decking.

  ‘A room with a view, huh?’

  She kisses James’ cheek and sits down beside him, wrapping the bobbled blanket shawl on the back of the seat around her.

  James looks up from his guidebook, at the pig. ‘Yeah, sorry about that. How the mighty fall…’

  Maya lifts her bare heels onto the edge of the cold, metal seat and curls into a ball.

  ‘It is a lovely view,’ she says. ‘If you just ignore this shit bit right in front of us.’ She gestures her hands to the wild pig in the litter.

  James smiles.

  They both look at the view beyond the garden, of Lake Pichola and its morning bathers, boats and kingfishers. If Maya squints, she can see the domed bronzed onions on the roof of the palatial hotel where they spent three luxurious nights.

  Sigh.

  As the wedding party packed up and flew back to the Punjab, Mumbai, Lahore, London and New York, Maya and James checked into reality: one night in the not-terribly Exotic Happy Heritage Hotel, before their big bus journey to Bundi tonight.

  James unfolds a map and studies it, then reads something aloud about Brahmin blue buildings they can expect to see, while Maya rubs the sleep out of her eyes and reaches for the cold toast in the middle of the table. She eschews the little white plastic pack of butter James saved her, thinking there’s no point if it won’t seep in and melt. Oh how she wishes there were a plate of warm doughy kachori and a glass of mango lassi in front of her.

  ‘We’re sleeping on the bus tonight, yes?’ she asks through dry toast.

  ‘Yep, eight hours in the sleeper car.’

  Sleeper car?

  Maya smiles to herself and looks at James.

  ‘I think sleeper cars are a train thing.’

  James looks up from his guidebook and map with a thoughtful smile but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Once a Train Man, always a Train Man, eh?’

  James pulls Maya towards him, then lifts her off her chair and onto his lap. A pig comes a bit too close to Maya’s toes, still polished a shade of Black Cherry Chutney from her pre-wedding prep, and she gives her foot a flick to try to keep the boar at bay.

  ‘Argh!’ she gives a repressed squeal. ‘Go away!’

  Maya rests her head in the space between James’ shoulder and his ear, leaning into the curve of his neck and feeling his pulse on her temple.

  ‘I hate this!’

  ‘Shoo! Piss off!’ says James, with only slightly more certainty than Maya, before holding her into him.

  The pig snorts and shuffles back to its corner.

  ‘This is what you wanted, honey – travelling, backpacking, roughing it with the pigs.’

  Maya shuts her eyes and leans in even closer. ‘Well, we’re most definitely roughing it now, earning our stripes.’ James kisses the top of Maya’s head. ‘I know, I know, I guess it’s just a bit of a comedown after being so spoiled all week. Makes it seem even more…’

  ‘Brutal?’ they chime.

  ‘Well this place is shit,’ reasons James. ‘But it’s a life lesson. And tonight won’t be that bad. I imagine it’ll be a wide reclining seat. Like Premium Economy on a plane.’

  ‘Premium Economy sounds good. I can sleep on a wide reclining armchair. Anything’s better than that disgusting bed in there,’ Maya shudders, as the pig gets his snout stuck in an empty bottle of Thums Up! cola and starts snuffling at an even louder volume.

  10

  ‘A 27-year-old London-based French national has gone missing in Thailand. Manon Junot, who is a post-doctoral researcher at SOAS at the University of London, was travelling the region by herself on an extended Christmas break, but her family raised concerns when she didn’t board the Paris-bound flight she was due to return on, on New Year’s Day. Now investigators from the Metropolitan Police have joined forces with intelligence in Paris and are flying out to Chiang Rai, the last place Manon was known to be seen, to help Thai investigators in their search. Clarence Meek has the story.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO A MAN IN A LINEN SUIT FACING THE CAMERA.

  ‘Manon Junot had been travelling around South East Asia for four weeks over the Christmas and New Year period, but family and friends raised the alarm when she didn’t arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris last Saturday. After questioning the
airline, her family soon learned she had failed to check in, and alerted authorities in Thailand.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO THAI MAN IN MILITARY-LOOKING UNIFORM. A BANNER SAYING ‘SOMSAK KONGDUANG, THAI POLICE’, RUNS ALONG THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN.

  ‘We were alerted to the fact that a French national didn’t turn up for a flight in Bangkok five days ago and hasn’t made contact with friends or family since. She had travelled in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia over December, and her passport was last registered at a hotel in Chiang Rai a fortnight ago. We’re very concerned and are working with our friends on the Laos and Myanmar borders to see if she left the country overland, and also with Cambodian border patrol in the south.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO A PHOTOGRAPH OF A WOMAN JUMPING BACK IN LAUGHTER AS SHE FEEDS AN ELEPHANT A BUNCH OF BANANAS AND THE VOICE OF CLARENCE MEEK RETURNS.

  ‘Ms Junot had been in regular contact with friends and family while she was away, posting photographs on her social media pages during her trip.’

  SCREEN CUTS TO A WOMAN WITH DYED RED HAIR. A BANNER ACROSS THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN READS ‘NADIA RUTSCHMANN, FRIEND’.

  ‘At the start of her trip she was posting updates, every couple of days maybe, to her Facebook and Instagram. Nice pictures, of beautiful places she was visiting. We didn’t think too much of the posts stopping, we hoped she was having fun, but to not hear from her and for her to not use her flight ticket home, well that’s a worry.’