Someone, help me.
I took the last sip of the Swedish Embassy water and found a sock near the top of my bag. I folded it, standing close to one of the giant concrete Skytrain girders, and stuffed it into my knickers.
Mum, I thought suddenly. What would Mum do? She would not be standing on the side of a main road, spiraling. She’d be in motion.
I stood up and walked to a break in the roadside barrier.Look for taxi. Raise arm.
It worked. A taxi pulled over, the driver gesturing for me to move fast.
Put bags in boot. Get in taxi.
The interior of the car was blessedly soft and cool. I asked the driver to take me to Chakkrawat Police Station and then closed my eyes for a few moments, listening to the driver’s murmured conversation on his phone. Even if he drove me around on a three-mile loop like the last one had, I didn’t care.
I thought about the soft cotton of Johan’s T-shirts, the earthy spruce smell of his skin, the laughter lines that transected his face even though he was only thirty. His fascination with me, his need for me, the way our bodies fitted together.
In desperation I returned my thoughts to my mother. In the months Johan and I had been together, I’d seen more of her than in all the years I’d spent in London; they had formed a mutual fan club that had taken me entirely by surprise. Slowly, I’d come to welcome it. Johan’s open and uncomplicated admiration of Mum’s work, her energy, her spirit, had helped me see her once again as the woman I’d worshipped as a child, before Dad and Maya’s endless maligning—and, ultimately,Mum’s own repeated failures as a parent—had hardened that tender part of my heart.
Years I’d spent, listening to talk of successful sit-ins and public letters, speeches and rallies and forced meetings with government officials. If anyone could advise me on my next move, it was Mum.
I got my phone out and called her, but of course she didn’t answer. I left a voicemail.
—
The one English-speaking man at Chinatown police station said Johan was not there. He did not know where he might be.
After ten minutes of me standing at the desk, begging him to find out where Johan was, he asked me to leave. “We very busy,” he said, indicating the two other people in the waiting room.
Eventually I went off to a stairwell, which might or might not have been another waiting room, to try Mum again. As the call connected I stared at a bunch of framed pictures of former police chiefs, waiting for inspiration. All around me were Thai voices. Blood was beginning to seep through the sock in my knickers and my abdomen was knotted and angry.
I found the other sock in my bag and cautiously pushed open the one door that wasn’t locked, hoping it might be a toilet.
It wasn’t a toilet. It was a small room of holding cells. I stopped in the doorway, unnerved. Why was this accessible to the public?
I stared at the cells. Chipped paint, no fans or windows, little more than five square feet of dirty floor space. Compared to the lobby outside, with its framed photos and air conditioning, the room was hellish, but I imagined the real cells, probably below ground level, would be a lot worse. This couldn’t be anymore than a processing space for new arrivals.
I turned to the whiteboard next to me. It was covered in writing I couldn’t read, but there was one word I knew:farang.
Johan. That was Johan.Foreigner.
I stuffed the clean sock into my knickers and went back to the front desk, grateful for new faces: the shift had changed. The English-speaking woman at the desk knew who Johan was straight away. He was being interviewed, she said. Her facial expression was surprisingly sympathetic.
About what? What the hell is happening here?I wanted to shout. Instead I asked, as politely as I could, when I would be able to talk to him.
She turned around and said something to a colleague who was sitting in a giant swivel chair. After a brief consultation, she told me, “We don’t think you will be able to talk to him.”
I took a deep breath and asked if I could talk privately to her. Surprisingly, she agreed, and we stepped back into the stairwell. Through an emergency exit, I could see the sky had turned pink. Night would soon fall and yet Johan was being held in this building, charged with drug trafficking. Across the road a shop turned on neon Coca-Cola lights. Tuk-tuks and mopeds buzzed past; the evening burned brazenly on.
“I have about six thousand dollars in my bank account,” I said bluntly. “Can I help him get bail?”
“Bail?”
“I pay money so Johan can come home. Before he goes to court.”
She smiled, although whether out of sympathy or derision I couldn’t tell. “He will be going to court every week for long time,” she said. “It is never possible to go home for his crime. He will go to court tomorrow, then Klong Prem after that.”
Everything started to move slowly, even the fly hammering itself against the window between us and the front waiting area.
“Klong Prem? Are you sure?”
