Mum’s eyes had filled with tears. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen this happen. She picked up a napkin and almost hit herself in the face with it. My mother and father could not have been more different as human beings, but both of them did nearly anything rather than cry.
I accepted her offer. What else could I do? And she was right: I did need somewhere to live that wasn’t full of my life with Johan.
She slept on the sofa that night so that I could have the bed. There was a photo of me and Maya on her bedside table, two smiling girls on top of Hound Tor on a blazing summer day. In her tiny bathroom, a picture frame holding little offcuts of our hair.Carrie,December 1985, her handwriting said, next to one.Maya, April ’88.
I’d been too frozen to cry since coming back at the end of September. The hair was what finally brought the tears.
The next morning, as I walked the short distance to the hospital, Mum sent me her first ever text message. She believed mobile phones should never have been developed beyond their basic ability to make and receive calls. It was very touching to receive a communication like this.
I’m sorry,she wrote.I love you.
—
The call from Prawat came through two days before Christmas. I was in the on-call bedroom, checking the bedsheets for signs of prior use, when my phone rang.
I hadn’t actually talked to Prawat in Bangkok; Mum had done it all. So I didn’t know his usual tone, but I knew straight away that the news was bad.
“Johan’s trial took place over the past two days,” he said, after some hopeless pleasantries. I peeled back the duvet and inspected the bedsheet. It looked clean and stretched tight. Two nights ago, I had been in someone else’s dirty sheets for the three hours’ rest I managed to get between emergencies.
“We were not expecting such a quick trial. It is very unusual in Thailand. His lawyer was not prepared, and I think this was not an accident. I think they wanted his lawyer unready.”
I sat down. “And?”
“The lawyer did his best, but it was not a good trial. I am very sorry, Carrie, he has been found guilty and they have given him a twenty-five-year sentence in Bang Kwang Prison.”
He went silent, but I knew he was still there because I could hear mopeds and horns, a faint ribbon of music.
I had read about Bang Kwang. It sounded like the darkest place onearth. It housed Thailand’s highest-security male prisoners, along with the national death row and execution chamber. I distinctly remember one post on a forum that said the only way out of Bang Kwang was in a box.
I curled slowly down onto the bed, suddenly faint.
“Not Bang Kwang.”
“It is Bang Kwang,” Prawat said softly into my ear. Thousands of miles away. I pulled the synthetic duvet over myself. I hadn’t even removed my shoes. “I am so sorry.”
I didn’t speak.
“Carrie. I have to tell you that even though Johan’s lawyer was not ready, he would get the guilty verdict anyhow. I am sorry to say that I have continued my inquiries, carefully and quietly, and I am satisfied that he did commit the crime. There is no doubt. I also have learned that he was delivering for one of the biggest crime rings in Asia. He was cooperating with them for a long time.”
I lay down on my back, adjusting my phone. “Are you sure?” I asked. “You really believe this?”
“I know it,” he said gently. “I think you have made a very lucky escape. But I know this is very hard. I am very, very sorry.”
“Me too,” I said.
Prawat excused himself to speak briefly in Thai to someone nearby. The faint music I’d heard earlier got louder. The radio, or whatever it was, was playing “You’ve Got the Love.”
“I also have to tell you…ah…Johan had a girlfriend in the organization. I have heard this from multiple sources.”
I sat up again. “No. That’s—that’s not possible.” But even as I spoke the words, I recognized the naivety, the simple faith that had got me into this mess in the first place.
“It is,” Prawat said simply. “I don’t know if she was in Myanmar orhere in Thailand, but I have heard from several people that they were more than just professional colleagues.”
After the call had ended I lay in bed, perfectly still. I breathed in the stale, recycled air under the duvet and listened to my urgent heartbeat. I felt my phone slip out of my hand and onto the floor.
I stayed there, unmoving, for thirty-four minutes, thinking about my husband the criminal, the liar, the adulterer. The man who had filled my gullible, lonely little mind with stories, right up until the moment he was taken away.
I stayed there, breathing this new version of my life in and out, until the screech of my bleeper propelled me out of bed.
