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“Here she comes,” he said as she entered the kitchen.
She smiled at him in his Christmas cracker hat and festive jumper. He blew into a party blower, and it let out a shrill noise that drilled through the headache that had crept up on her in the last hour. She’d forgotten her parents were coming around, but perhaps they would keep her mind off Kendra. “I’m just going to change,” she said and headed upstairs with her bag.
She showered quickly and read through some papers at her desk, but her attention turned to the thought of seeing Kendra and butterflies took flight in her stomach.
“No more work tonight, Sarah. Come on. It’s family time,” Mark said, handing her a drink.
She smiled at him and held his gaze. “What would you say if I told you I was going to Thailand to talk to Kendra in February?”
He tilted his head and smiled. “It’s going to be bloody hot there.”
She laughed. “Do you mind?” It was a daft question because she knew he wouldn’t. She just needed his reassurance because what came after this decision would affect them all.
“You’ve not been yourself since Kendra left, Sarah. Tonight, I see a sparkle in your eyes, and the reason why is clear.”
She sipped her drink. “I feel lighter.” She put her hand to her chest.
“And what about PM?”
She puffed out. “I want that too. I want both.”
He went to the window and shut the blind. “But what about the voters and you coming out this late in the game?”
“The more I’ve thought about that, the more I believe I should fight against the prejudice and injustice. I need to lead by example. I’m deceiving a whole population by not coming out as a gay woman and standing proudly in support ofallthe people in my community. With the right spin, why can’t I make both happen?”
Mark held up his glass to her and smiled. “That’s more like the Sarah I know and love.”
“I have to speak to Kendra first. I don’t know what she wants and if she says no, then so be it. I’ll carry on and focus on the election and being the first gay PM. I have to tell her how I feel. This emptiness without her is soul destroying.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “She’s smart. She’ll realise what happened was done out of political necessity.”
Sarah looked past him, praying he was right. Like being prepared to fail in the election, she had to be prepared for Kendra to reject her. The thought hardened her stomach. Her hand trembled as she sipped her drink. “Best get downstairs or my father will come looking for us,” she said.
Her excitement grew as she thought about arranging an early appointment with her doctor so she could get the jabs she needed for the trip. The idea of seeing Kendra again, of spending time with her and hopefully winning her over once and for all lightened her mood, and by the time she started down the stairs she couldn’t wipe the smile away. What she and Kenny had shared was real and honest and she had to hope that Kenny still felt the same way after the way she had been treated.
23.
SARAH BREATHED A DEEPsigh as she stepped onto the longtail boat. The only downside to the final leg of this torturous trip was the presence of the other five women who appeared to love the sound of their own voices. With little else to do on the long-haul flight except watch a movie, she’d exhausted herself questioning her motives and constantly pitting her heart against her head. She’d almost convinced herself the children would be fine without her close to hand. She’d be the one missing them. She barely saw them as it was, with the job and their increasingly active adolescent lifestyles. Two more years of school and they would head to uni, and she would see even less of them. Her parents would never understand her decision, but that wasn’t a good enough reason for her to hide her true self from the world. The fear that had crept up on her since she’d talked to Mark about her feelings for Kendra had intensified on the journey. If Kendra rejected her, it would break her heart, and she would return home empty and lost. But she would have tried.
Sweat pulsed through every pore in her skin. Why couldn’t Kendra have gone somewhere with snow and igloos or an ice-hotel? Somewhere cooler leant itself to snuggling up to keep each other warm. This was separation kind of weather. She stared in the direction of the blistering sun and wiped the unrelenting effusion of salty water from her face and neck. Her trousers were damp at the crotch, and her shirt stuck to her arms. Even though she’d slowly removed several items of clothing since leaving London and arriving in Bangkok, she could easily strip off completely and still not cool down sufficiently to feel comfortable. The water promised relief, but she took her seat on the boat, careful not to rock it or topple in. The woman who sat next to her, the quieter one in the group, introduced herself as Nadia Gupta from India. Sarah smiled a tight-lipped smile, sending the message that she didn’t want the chit-chat. In fairness, Nadia was more interested in the surroundings than she was the trivial conversation going on around them. “Sarah Williamson. England,” she said. She’d travelled as she always did, under her maiden name, the same name as was on her passport which she could use to distract anyone who claimed to recognise her.
“Have you been before?” Nadia asked.
“No, you?”
“Three times. It’s my heaven,” she said, and she didn’t even look as though the heat touched her.
Sarah had tried to book the boat as a sole passenger for some privacy and to fully relax, but that kind of thing didn’t happen here. “You wait for the boat and go together,” the man had said. His cheery voice had done nothing to settle her already frayed nerves after the long journey or her conflicted thoughts about whether she was doing the right thing. The stopover in a Bangkok hotel hadn’t been worth paying for since she’d hardly slept. It had reminded her of Las Vegas with an Eastern twist, which would have been fine had she wanted to club or gamble the night away.
She’d turned her work phone off before leaving London and resisting turning it on to find out what was happening with the campaign put her even more on edge. She’d promised herself quality time with Kendra but with her destination drawing closer, her stomach tightened by the minute. She stared out across the expanse of water and breathed in the humidity, her heart pounding and her thoughts circling.
She studied the irregularly shaped limestone formations in the distance to distract her thoughts. They jutted up more than twenty feet from the still, emerald-green water and spawned a fern-like floral hairdo exactly as she’d had seen when she’d researched the place. They were more impressive and imposing than she’d imagined. Haunting even. Wispy clouds, high in the deep blue sky, offered little respite from the sun that had already started to tingle Sarah’s skin, and they were only half an hour into the crossing. The Cheow Larn Lake was vast and bounded by one of the oldest rainforests in the world known as the jewel of Thailand. It certainly lived up to its name. It was a stunning spectacle for tired eyes, and her thoughts drifted into incoherence.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The gentle hush of water slipping from the bow of the boat had a rhythmical resonance to it, and the other women’s chatter faded beyond it. She blinked when a shadow fell across her face. The white limestone rock towered above her, and as they sailed slowly past, small colourful birds dived into the ferns that clung to the rock’s surface. She smiled at their antics and yawned.
The longtail boat weaved slowly between mountainous limestone karsts until Sarah could see the shoreline. A row of eight bamboo huts floated slightly above the water, with brightly coloured balconies set in front of a canvas of vivid and vibrant shades of every green on the spectrum. Sarah’s heart raced at the thought of seeing Kendra, and nausea turned her stomach with the niggling notion of rejection.
“Where’s the beach?” the woman who had introduced herself earlier as Erica asked her friend, Dani.
