Captured (5 page)

... Anderson please make your way to Gate 32, your flight is waiting to depart.

“Shit, my flight,” she muttered. “Simon, are you there?”

“Kirsty...Simon...I...”

“Simon the line is terrible, I can’t hear you. It’s really noisy here.”

The phone crackled in response.

Kirsty could see her gate fifty meters away, and the only people there now were two cabin crew. “Simon?” she said again, scrambling to pick up her things with her free hand.

The line was silent now. Panicking, Kirsty hung up, picked up her bags and ran to the gate.

Grace’s boss was alarmed by her request for leave, assuming the worst.

“Is everything alright, Grace? You can... ah... talk to me, you know.” Daniel Simmons, one of the partners, shuffled uncomfortably in his leather chair. His eyes darted from the crammed bookshelves to the large sash window and back to his Victorian mahogany desk: everywhere, it seemed, but her eyes.

“What? I just want to take some...” she started defensively, before noting his increased discomfort. “I just need a holiday!” She had sent him a calendar entry for the weeks she wanted, and he had called her immediately, and asked her to come to his office.

Simmons nodded, mystified but relieved. Calder & Simmons usually worked their young associates like donkeys, but Grace tended to push herself even harder than they expected.

“My workload should be reasonably light for those weeks,” she continued. “I’ll check and respond to emails when I’m gone of course, and—”

“You can take those weeks.”

Grace smiled and stood up. “Great.”

He watched her walk to the door. “But I trust that you won’t drop the ball, Grace. Try and get your hours up before you go.”

Grace’s mother, Jan, who called her religiously every Sunday evening, didn’t react with enthusiasm when her daughter told her of her plans that Sunday.

“Mum you’re always telling me that I should take more time off,” Grace admonished. “Now you’re telling me I shouldn’t?”

Her mother tutted. “I’d like nothing better for you to get some time away and recharge.” She sighed. “but I don’t understand how you can let that lovely man slip through your fingers and then turn around and follow that missy—“

“Mum!”

“But she’s so unreliable, love,” her mother continued.  “And a bit cold. Mrs. Rogers agrees with me.” Jan sighed again, something Grace had grown accustomed to hearing on their weekly calls. “Why don’t you go and tell Neil you’re sorry and go somewhere nice with him. You could use the break.”

“Mum, stop!”

“I’m just telling the truth sweetheart. Remember Barcelona?”

Grace took the bait. “Like it was yesterday. We had a great time.”

She could hear the smile in Jan’s voice. “Remember the nightmare you had trying to plan it? And then she didn’t even bother showing up for the flight!”

“She was late and she missed it. She got on the next one and we had a brilliant week. She’s just a bit more spontaneous than me, she—“

“She’s a flake,” Jan said triumphantly. “I bet she’ll leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. I’m telling you love, call Neil. I’m sure he’d take you back if you didn’t work so much. Is that company going to look after you when you’re old?”

“No, Mum,” Grace conceded.

“I worry about you, that’s all, love. I’m not trying to ruin your holiday; I just want you to have a lovely time. God knows, you work yourself hard enough.”

“I know, I know. I have to go now. Love you Mum, I’ll speak to you next week.”

A loud crackling sound erupted near Grace’s ear when she lifted the phone. After a beat, she heard Kirsty’s distorted voice.

“hellooooooo? Grace can you hear me?”

“Hi!” Grace said. “You’re faint, but I can hear you. Where are you?”

“Danang. In Vietnam,” Kirsty’s distorted voice responded after a few moments of static. “Sorry the connection’s really slow here.”

“I can sort of hear you,” Grace replied. “Guess what? I booked flights!”

“Oh wow, really? When do you arrive? And
where
?”

Grace heard the hesitation in her friend’s voice. “Don’t worry. I fly into Bangkok and I can get a connecting flight and come and meet you. I arrive in three weeks, on the twenty-sixth. Where do you think you’ll be?”

“Don’t be crazy, I can come meet you in Bangkok”, Kirsty replied quickly. “So how long have you got?”

“Three weeks.”

“Wow! How did you manage that?”

“I’ll have to do some work while I’m there,” Grace admitted. “But it shouldn’t be too much.”

“Well I have no plan yet, but I’ll aim to be in Bangkok then. What date did you say you arrived?”

“The twenty-sixth. At 7am local time. So, I’ve been looking into hotels and I think—”

“Grace, hotels are kind of out of my budget right now.”

“I know, but I need some pampering so it’s my treat! I’ll book the Imperial hotel, have a look at the website and tell me if you like it.”

“I like the sound of it already. A
hotel
. Wherever you want. You should see some of the places I’ve been staying in,” Kirsty shouted over the background noise. “I can’t wait to see you, you know.”

“I’ve been looking at possible itineraries too—”

“Oh my god, it’s a holiday Grace! We’ll just go where we feel like going!”

“I only have three weeks hon, we’re going to have to make some kind of plan.”

“Look, if you want to make a plan I’m happy to go along with it. Just places though, no detailed hour by hour timetables.” Kirsty laughed. “I have to go, my train to Hanoi leaves in an hour. See you soon!”

Grace was livid. Her excitement about seeing Kirsty had kept her going on the fourteen hour flight – the longest she had ever taken. It hadn’t taken long for the anticipation to dissolve into rage when she discovered that the hotel had neither seen nor heard from Kirsty. She hadn’t even left a message to say that she’d be late.

Grace collapsed onto the king-size bed, exhausted. Bangkok had seemed chaotic and exciting from the window of the taxi. Despite all of her planning for their holiday together, she hadn’t developed any preconceptions about the place. The humidity had smacked her in the face the moment she left the airport terminal and its frigid air-conditioning. It was sensory overload: the dripping, humid air; people yelling at her in Thai, presumably something about the taxi queue they were all standing in; the unfamiliar smell (she wondered if it was the smell of pure heat); the cabs honking and jostling for space in the set-down zone. She was relieved when she finally slid into the back of a car and handed the driver the little receipt that listed her destination.

She had leant her head against the fabric window frame, watching in awe as the car made its way off the highway into a spider’s web of narrow streets and lanes. Ramshackle stalls sold food, clothing, homewares; everything imaginable it seemed. Dirty, poorly-clothed children chased each other through dusty alleys, as fires blazed at the edge of the bumpy road. It was a world away from Farringdon, where she had lived for several years now. Working barely a mile away, she hardly ever left its comfortable radius.

She had been amazed moments later when the poverty gave way to sleek high-rise buildings and upmarket shopping malls. The streets still bustled with activity, but obvious affluence had replaced the stricken poverty. The little food stalls were still dotted along the streets, but they were shaded by luscious green trees now, instead of rusting corrugated iron. The cab spat her out onto a side street, where her hotel nestled between an expensive-looking hair salon and a karaoke bar teeming with Japanese businessmen.

Grace rolled onto her back and leaned across the bed for her handbag. She fumbled for her phone, hoping that it worked here: she could at least catch up on some work while she waited. There was still nothing from Kirsty. She typed an angry email, toned it down, and hit send. Then she gathered the four huge squishy pillows together and sank into them.

Kirsty sat in the bus station watching the night bus to Vientiane trundle towards her. She was travelling alone again now. Her latest patchwork group of friends had gone their separate ways in Hanoi. She was feeling lonely for her little group already.

The bus was a regular coach on the outside. Inside, instead of having several rows of seats running along either side of one aisle, there were three rows of narrow, almost flat, cushioned benches, with two aisles running between them. At the back of the bus, the two aisles ended at a block of five benches, with five more situated above them. Kirsty’s ‘bed’ was the third of the bottom five; a nightmare for even the mildly claustrophobic.
Typical
, Kirsty thought grumpily.
Cram the stupid tourist in the crap seat
. She pointed at the end recliner, which was empty, raising her eyebrows to the driver.

“You sit here,” he said, pointing insistently at the middle bunk.

Kirsty crawled into the tight space, resigned to a very long, bumpy night. A couple of minutes later, the empty side-bunk was occupied by a newly-arrived Vietnamese man, who quickly removed his t-shirt to reveal a doughy brown chest. Even from two seats away she could smell the acrid stench of body odour and stale cigarette smoke.

“At least you’re not beside him, mate.”

Kirsty had been too busy despairing at her new home for the next twenty four hours to notice the guy in the bunk beside her.  Now that her impatient eyes had met his twinkling blue ones, she wasn’t sure how she could have missed him. Perhaps this wouldn’t be such a nightmare journey after all, she thought as she introduced herself.

Grace sat at the bar of the rooftop lounge, the majestic view wasted on her. She had grown bored of waiting in the hotel, and had left the building with no idea of where she was going.  After wandering for what felt like hours, she had stumbled upon this place, and attempted to fool herself into believing that an overpriced cocktail might help her to relax and make the most of her time in Bangkok. A couple of weeks before, she had booked flights to the Andaman coast for her and Kirsty. She presumed the flight had departed that morning as scheduled, only without them aboard.

The view from the bar was truly spectacular: despite the waist-high green-tinted glass barrier, she had an almost three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of the glinting lights of the entire city from her stool at the bar. She had spent most of the second day sleeping, before working late into the night, still not adjusted to the time different. Today, she forced herself to wake up early, despite only sleeping for a couple of hours the night before.

Hesitating for a moment, then reassuring herself that three days was beyond even Kirsty’s capacity for oblivious inconsideration, she wrote an email to Kirsty’s parents. She didn’t know them very well: they’d always seemed unapproachable when the girls were growing up, and Grace had maintained that impression of them well into adulthood. But if something was wrong they needed to know, she reasoned.

She had little doubt now that something
was
wrong, but what on earth was she going to do, she wondered. She felt helpless relying on emails when her friend mightn’t even be checking her account. After sending yet another email to Kirsty, she opened Facebook, feeling slightly foolish for the idea that had entered her head. Kirsty would have mocked her for it, she was sure. She clicked through to Kirsty’s profile hoping there’d be
something
there to explain what the hell was going on, squinting as she tried to read the tiny screen.

Kirsty juddered awake in the middle of the night. Half delirious, she looked around, not recognising her surroundings. Slowly coming to, her heart stopped racing, and she remembered the Australian who was currently snoring softly on her left side. She became acutely conscious of the dry trail of drool that snaked down her cheek to her chin.

Rubbing her face, she lay back on the cramped bunk, hoping to get some more sleep. She switched on her camera and could just make out the face of her watch in the dim light. It was 5am: there were still several hours to go before they would reach Vientiane.

So far on the journey, time had flown by: she’d spent the first couple of hours chatting in whispers to the Australian – who had introduced himself as Grant – and sniggering at the elephantine snoring of the middle-aged men surrounding them. At some point she’d drifted off to sleep: no mean feat when she considered the confined nature of her quarters, and the fact that what looked like an entire Vietnamese family was sharing the two beds on her right. In the first hour, the bus had stopped several times to load up with the most random combination of items imaginable: sacks of grain, crates full of Pepsi, electrical goods, garden strimmers. Various extra passengers had also boarded the bus, sought out the floor space that wasn’t covered in bags and boxes, and lain down to sleep. She had enjoyed picturing Grace on that bus, imagining how her friend would have reacted had she been asked to share her seat with a gallon bottle of bleach or an old-fashioned radio, as some of the other passengers had had to.

She was suddenly aware of a gnawing hunger, and regretted not bringing any food. All she had was a small water bottle, around three-quarters empty, the remaining water now warm. She had no idea when – or if – the bus would stop for food.

She was shaking the water bottle disconsolately and debating whether to pry open the corner of one of the sacks at her feet, when she heard movement beside her.

“Hey, I’ve got some noodles left from earlier. Wanna share?”

She smiled in the darkness.