Forgotten: a truly gripping psychological thriller (11 page)

Our section of this deck of the boat consists only of first and second class cabins with an outside deck area and a lounge with a TV. I may need to retire there as Mr and Mrs Frosty-Pants have turned the cabin TV up to an ear-damaging level, no doubt in an attempt to drown out my presence. I hope they feel paranoid enough to think I’m writing about them – perhaps if I look at them between sentences.

No, they’re determined to ignore me.

We had a conversation when they first arrived.

Me: Ni hao

F-Ps: (silence)

Me: (shrug)

F-Ps: (Lots of fast Mandarin to steward with gestures towards me.)

Me: Fuck you then!

Actually I made up the last part, but I wish I had said it. They probably wouldn’t have understood anyway. Perhaps if I turn my light off and try to sleep they’ll turn the TV down just a fraction.

14th October – Boat No. 19, Somewhere on the Yangtze

I did manage to get a bit of sleep last night but the TV was blaring until quite late. To make matters worse I was woken up at 6.30am by an excited Mr F-P trying to get his wife out of bed and organised for an excursion. It looks like they’ve bought a package because they’ve both got some sort of laminated pass. Mr F-P wears his on a ribbon round his neck like an Olympic medal.

The excursion turned out to be a stop at a small town called Fengdu which looked grey and dismal in the dawn drizzle. I dutifully got off the boat, more in search of breakfast than through any interest in the town and, having choked down some dumplings and deep fried batter I thought I’d show willing and explore a little.

It was truly awful. Everything and everyone was grey. I poked around the damp streets for a while until, by sheer good (or bad) luck I discovered what all the fuss was about. There was a chairlift.

Unable to resist I paid my extortionate 10 yuan and found myself bundled into a seat. It was an odd ride in that it only went up a slight incline but it must have covered half a mile of hillside. Even odder was the fact that I recognised most of the people coming towards me, heading back down. They were from the coach I’d taken from Chengdu to Chongqing to board the boat. One small child even smiled and waved so I grinned and managed a hearty ‘ni hao,’ grateful for some sort of human contact.

The chairlift led to a bizarre cross between a temple dedicated to the ‘black arts’ and a fun park. There were all sorts of ways to indulge a superstitious nature, and get seriously ripped off in the process, and a sprinkling of demonic-looking gods and goddesses, no doubt specially designed to frighten small children. I really didn’t know what to make of it at all. I couldn’t even work out if it was meant to be some sort of temple or a tourist place. I’ll probably never know.

I’ve set up camp on the small patch of deck outside our cabin. It’s a great example of Chinese tackiness. I really love the fluorescent green fake grass. Mr and Mrs F-P have gone up to the main cabin (with the bloody thermos!!) so I can sit and relax. There’s a real lack of colour on the river. The water itself is brown, slightly darker than a good cappuccino and similarly frothy in places. The small towns we’ve passed so far are all grey, so dark they’re black in places as though they’ve been carved out of coal. They are possibly the most depressing places I have ever seen.

I don’t know if it’s my surroundings or the strange isolation of living on a boat but something’s making me feel really low. I found myself staring at the cappuccino froth on the river and wondering if my life would be simpler if I threw myself in. I could just float, fat and waterlogged, down to Shanghai and out into the sea. Food for the fish. There’s a strange inertia about travelling by boat. The world seems to pass you by rather than the other way round and the society on the boat seems so self-contained and regulated. There are the honeymooners in first class, those of us who are not really wealthy but determined to enjoy the trip of a lifetime in second, and the unknown masses downstairs with their own canteen and way of life.

For the first time I’ve started wondering if I’m making a huge mistake. How far from my own culture could I possibly get? Is this more an exercise in running away? I started planning this trip over ten years ago. God it all seemed so simple just after I graduated! I was going to work for as long as it took to save enough money then I’d be off. I wanted to be ‘a traveller’. I remember seeing the photos of the Xi’an warriors when some of them were brought to London, and I was transfixed. I’m sure I must have read everything I could find about the country before I left secondary school and that led me on to planning a route through south-east Asia – this route. Then, somehow, I’d saddled myself with a mortgage because everyone said that paying rent was a waste of money. And then there was the job, the pressure to climb the ladder. Christ, what was I thinking? How did I get sucked into the stable job, stable relationship, stable life way of thinking?

And now, here I am, doing what I always dreamed of. I’m travelling and I’m getting ridiculously depressed about it. I should be swinging from the bloody chandeliers – well the crappy-looking light fitting at least. I should be buying champagne and sharing it with the Frosty-Pants, I should be sending jubilant postcards to everyone who smiled tolerantly when I told them that I’ve always wanted to travel. And here I am contemplating chucking myself overboard. This is not the person I want to be. This is not why I’m doing this. Aaagh! I need to get off this fucking boat!

October 15th – Yichan

I’m feeling a bit better today. I’ve just read yesterday’s ramblings and I feel a bit embarrassed. I can only assume that I was tired and sick of the attitude of the F-Ps. They’d really been pissing me off with their monopoly of the bathroom and the thermos. I got so sick of it that I ordered my own thermos from one of the boat crew. She came in and looked around in that officious and slightly mistrustful way that everyone with the slightest bit of authority seems to have towards me. I just pointed to the table and shrugged, then gestured to the F-Ps’ bunk and indicated ‘upstairs’ with my thumb. I think she got the idea and some childish part of me really hopes the F-Ps are in deep shit.

We all got off the boat last night to tour a temple. I just couldn’t be bothered. I really couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for trekking up a hillside with a hundred other people, in the dark, to see something that I probably wouldn’t have understood. Instead I lurked on the pier and feasted on wonderful spicy boiled potatoes. I was still there when the F-Ps came back down and I’m sure Mr F-P smiled at me, just briefly, when the dragon wasn’t looking. Maybe it was just a trick of the light.

I did manage the tourist thing today. There’s a trip up the ‘Little Three Gorges’ that I’d read about in the guidebook. It would have cost a fortune to sign up when I booked my ticket but it was much cheaper on board the boat so I decided to give it a go. I’m so glad that I did as it was fantastic! The scenery was pretty special but it was the whole experience that was really great. We set off into the drizzle with the cover of our little boat hauled over us at a claustrophobic angle and the plastic windows all steamed up. Almost as soon as we entered the ‘Little Three Gorges’ the sky cleared and the crew pulled the roof down. I suddenly realised one of the differences between a trip like this in China and at home. In Britain we would have been issued with life jackets and given a ten-minute safety talk. Here there was a scramble for seats and the ritual pointing and frowning at the big man at the front who wanted to hog a whole double seat and smoke a lot.

The water was completely different from the main river. It was really clear but strangely sterile except for the polythene bags that occasionally floated past us like obscene jellyfish. We even encountered some beggars who really deserved any money they were given. They were all young boys who waded out into the river with nets on really long sticks. They fought the current and the beating of umbrellas against their poles, to thrust their nets under the chins of the unwary. They were all under fifteen and had the physiques of body builders, probably from battling the current and trying to balance the poles.

The real treat came at the top of the ‘Little Three Gorges’. There’s a shingle bank where a small village has sprung up to feed and rip off tourists. This guards the entrance to yet another trip – the ‘Mini Three Gorges’. Incredible! Maybe you eventually end up in a puddle called the ‘Micro Three Gorges’.

Back on the big boat I was approached by one of the crew looking very sheepish. He told me, in broken English, that he was very sorry but he needed to see my ticket for the excursion. I dug it out of my pocket, he inspected it, smiled and went away. I wasn’t sure what was going on until I went back to my cabin and the F-Ps were engaged in a whispered conversation with sly glances in my direction. I couldn’t help but wonder if they thought I’d tried to get my trip for free so I made a great show of removing the ticket from my pocket, inspecting it and placing it on the table with a flourish.

After all this excitement the entrance to the real ‘Three Gorges’ was a bit of an anti-climax. It was spectacular but it was nearly dark when we entered the final gorge so all I saw were the lights around the dam.

After a scary taxi ride in the dark I’m now happily drinking tea in a four-star hotel, wrapped in a towelling robe and contemplating the wisdom of trying the swimming pool in the morning. This isn’t quite what I envisaged when I originally planned this trip. I expected backpacker accommodation and bed bugs most of the time but, what the hell, I can afford it. I do feel like a fraud at times because I don’t have the same difficulties as some of the westerners I’ve met. If I can’t find cheap accommodation then I check into a place like this. In fact, I can stay in a place like this whenever I feel like I need a treat, which has been a regular feeling for the past few days.

It’s times like now, when I’m warm, calm and contented with a real adventure behind me, that I can truly appreciate what I’m doing. This is exactly where I want to be. I’m learning to enjoy my own company again and my confidence is coming back more quickly than I ever could have hoped. Even tonight when the taxi driver seemed to be heading out of town, I just leaned forward with my guidebook and said the name of the hotel loudly and sternly. I felt like one of those Victorian lady explorers who always seemed to get exactly what and where they wanted. I love my new-found independence and the fact that I’ve got the courage to live out my biggest dream despite the ‘wilderness years’ of work, home and relationship. Now I just sound bloody smug. Time to go to sleep.

VII

A tentative knock on the door brought Kai back to the present with a start. She’d been totally absorbed in the diary, trying to get a feel for the person who had written so enthusiastically and vividly. It was hard to come to terms with the fact that the woman writing and the woman reading were one and the same because Kai couldn’t imagine having such adventures, or even such thoughts. The hints about her past were still maddening. There was clearly some big secret, something that she hadn’t felt comfortable talking or writing about, but Kai’s ideas were still unformed. It obviously had to do with a relationship that went wrong, possibly violently wrong, but the lack of detail was frustrating.

Distracted she snapped, ‘Come in,’ still trying to keep a grip on the delicate link the journal provided with her past.

‘Hello, you busy?’

Mark stood in the doorway. A rogue shaft of sunlight that had defied the blind caught in his hair and turned the pale blue of his eyes electric. He thrust his hands in his pockets and hunched against the wall, barely smiling as though expecting a rebuke.

‘Just reading,’ Kai responded with a smile, surprised to discover that she was pleased to see him.

‘Anything exciting?’

‘My journal.’

‘Oh,’ he nodded sympathetically, as though her revelation was one of a fatal illness or a bereavement.

‘It’s no big deal, I read a little bit every day to see if anything’s familiar. The doctors think it might help. I don’t know if it will but it’s kind of interesting anyway. It’s a bit like reading about someone else’s travels, like in a real book.’

His eyes moved to the diary which Kai had placed in her lap and for a second she couldn’t read his expression. It was as though he was focussing all his energy on the blue cover, willing it to reveal its secrets to him. He was frowning and she could tell that he wanted to ask her more. Unnerved she picked up the journal and put it in its usual place in her bedside cupboard. She wasn’t ready to share its contents with anyone just yet.

‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’

He smiled, all the intensity of his former expression gone in an instant.

‘I just happened to pick up a get-out-of-jail-free card and I thought you could use it.’

‘Sorry?’ He might as well have been speaking Thai.

‘Like in Monopoly? The game?’

She simply shrugged at his pleased expression.

‘Okay, sorry, I asked the doctor if he was ready to take pity on you and let you loose on an unsuspecting town and he agreed to let me take you out for an hour or two. How does that sound?’

It sounded fantastic, exactly what she’d been wanting for days now – finally, a real change of scenery, new places and new faces. But Kai hesitated. Remembering her reluctance to leave the room earlier she knew that this could be even more difficult, she had to leave the hospital and there were
people
out there, strangers. She studied the gleeful expression on Mark’s face, conflicting emotions warring within her and suddenly she didn’t feel ready. What had seemed like a matter of life and death yesterday seemed less important, less urgent. Perhaps now that she had started to remember something, she was reluctant to leave because she associated the hospital with her returning consciousness. Maybe she was afraid that the darkness might come back if she stepped outside the range of the power of the doctors; if she were beyond Ekachai’s protection how could he save her if anything went wrong?