Chapter 14
‘The distance is nothing, when one has a motive.’
Imoved in with Dom, renting his second bedroom, and worked out of the family firm’s tiny London office. When the financial year-end loomed, our accountant called me with thrilling news: I had a full week of holiday owing and needed to use it or lose it.
Dom had too much going on workwise and socially.
I rang Alice. She answered with her usual flair. ‘Alice Winters speaking. If you’re not calling to buy ad space, I’m hanging up.’
‘It’s me.’
‘Oh, thank God. Flo. I’ve just had a brand manager tell me they want to put glitter on a half-page print ad. Actual glitter.’
‘I’ve got a week off. Fancy going somewhere hot with cocktails and hammocks?’
A pause. I could hear her slurping what I guessed was a lukewarm cup of tea.
‘I’d love nothing more than to head to a beach with you, but this new campaign’s launching and I can’t take time off. I’m living at my desk and being fed solely by vending machines. What about mister newly single?’
‘Dom can’t either. I guess I’ll have to lose it.’
‘Lose what?’
‘The vacation time.’
‘No bloody way. You go and find sunshine.’
‘On my own?’
‘Do it,’ she said. ‘Seriously. Go somewhere warm and lawless. Talk to no one. Return gloriously tanned and smug. No half-measures. If you come back still looking like a Jane Austen spinster I’ll disown you.’
She hung up.
I returned to the flat, which was empty and unusually silent. My first stop was the fridge, where I discovered half a bottle of wine and no food. I flicked on the telly. EastEnders’ doom-laden soundtrack was getting underway.
I poured a glass, sank into the sofa, and inhaled the wine deeply. For once, I could actually smell it: something clean, coastal. Like rock pools and lemon rind. I took a sip and the taste jolted something in me awake – something long dormant and hungry for change.
I got up, went to Dom’s pine bookshelf, and pulled out his old school atlas which was jammed in beside a collection of spy thriller paperbacks.
I flopped back onto the sofa and opened it.
EastEnders became white noise as I traced coastlines with my finger.
Possibility fizzed through my bloodstream.
I had savings, a week of time. I had nothing to stop me.
Ten days later I was on a plane bound for Thailand.
The leaden skies of London were replaced by thick, velvet heat as I landed in Bangkok.
It was late evening. Armed with my Lonely Planet guide – Alice’s going-away gift, complete with sticky notes like ‘Adventure starts where comfort ends, Flo!’ – I navigated my way from the airport to the bus terminal and boarded an overnight coach headed south.
The coach had the ambience of a meat locker and the legroom of a kid’s car seat. By morning I woke, crumpled and frozen, to find myself pulling into Phuket.
Stepping outside was like opening the door to a pre-heated oven.
Following my heavily underlined guidebook, I boarded a low-slung fishing boat that took off across a cobalt sea. It bounced over waves like a skipping stone. I gripped the sides, grinning like a madwoman. An island appeared on the horizon, small and green and too perfect to be real.
When we reached shore, I hopped off and trudged along the beach until I found the wooden huts mentioned in the book. For a week’s rent paid in rumpled Thai Baht, I got a bamboo shack with a mosquito net, bed, and a thin, scratchy towel that had probably dried hundreds of other hopeful escapees.
Unpacking took two minutes. I hadn’t brought much. I stripped naked in the sweltering hut, caught sight of myself in the mirror – pale, translucent, every vein visible beneath the skin – and laughed out loud. I looked like a vampire who’d wandered off course.
I threw on my bikini, slathered myself in factor 30, and stepped out into paradise.
The sand was sugar-soft, the sea a bright, endless blue.
A couple of girls lay tanning near the water’s edge, brown as hazelnuts, with long plaited hair, Thai-print bikinis and shell anklets.
They looked like they belonged to the island, as if they’d been cast there by some tropical tide months ago.
By contrast, I felt like an intruder. A pink, blinking British ghost.
Part of me wanted to scuttle back into the shade of the hut and hide under the mosquito net. But Alice’s voice echoed in my head – ‘Properly tanned, Flo!’ – so I jammed on my Walkman headphones, fired up Madonna, and walked in the opposite direction.
The sun seared my shoulders, my feet sank into the sand, and I smiled. Alone, but happy.