The One Day You Were My Husband (47)

The man made a few notes in the large notebook he’d been carrying since he’d found me dragging bags through the entranceway.

“I think you should just go to the police station and tell them everything you know,” he said.

“But why haven’t they taken me in for questioning, too? Why didn’t they get a statement from me on Koh Samui?”

The man held up his hands, as if to say, I’m afraid this is beyond my remit, but I could tell what he was thinking. They hadn’t bothered with me because I clearly had no knowledge of the crime, and somehow they already knew that.

“Is he OK?” I heard myself asking. “Is he safe?”

“He is not being tortured, if that is what you mean, although I cannot pretend that the conditions in police stations are good. I urge you to go there as soon as possible. If it turns out that you can help him, you must.”

Soon after that, he explained apologetically that he had a long queue of Swedish nationals waiting for him, and that he had to go. “You are welcome to stay in touch,” he said, handing me a card. His name was Niklas Sundberg.

And then I was outside again. Traffic roared in both directions as I dragged the bags up the Sukumvit Road toward Phloenchit. Above me the Skytrain rumbled, its pedestrian walkways hammered by the smart shoes of homeward bound workers.

At a loss, I sat down on a wall and got out my phone. Who to call? What could anyone do, anyway?

Someone, help me.

I became aware, suddenly, of a hot stickiness between my legs. I must be a day early. I’d been planning to buy tampons today; we were going to have a lazy first morning as husband and wife before going into town in the early evening for dinner and supplies. Our first full day married.

Blood began to seep through the thin fabric of my knickers.

Someone, help me.

I took the last sip of the Swedish Embassy water and found a sock near the top of my bag. I folded it, standing close to one of the giant concrete Skytrain girders, and stuffed it into my knickers.

Mum, I thought suddenly. What would Mum do? She would not be standing on the side of a main road, spiraling. She’d be in motion.

I stood up and walked to a break in the roadside barrier. Look for taxi. Raise arm.

It worked. A taxi pulled over, the driver gesturing for me to move fast.

Put bags in boot. Get in taxi.

The interior of the car was blessedly soft and cool. I asked the driver to take me to Chakkrawat Police Station and then closed my eyes for a few moments, listening to the driver’s murmured conversation on his phone. Even if he drove me around on a three-mile loop like the last one had, I didn’t care.

I thought about the soft cotton of Johan’s T-shirts, the earthy spruce smell of his skin, the laughter lines that transected his face even though he was only thirty. His fascination with me, his need for me, the way our bodies fitted together.

In desperation I returned my thoughts to my mother. In the months Johan and I had been together, I’d seen more of her than in all the years I’d spent in London; they had formed a mutual fan club that had taken me entirely by surprise. Slowly, I’d come to welcome it. Johan’s open and uncomplicated admiration of Mum’s work, her energy, her spirit, had helped me see her once again as the woman I’d worshipped as a child, before Dad and Maya’s endless maligning—and, ultimately, Mum’s own repeated failures as a parent—had hardened that tender part of my heart.

Years I’d spent, listening to talk of successful sit-ins and public letters, speeches and rallies and forced meetings with government officials. If anyone could advise me on my next move, it was Mum.

I got my phone out and called her, but of course she didn’t answer. I left a voicemail.



* * *



—

The one English-speaking man at Chinatown police station said Johan was not there. He did not know where he might be.

After ten minutes of me standing at the desk, begging him to find out where Johan was, he asked me to leave. “We very busy,” he said, indicating the two other people in the waiting room.

Eventually I went off to a stairwell, which might or might not have been another waiting room, to try Mum again. As the call connected I stared at a bunch of framed pictures of former police chiefs, waiting for inspiration. All around me were Thai voices. Blood was beginning to seep through the sock in my knickers and my abdomen was knotted and angry.

I found the other sock in my bag and cautiously pushed open the one door that wasn’t locked, hoping it might be a toilet.

It wasn’t a toilet. It was a small room of holding cells. I stopped in the doorway, unnerved. Why was this accessible to the public?

I stared at the cells. Chipped paint, no fans or windows, little more than five square feet of dirty floor space. Compared to the lobby outside, with its framed photos and air conditioning, the room was hellish, but I imagined the real cells, probably below ground level, would be a lot worse. This couldn’t be anymore than a processing space for new arrivals.

I turned to the whiteboard next to me. It was covered in writing I couldn’t read, but there was one word I knew: farang.

Johan. That was Johan. Foreigner.

I stuffed the clean sock into my knickers and went back to the front desk, grateful for new faces: the shift had changed. The English-speaking woman at the desk knew who Johan was straight away. He was being interviewed, she said. Her facial expression was surprisingly sympathetic.