So, when he told her his mate Derreck had moved to Thailand and got himself some cushy job and had invited them to stay in his five-bedroomed villa with river views, he had looked so desperate, so hopeful that she felt this was a compromise of sorts. ‘We’d just need to find money for our flights, that’s all,’ he’d said, in the same pleading tone, his hands warm beneath hers. ‘I’ve got a bit saved up. Imagine the romance. You’ll love Thailand. It’s one of the most amazing places. Bangkok is like nowhere else you’ve ever been.’ Which wasn’t hard to accept when she’d hardly been anywhere. But she’d relented, seduced by his stories of South East Asia. She’d go with him, she’d decided. That might curb his wanderlust, and bring them closer. Over the last six weeks, since John-Paul had lost his job, their relationship had deteriorated.
‘And also Derreck asked if we wanted to bring some mates,’ he’d said, his deep chestnut eyes lighting up. Straight away she knew which mates. Her crowd, who had subsequently become his crowd. The lads, as he called them, consisted of Griff, Trevor and Martin. And their other halves were Leonie, Hannah and Maggie respectively. She’d been at school with the girls and Martin, had known them for ever. They were like her family.
Of course they were excited: a chance for them to get away for two weeks from their dull jobs and the grey January English skies and the incessant rain. They couldn’t pack their suitcases fast enough. And now here they were, on this ‘holiday of a lifetime’， as Leonie and Hannah kept calling it, their arms linked, reminding Stace of their fourteen-year-old selves at school.
There were so many different sensations Stace was experiencing on that journey to the villa, the heat being just one of them. The smells – a mixture of fish, vehicle fumes and something sweet – the noise of the tuk-tuks and the motorbikes and cars that zoomed past their minivan; the sights, the sun poking through a hazy blue sky and the multi-lane motorways, the smaller roads lined with market stalls, and barely dressed men leading elephants along the pavements. It was like nowhere she had ever been and she felt terrified. Maggie was pressing her nose to the glass and exclaiming in wonderment, ‘There’s an actual elephant in the street!’ Or ‘Are those Buddhist monks?’
By the time they pulled up in front of a gated complex Stace felt car sick. John-Paul looked like he felt the same. His enthusiasm had begun to wane before they’d even left the UK. At one point he’d asked her if perhaps they were making a mistake. But her friends were so excited there was no way Stace could let them down now.
‘Wow,’ said Martin, standing on the paved driveway in awe, his arm slung around Maggie’s slim shoulders, his strawberry-blond hair standing up in peaks. Trevor removed his hat and used it to fan his thin face. Hannah jumped up and down in excitement and clapped her hands.
‘Fuck! We’re staying here!’ she exclaimed. She often spoke in exclamation marks. Even Stace, feeling hot and sick as she was, couldn’t help but be impressed with the sight that greeted them.
Before them stood three identical sparkling white villas, detached and evenly spaced, grand with their wedding-cake-esque pillars. Stace had never seen anywhere so beautiful and in that moment excitement flared in her belly. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad after all. ‘Wow,’ said Martin again, his mouth hanging open. ‘I can’t believe we’re staying here.’
‘How can his friend afford a place like this?’ whispered Maggie, her dark hair piled on top of her head in a messy but stylish bun. Maggie had always been the glamorous one of the group. It had been a source of shock to all of them when she’d fallen for pale, lanky Martin.
‘I bet he’s a criminal,’ said Griff, under his breath. Always the joker but as he said it Stace experienced a flash of panic. They knew nothing about this Derreck. John-Paul had been vague, said he’d met him travelling and they’d kept in touch and that he was a bit of a ‘caballerete’， whatever that meant. But she’d hardly heard John-Paul mention his name until the invite.
The front door of the middle villa suddenly opened and they all stopped in their tracks, falling silent. A tall, lean guy with golden blond hair stood there, a cream fedora perched on his head, like he thought he was Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby. Behind him was a vast hallway of polished wood. He was wearing an open-necked shirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow, revealing tanned and muscular arms. There was a collective hush as they took in this Adonis figure and Stace noticed how Martin grabbed Maggie’s hand firmly in his own freckled one.
‘Welcome to Chao Phraya Riverside Villas,’ he said, with a sweep of his arm, like he was a Shakespearean actor in a play. And framed as he was between the white Roman-style pillars in front of the wedding-cake villa he could have been. ‘I’m Derreck.’
Day Two
6
Jenna
Voice Memo: Tuesday, 27 November 2018
I hardly slept last night after seeing someone lurking around outside. Maybe I’ve spent too long reading about all the weird things that have happened here and imagined the whole thing. This place is definitely eerie: the way the light falls between the trees, the remoteness of the cabins, the unnerving night-time silence only punctuated last night by some screaming, which I think must have been foxes. My rational mind says it’s all down to nature, but another part is wondering if there might be some truth to these legends after all. I read that in 2012 two men spent all day searching for a baby they heard crying in the field of standing stones, but despite looking everywhere for it they never found the source, and there have been numerous reports of sightings of a hooded figure along the Devil’s Corridor. It’s hard to know what has become folklore and what is reality. But don’t all myths stem from some semblance of fact?
I’m awake at 6 a.m. but my relief at making it through the night with no more interruptions is short-lived when I realize it’s still dark. I get up anyway and sit at the kitchen table with a brew. I’ve got a few hours before I’m due at Brenda’s. My eyes were so tired last night that I could barely focus on the information I gathered before arriving here. I pick up an old press cutting with a photo of the four girls: Katie, Olivia, Sally and Tamzin are sitting around a table in a pub garden on what looks like a summer evening at dusk, young in their 1990s fashion.
Olivia is pretty with a streaky blonde Rachel haircut and Sally is wearing a velvet choker and a crop top. Sally is a beauty, there’s no getting away from it, hair so dark and sleek as to be almost black, with huge almond eyes and poreless skin. Tamzin is pretty in that bleached-blonde way, and Katie cute with a light brown bob and freckles. I put the photo down, then pick up another with the headline ‘LOCAL ODDBALL ARRESTED’。 I blanch at its insensitivity, pleased that at least some things have changed. There is a grainy photo of a dishevelled, bearded man on the front with his head down. The name Ralph Middleton pops out at me. There’s something familiar about him and then I realize with a jolt he looks very much like the guy who spoke to me on the Devil’s Corridor yesterday. According to the article, he was the one who found Olivia trapped in her car on the night of the accident and called the police. The piece doesn’t really say much more than that he lived alone with a menagerie of animals and was considered ‘odd’ by the locals. I’ll need to interview him for the podcast but I can’t help feeling a rising anxiety at the thought of being alone with him.