The Girls Who Disappeared(7)

Instead she turns her thoughts to her earlier conversation with Wesley. His insistence that she doesn’t talk to this journalist, whoever she is. Not that he needs to convince her of that. What seems off, though, is why he seemed panicked at the idea that she would. He always said he wouldn’t be interviewed either out of respect for her, but the way he was acting tonight and his air of desperation have made her wonder if maybe she isn’t the only one with something to hide.





5



The Holiday of a Lifetime


Stace hated the heat. She hated the stickiness of it and the way it made her T-shirt and shorts cling to her body and her stomach turn over, like she’d eaten something bad. It hit her like a wall as soon as she got off the plane so that she felt she couldn’t take deep enough breaths. The others were excited, chattering away on the drive from the airport to the villa, faces slick with sweat, dark patches under the arms of Maggie’s yellow T-shirt, Trevor with a straw hat he wouldn’t be seen dead in in England but that now sat at a jaunty angle atop his curly head. Martin’s ultra-pale skinny legs protruded from khaki shorts. Legs she hadn’t seen since school. She couldn’t bring herself to join in on the good-natured banter with the driver of their minivan. She already knew she should never have agreed to it. John-Paul had persuaded her.

‘But we can’t afford it,’ she’d said, hoping that would be the end to it when he first broached the subject. They were flat broke, that was the truth of the matter. Holidays to exotic far-flung places were for other people, not them. And that was fine. She was happy with their little life, their weekly outing to the local pub, their takeaways in front of the TV and their tiny rented flat above the launderette with the damp patch shaped like a butterfly on the ceiling above their bed.

But John-Paul wasn’t like her. John-Paul was different. She’d known that the first time she’d met him eighteen months ago. He had been an out-of-towner – a stranger, an outsider – but that was what had attracted her to him. There was something of the exotic about him with his Spanish mother and his Catholic upbringing and his lust for travel. He had strayed into her life by accident, really, just ‘blowing through town like tumbleweed’, he’d said when she’d first met him. And she’d liked that, the poetic-ness of it. He was that kind of person, always talking in similes and analogies in his soulful voice with a hint of a Spanish accent. A wanderer, he’d said, but then they’d fallen in love and she’d convinced him to stay, and over time he’d stopped talking poetically or about his writing ambitions, instead swapping his tie-dye T-shirts for a data-inputting clerical role, but she could see it in his eyes sometimes, the wildness of him, like a beautiful caged animal that was desperate for escape.

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.