Best British Short Stories 2020

^{STEPHEN THOMPSON} SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT

She was staying in a part of Bangkok choked by a tangle of overhead power cables. The nearer we got to her place, the stealthier she became. She was acting like a burglar. Halfway down a deserted side-street crawling with cats and stinking of sewage, she came to an abrupt halt in front of a three-storey building that had bars on the ground-floor windows and a front door made from a combination of wood and corrugated iron. As if she were being watched, she slowly pushed the door open and we entered a gloomy, low-ceilinged hallway with a wooden staircase just about visible in the distance. She started towards it but stopped when I asked, ‘No light?’

‘Keep your voice down!’ she snapped. ‘It’s late. People are asleep. The bulb’s blown.’

Earlier that evening, in the bar, she had been very attentive towards me, occasionally touching my knee and making sexual innuendos; now she didn’t seem bothered. There was an air of officiousness about her, she had a job to do and was keen to get on with it. At the top of the stairs she flicked a switch and one of two overhead strip bulbs flickered into life. A tiled landing ran off to our right with doors on either side. Creeping along, we passed a picture on the wall of the bespectacled king whose image seemed to adorn every public space in the city. There was even one in my room back at The Grace. The picture was hanging askew in a cheap, gold-painted frame that did nothing for the regality of the subject.

The bulb was blown in her room too. Through a narrow, frosted window a shaft of street light fell diagonally across the floor, strong enough for me to see the room was sizeable but bare: a single mattress on the floor covered by a crumpled white sheet, an enormous rucksack leaning against the wall with several items of clothing spilling from the top and a few others in a pile on the floor. Hot and stuffy, the room could have done with an airing and the tiled floor clearly hadn’t been swept in a while, judging by the grit that crunched under our feet as we came in. Kicking off her flip-flops, she padded over to the bed and started to arrange it, even though there was nothing to arrange. I hung back. All evening I had been feeling aroused, but now sex was the last thing on my mind. I thought about Miriam and could almost hear her telling me to ‘just go for it’.

She finished smoothing the sheet and started heading for the door.

‘Where’re you going?’ I asked, trying to disguise my anxiety.

‘Bathroom,’ she replied. ‘You gonna stand there all night?’

I moved into the room proper and she slipped past me out the door. I dragged my feet over to the bed and crouched down, beginning to inspect the sheet. Up close, it didn’t seem as dirty as I had imagined, so I sat on the edge of the mattress and removed my trainers. Moments later I heard the unmistakable sound of someone urinating into a toilet bowl. I swung my legs up onto the mattress, rested my head and back against the flimsy partition wall, and listened for a while.

I began to review the changes I had made to my life in the last few weeks, in the process of which I experienced the old familiar panic: had I done the right thing? Anna hadn’t thought so, and yet she hadn’t made much effort to try to stop me. If I was determined to ruin what we had, the life we were building together, she wasn’t going to stand in my way. The funny thing was, at no point had I mentioned splitting up. I had simply said that I was thinking of quitting my job to go travelling for a while, and maybe hook up with Miriam in Thailand, but for Anna that was another way of saying I wanted out. She would brook none of my attempts to make her think otherwise. ‘You’re obviously searching for something, but I don’t see why you have to smash up our lives to go looking for it.’

She was right. I was looking for something, had been for years, but I could never put my finger on what it was or where I might find it. Be it at work or at play, nothing had ever sustained me beyond the initial burst of interest. Not that anyone could tell. I could feign it with the best of them, I could put on the face of a contented, successful careerist and pass myself off as someone to look up to and admire, but inside I felt like the only person doing backstroke in a pool full of front-crawlers. The day I cracked and spoke to Miriam about it she said, ‘Sounds like you’re having an EC.’ When I looked at her askance she said, ‘Existential crisis’ and advised therapy. I laughed. I was as likely to start seeing a shrink as I was to drink paint. When it came to such matters I was, and had always been, a confirmed sceptic, more inclined towards self-help than psychiatric, and yet a belief in my own abilities hadn’t brought me any closer to discovering the source of my angst. Perhaps I would never discover it. As I sat there in that dismal room, feeling a long way from home, waiting to have sex with a person who clearly had as much feeling for me as a dog for a fence-post, the walls seemed to be closing in.

It was the first night of my first trip to Bangkok and, so far, the city had been a huge disappointment. I had expected the noise, the pollution and the overcrowding, but was surprised by the squalor and the crumbling buildings dotted with rusting air-conditioning machines. I’d been in a grumpy mood since landing at the airport. Needing a room for the night before heading to Koh Samui to meet up with Miriam, I had spent a long time at the hotel reservations desk in the arrival lounge leafing through glossy brochures that featured page after page of sky-scraper hotels. To my inexperienced eyes, they all looked the same. I couldn’t choose between them and regretted that I hadn’t thought to book something back in the UK. More from impatience than a desire to help me decide, the young woman at the desk had tapped her French-polished nail on the page and said, ‘Very good this one. Central, cheap, have pool,’ but for some reason she failed to mention that The Grace was also a knocking shop. Later, when I walked into its faded, high-ceilinged lobby and saw the amount of middle-aged Arab men lounging around with young Thai girls draped across their fat bellies, I was repulsed. I was no prude, and this was Thailand after all, but there was something so off-putting about the scene I almost cancelled my reservation. I only didn’t because I couldn’t face traipsing about the city in the mid-afternoon sun searching for an alternative. Not on the back of a non-stop, fourteen-hour flight from Manchester.

Later that evening, after a revitalising sleep, I left The Grace to find something to eat. In a nearby food hall I had an extremely tasty dish of deep-fried fish in sweet chilli sauce, accompanied by a steaming-hot bowl of egg-fried rice: all for the princely sum of five pounds. Things were looking up. My fellow diners consisted almost entirely of Western men and their Thai ‘girlfriends’. One guy, wearing an England football shirt and clearly stoned, had been eyeing me from the moment I arrived. He was one of the few men sitting by himself and after a while he got up from his table and came and sat on the bench next to me. I resisted the urge to move to another table as I didn’t want to draw attention. I was feeling conspicuous enough. He introduced himself as Pete, Pete from Peckham, and within minutes was telling me, in a very loud voice, about all the countries he’d visited and what he’d got up to and where he was planning on going next. In this way I learned that he’d been on the road for almost a year, criss-crossing south-east Asia on a seemingly endless quest to, as he put it, ‘have it large’. He made me think of Miriam, who’d been travelling for a similar amount of time, in the same part of the world, making me jealous with all her Insta posts. She seemed to be having the time of her life. Travelling seemed to agree with her, but the same could not be said for Peckham Pete. Gaunt enough to be skeletal, he had dirty, broken fingernails, crusty, sun-bleached dreads and a long, wispy, unkempt beard that put me in mind of a wizard. If he had left the UK with any light in his eyes, not a trace remained. On and on he prattled. At one point, just for something to say, I told him I was off to Koh Samui first thing in the morning and he started bombarding me with tips. ‘Stay away from Lamai Beach. Boring as fuck. Fulla tofu eaters and yoga freaks. Head for Chaweng. That’s where it’s all ’appening. Cheap booze, drugs. You name it!’

After an hour or so in the food hall I felt a headache coming on, caused by a combination of listening to Pete and the glare from the blinding strip lighting. I had to get some air, stretch my legs. As I stood up Pete said, ‘You off, then?’ I nodded and he added, ‘Nice meeting you.’ His disappointment was all too apparent. I smiled and walked over to the counter to pay my bill. While I was settling up, I could feel Pete’s lecherous eyes on me. I couldn’t wait to get away.

I spent the next or hour or so meandering around a set of narrow, deserted back streets that put me slightly on edge. At one point I fetched up in what amounted to an African quarter. I was so surprised to find such a high concentration of black people in such an improbable location that I was momentarily confounded. My overriding feeling, however, was one of relief. No-one seemed especially interested in me. For the first time since arriving in the city I wasn’t being gawped at.

When my feet began to ache – Converse trainers are not ideal for pounding pavements – I popped into a bar. A narrow hole in the wall with a few stools jammed up against a counter, the place was deserted. In the cramped area behind the counter sat two dark-skinned Thai women with long black hair and more attitude than I was prepared for. They didn’t so much as nod, let alone try to serve me. I stood at the counter and waited for one to approach, but instead they averted their eyes and started speaking in Thai. I was baffled. They had clearly seen me, and it was obvious that I was waiting to be served, so what the hell were they playing at? So much, I thought, for the famed Thai hospitality. I cleared my throat and, trying to disguise my anger, said, ‘Excuse me, would it be possible to get a bit of service, please?’ No sooner had I finished than an old white guy with a copper-tan face and a grey, walrus moustache emerged from a room behind the counter through a beaded curtain. Though quite bald on top, he was sporting a grey pony-tail and was dressed in a black sleeveless T-shirt that showed off his flabby tattooed arms, and a pair of washed-out denim shorts. I pegged him for a retired biker seeing out his days in the tropics. He came straight over and said, ‘Where you from?’ His accent was North American and, judging by the way the girls stiffened in his presence, either owned the place or ran it. When I told him I was from London, he visibly relaxed.

‘Well that explains a lot.’ He stared at me before continuing, ‘Listen, no offence, but as a rule we don’t usually serve your type in here. Gotta bunch o’ Nigerians round the way who were using the place to peddle dope. Had to bar ’em, see? But you’re all right. And just to show there’s no hard feelings, have a drink on me. What’s your poison?’ I couldn’t believe my ears.

‘I’m good,’ I said, then turned and walked.

I spent the next few minutes ambling along a busy main road, trying not to think about how much I missed Anna, becoming increasingly annoyed at having to negotiate the narrow, overcrowded pavements. Several times I was forced to walk in the street. At other times I had to press myself against a wall or a shop front to allow people to go by. All the while I kept getting stared at. During our last WhatsApp chat, Miriam had encouraged me to make a trip to the famous Khao San Road. She’d called it ‘the spot’ and said it was full of ‘hot chicks’. It didn’t sound like my kind of place, but it was either that or head back to my hotel room to watch TV.

The tuk-tuk ride got me to Khao San Road in about twenty minutes. On the way, the narrow maze of streets became clogged with vehicles and the air increasingly polluted. Several times I had to cover my nose and mouth to avoid inhaling the cloying stench of petrol fumes, and such was the humidity that even in an open-sided tuk-tuk I was sweating all over. Toy, my poker-faced driver, deposited me at what he said was the quieter end of Khao San Road. Thick with backpackers, it didn’t seem quiet to me. Toy and I haggled good-humouredly over the fare before I relented and paid him what he originally asked for. Wearing nothing but a pair of faded Hawaiian shorts and some worn-down flip-flops, he kissed the back of my hand theatrically, started the engine of his tuk-tuk, turned it down a side-street and was gone. Moments later I was surrounded by a trio of small Thai boys. They seemed to appear out of nowhere and must have been waiting for the right moment to pounce. None looked older than twelve. Tugging at my arm and fighting with each other for my attention, they shoved their wares into my face with barely controlled aggression. One had a forearm full of leather bracelets, another was clutching a fistful of fake gold jewellery, while the third specialised in what looked to me like satin scarves. Everything was available at a ‘special price’. Politely but firmly, I told them I wasn’t interested and to emphasise the point wriggled free of their clutches and strode purposefully away. Long after I’d gone I heard them calling, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t dare.

There was no other way to get down Khao San Road except to stroll. At every turn someone was blocking my path. With a mounting sense of frustration, it eventually dawned on me that I was in a rush to go nowhere and that I would have a far better time of it if I did like everyone else and slowed down. It was all too easy to see why the road attracted so many backpackers. It had an aroma of vice almost as pungent as the roadside food stalls. Miriam had described the area as vibrant, which was beginning to seem like a euphemism for noisy. Techno blared from open-fronted, neon-lit bars and each bar had its attendant knot of silver-tongued, English-speaking touts shouting at the passersby and shoving laminated drinks menus into their faces. ‘Happy Hour cocktail. Beer cheap cheap.’ For a while I managed to avoid making eye contact with them, but eventually a dark-skinned middle-aged man in a pair of denim shorts caught my attention and shouted, ‘Hellooooo!’ When I smiled, he patted his arm, said, ‘Same same, but different!’, cackling at the top of his voice. I was so embarrassed I put my head down and hurried away as fast as the crowd permitted, the sound of the man’s laughter, and those of his co-workers ringing in my ears. Feeling conspicuous again, I took cover in a nearby Irish pub.

Soft lighting. Stained wood panelling. Unvarnished wooden tables and chairs. Upholstered booths. Framed olde worlde posters advertising whisky and Guinness and Irish coffee and other famous beverages from the Emerald Isle. Gaelic background music. Shannon’s Pub was striving hard for authenticity, but as someone who’d visited Ireland a few times, I could say with certainty that the overall effect was more Oxford Street than Dublin. At a glance, the clientele seemed to be a relaxed co-mingling of Thais and Westerners, most sitting towards the rear of the pub below a mounted wide-screen TV, watching a re-run match between Man United and Everton. Among them I noticed several United strips, worn by Thais and westerners alike. For several minutes I stood near the deserted bar watching the game ebb and flow until I heard a male voice say, somewhat tetchily, ‘I can help you?’

I turned to see a Thai barman staring at me. He was young, pasty-faced and bony, with close-cropped dark hair and a couple of silver hoops dangling from his right ear lobe. His leather bracelets, tattooed fingers and crushed white t-shirt with a picture of a snarling Joe Strummer screamed I might be a local, but I’m worldly, so don’t even think about patronising me.

‘Pint of Guinness, please.’ It felt strange ordering Guinness in Bangkok, but I figured I’d try it if only as a way to compare and contrast.

‘You must be rich.’

A female voice this time, English, home counties. Turning to my left, I saw a young, elfin-faced white woman standing at the bar beside me. She had braided, strawberry-blonde hair and wore a white, half-cut blouse with an elasticated bottom that clung to her visible rib-cage. In the gap between her blouse and what I later came to know as Thai fisherman’s trousers – a loose-fitting kind of skirt-trousers held together by straps – I noticed she had a sunken stomach and that the top of her black knickers was showing slightly.

‘Were you talking to me?’

The barman turned away to watch the game. He seemed grateful for the opportunity. The woman stepped closer to me, cupped her hand over my ear – a surprisingly intimate gesture that gave me a jolt – and whispered, ‘The Guinness is over a tenner a pint.’

I must have reacted with shock because she stepped back and started nodding her head. Before I could say anything, she leaned in again and whispered, ‘I’d recommend the local rum. You can buy a bucket of it with Coke for about a fiver and it lasts a lot longer than a pint of Guinness. We could share it. That way you won’t have to buy me a drink.’ She stepped back again and stretched out her hand, which struck me as oddly formal after her earlier behaviour, and said, ‘Kelly.’

Slightly bemused, I shook her clammy hand and said, ‘Afia.’

We took our bucket of rum and Coke, served with icecubes and two straws, and went and sat at a pavement table near the entrance. The heat was a welcome relief from the chill of the pub’s air-conditioned interior and I took it as a sign that I was already beginning to acclimatise. As soon as we were seated Kelly said, ‘Know why they serve it with straws?’ I shook my head. ‘Apparently, you get less oxygen drinking through a straw, which means you get mashed a lot quicker.’

I gave her a quizzical look. ‘Isn’t that a myth?’

She shrugged and replied, ‘Who the hell cares?’

Using both hands, she lifted the plastic bucket to her head, sucked long and hard on her straw and handed me the bucket as though we were smoking a peace pipe. I took a sip and almost had to spit. ‘Damn, that’s strong!’

Kelly laughed. ‘That’s how they serve it here. You get used to it.’ She patted my forearm. ‘Diddums. Don’t worry. The ice’ll dilute it.’

The condescension didn’t make me warm to her but I definitely fancied her. She was pretty, no doubt, with a confidence, even arrogance, that belied her slight frame and softly spoken voice. She had the look of someone who’d seen it all and bought the commemorative mug. Under the street light, her tan was more visible and deep enough to suggest she’d been away a long time. I was grateful that she wasn’t covered in mosquito bites. She had the odd one here and there, on her forearms and ankles, but nothing like some of the women I’d seen. She didn’t look like she had the pox.

‘I hope you’re not expecting small talk,’ she said, suddenly. ‘I don’t do it. Can’t. Too boring.’ She bent forward, sucked on her straw, straightened up again and said, ‘You’ve probably got all these questions you want to ask me, but I make a habit of telling girls my life story after I’ve slept with ’em, not before. That way I don’t scare ’em off.’

Leaning back in my chair, I made a deliberate show of appraising her. I was hoping she might keep talking, as I was enjoying her forced attempts to appear interesting, but she simply looked at me, a half smile on her face, a teasing smile.

‘Drink up.’ Using one hand this time, she lifted the bucket and held it in front of my face. I took a sip, pulled away, but she kept the bucket in place. ‘C’mon, get it down you.’

I swallowed hard and went back for seconds, taking several long gulps through the straw. ‘That’s the “spirit”,’ she said, and winked. When I could take no more I shoved the bucket away, almost spilling the contents. She laughed, lifting the bucket to her face and sucking on her straw till she became hollow-cheeked. When she finished she was flushed red and clearly out of breath, though she tried to hide it. She set the bucket down, smacked her lips a few times and said, ‘Might be cheap that stuff, but it certainly does the job.’

I was already feeling tipsy. ‘You trying to get me drunk?’

Kelly smiled and said, ‘And I thought I was being subtle.’

I couldn’t work out how long I had been asleep, but it must have been a good few hours because when I opened my eyes dawn had broken, the light penetrating the room and throwing its scuzzy décor into even sharper relief. Kelly was nowhere to be seen and I immediately knew she had gone. The fact that all her things were missing confirmed my suspicions. I stood up, swooned, had to sit down again. I felt dreadful. My head was pounding. My neck and back were stiff from resting against the wall for so long. My throat was parched. Desperately, I swallowed some saliva, but it had little effect. With considerable effort, I started hauling on my trainers and just then I heard movement in the bathroom next door, followed by the sound of running water. Kelly?

I laboured to my feet and shuffled to the door to check, but when I opened it I saw a short, fat Thai man come out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, his dimpled gut hanging over the top. He hadn’t seen me, so I pulled my head back into the room, closed the door quietly and tip-toed back to the bed. For some reason I felt safer on that side of the room. For a while I just stood there looking around, as if I couldn’t quite believe Kelly had gone. I walked over to the chest of drawers and opened them one by one. Empty. What was I hoping to find? Feeling sorry for myself, I realised it was time to leave. I didn’t have a clue what part of the city I was in, so I decided I would hail the first taxi I saw and get it to take me to The Grace, no matter the cost. As soon as I thought that my heart sank. I didn’t need to check my bumbag to know Kelly had stolen my money.

The taxi driver clearly didn’t believe my story. When we got to The Grace and I asked him to wait outside while I went in and got some money from the safe in my room, he insisted on coming into the hotel with me. I was offended by his mistrust, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. At the reception desk, he satisfied himself that I was a guest then waited in the lobby while I went up to my room on the sixteenth floor to get his fare. When I entered the room, I resisted the urge to throw myself on the bed. It looked so inviting, so luxurious. My anger at being robbed was already beginning to subside, mostly through exhaustion, but also because, having had the chance to think about it, I realised it could have been a lot worse. I had lost about two hundred pounds worth of Thai baht, but my credit card, passport and the rest of my cash were tucked away in the hotel safe. Still, I decided that I would report Kelly to the police. I knew she would never be caught. Her description would probably fit dozens of women in the city and I doubted whether Kelly was even her real name, but it was the principle of the thing.

Back downstairs I paid the driver, tipped him for waiting, and told my story to a smiley receptionist whose face was caked in skin-whitener. She listened patiently then got on the phone. Within minutes a young policeman arrived, wearing a brown, skin-tight uniform with his shirt tucked into his trousers. He was from the tourist division and just happened to be in the area. Sitting next to me in the bustling lobby, near a large bay window with tinted windows, he used a small notepad and pencil to take down the particulars of the theft. When he’d finished, he scolded me for not taking Kelly back to the hotel. He said that all guests, even casual visitors, had to register with reception and must give a valid form of ID. His advice made my hairs stand on end. Before leaving the bar, I had suggested to Kelly that we go back to my hotel but she had refused, saying she would feel more relaxed at her place. That may well have been true, but she obviously wanted to avoid detection. The policeman confirmed that it was unlikely she would be caught but commended me for reporting her. He said it would help when it came to compiling criminal statistics and that it gave the local authorities useful anecdotal evidence of what he called ‘inter-tourist crime’. Apparently, it was quite common.

After I’d given my statement, I went into one of several massage parlours that operated in the hotel lobby and treated myself to a rejuvenating back, neck and shoulder rub. Throughout the treatment, I thought of Anna. It had only been a few weeks since we’d split and there’d been no contact at her insistence. I yearned to hear from her, and actually got out my mobile with the intention of sending her a WhatsApp, but thought better. She was unlikely to reply and a snub was the last thing I wanted. After the massage, I went to a nearby travel agent and booked a flight to Koh Samui, scheduled to leave in three hours. I also reserved a bungalow in a beach-side resort called Tiki-Tiki. It had been recommended by Miriam. She’d stayed there once and enjoyed it so much she’d posted a favourable review on TripAdvisor. The plan was to meet her there when she arrived from Vietnam later in the week.

On my way back, I felt hungry and stopped in at an openfronted cafe that had an A-board on the pavement outside advertising English, American and Continental breakfasts. The place was deserted except for an elderly white couple sitting side-by-side at a small table, poring over a map. When I walked in they shot me a glance then quickly looked away and began to fidget self-consciously. The day before, fresh off the plane, I’d have bristled, but at that moment I felt sorry for them. They seemed so uncomfortable.

At the counter, I ordered a couple of croissants and an Americano from a cheerless old Thai man, then went and sat at a table near the entrance. I had to put on my sunglasses to combat the glare reflecting off the tinted windows of the skyscraper building opposite. For the next few minutes, waiting for my breakfast to arrive, I watched the traffic go by, both vehicular and pedestrian, trying in vain to ignore the smell of petrol and exhaust fumes. At one point a tuk-tuk raced by, the engine droning like a swarm of bees. A scrap of paper went flying into the air then came fluttering down again, blown this way and that by competing currents. Just as it was about to settle, it got caught on another current and went soaring upwards again. After a few seconds it blew down a side-street and out of view and I found myself hoping that it was still airborne, flitting about the city like a butterfly.