Half the World Away

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The restaurant is a big, square room on the corner of the block at street level. There are some tables outside, crowding the pavement, and we sit there. It’s fully dark now and the sky is a lurid indigo. Across the road I can see a man in shirt, trousers and baseball cap handing out leaflets. I ask Bradley what he’s selling.

‘Probably mobile-phone contracts or broadband packages,’ he says.

‘I saw on the map there’s a big software park,’ I say.

‘That’s near where Dawn lives,’ Shona says. ‘It’s huge.’

‘Twenty per cent of the world’s computers are made in Chengdu,’ Bradley tells us.

‘Seriously?’ Tom says.

‘Yep.’

‘Our new masters,’ Tom says.

‘Is spicy food OK?’ Rosemary says. ‘Or we can ask for little spice?’

It would be handy to have some sort of rating system on the menus, sticks of dynamite, maybe, or little bonfires.

We’re at a picnic table with bench seats. Tom and Shona are forced to sit sideways, Tom at my left and Shona to my right, as their legs won’t fit underneath. In the centre of the table is a large hole and below it a Calor-gas canister. We agree to try the standard hotpot menu. Rosemary and Bradley chatter in Chinese and then Bradley orders.

It’s ten at night and the street is still busy. There is a stall opposite us, piled with cherries and lychees and – it takes me a moment to identify them – goldfish in bags. A group of teenagers sit on their scooters, playing with their phones. I watch a couple walking with a toddler. The child holds the string to a shiny gold balloon that bobs above her. She keeps glancing up at it as though she’s afraid it will fly away, or burst.

I’m so tired that I wonder if I could just make my apologies and leave. My back feels as though the vertebrae are fused together. My eyes are gritty. Around us the other diners – all Chinese – talk with raised voices to compete with the traffic and each other.

We are served small bowls of pale green tea and provided with chopsticks, bowls and spoons in a cellophane pack. There is a plastic box of tissues at either end of the table and small wastebaskets on the floor. I sip the tea. Beer arrives, and I drink some of that.

‘So, your scooter was nicked?’ Tom says to Shona.

‘Yes.’ She pulls a face.

‘Nightmare,’ Rosemary says.

‘Does it happen a lot?’ Tom says.

‘Yes,’ Shona says.

‘I wish someone would steal mine,’ Bradley jokes. ‘I fancy a new one. But there’s a garage at my place,’ he explains, ‘in the basement with a security guy. No one is going to mess with him.’

‘You use it for work?’ Tom says.

‘Yeah – it’s an hour by bus, half that on the scooter. No-brainer.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ I say. ‘The traffic?’

‘You get used to it,’ Shona says. ‘I’ve not seen many accidents – people aren’t going that fast, really.’

‘Are all the scooters electric?’ Tom says.

‘You can get petrol ones but you don’t need a licence for the electric ones so most people use them,’ Bradley says.

‘Will you report it stolen?’ I say to Shona.

She shakes her head. ‘No point.’

The waitress brings over a large metal bowl with a lid and places it in the hole. She stoops between Bradley and Rosemary and lights the gas.

The dish is not immediately appealing, a milky grey liquid, reminiscent of washing-up water, with chunks of tomato, bamboo shoots, shredded cabbage, something cream-coloured that I can’t identify, and brown meat floating in it. Next comes a large bowl of sticky rice, which Bradley doles out. There is a plate of spice, red chilli and dark green coriander. Shona points her chopsticks at it. ‘If you like it really hot, add some of that too.’

Following their lead, Tom and I pick up food from the hotpot, fishing out what we’d like to add to our rice. My first taste is savoury, salty, a rich stock with a sizzling punch that numbs my lips and catches at the back of my throat. I cough and drink some beer. The steam rises from the pot, my nose runs and sweat breaks across my scalp and face. The tissues are handy for blowing noses but also to wipe my mouth and fingers when things get messy and my attempts to use the chopsticks fail. The cream-coloured food is tofu, unlike any I’ve had before: silky, with a delicate taste almost like shellfish. The brown meat turns out to be pork, streaked with fat. I lean back from the table and fan my face.

Rosemary smiles. ‘We say to eat hot food is good in Sichuan because it is so damp here. This is very good for your health.’

Tom laughs. ‘You’re bright red, Jo.’

‘I’m not the only one.’ I snag a sliver of tofu and eat it. The chilli catches again in my throat and I cough.

‘These…’ Tom points to a burr at the edge of his rice ‘… these are the peppers?’

‘That’s right,’ Bradley says. ‘Sichuan pepper. It numbs the tongue. You feel that?’ He reaches for a tissue, wipes his moustache and chin.

‘It was Lori who found this place,’ Shona says.

Conversation stops.

‘Where can she be?’ Rosemary says, her eyes pained.

My chest is tight.

No one answers but then Shona says, ‘She loves finding new things, exploring.’

They reminisce and I feel an ache in my chest. Wanting her here, wanting her here to share this. I’m not sure that we’re any further forward but I’m glad we’ve met these people, that Lori had their friendship and a sense of belonging in this unfamiliar place.

We get a cab back – I haven’t the energy to walk to the bus. We must get in touch with Peter Dunne, our only liaison with the police, and tell him what we’ve learned. And I still need to call Nick. On the ride, beneath the underpass, I see a figure curled up, sleeping. Homeless, I guess.

I call Peter Dunne from Tom’s room, my phone on loudspeaker so we can both hear what’s said. It takes the consul a while to answer – it’s late, Saturday night: maybe he keeps office hours even with a situation like this, but eventually he’s on the line. He listens while I explain the content of the text from Lori to Shona and ask him if he knew about the project. There’s a very brief pause, then he says, ‘Not as such.’

‘We think it might be important, that perhaps she was taking photographs that Monday.’ An ugly thought curdles my stomach. I say it aloud: ‘Perhaps she was photographing the wrong thing… You said it’s a sensitive time.’

‘Mrs Maddox-’

‘Please, call me Jo.’

‘Jo, if the authorities detained Lorelei for any reason, for any length of time, I would have been informed. It happens – visa irregularities, misbehaviour or more serious incidents. I’m called from my bed often enough and together we agree on an appropriate way forward. I can assure you, we would know.’

He sounds so certain.

‘But if we can find out where she was,’ I say, ‘whom she was seeing, that could be important.’

‘I agree,’ he says.

‘Superintendent Yin,’ Tom says. ‘He never mentioned the project. Apparently he didn’t ask Lori’s friends about it. We think it’s been overlooked.’

‘They may well be carrying out enquiries into it but I’ll pass on your thoughts to make sure,’ Peter Dunne says.

The boys are in the garden when I get through. I tell Nick all about my day and share my concerns about the investigation. Like me, he’s surprised that we weren’t told about any of the new information as it was established.

‘But we’re in their hands,’ I say. ‘I don’t think complaining will get us anywhere.’ I tell him I’ll Skype the kids another time but will just say a quick hello for now.

Finn says they’re going to the museum and wishes I could come too.

‘I’m sorry, darling, but we’ll do something special when I come back.’

‘What?’ he says.

‘I don’t know. You think of something. Bye-bye now, I love you, bye-bye.’

‘I don’t want to go to the museum,’ Isaac says flat out.

I don’t want to be having this conversation. I try a bit of reverse psychology, ‘OK. You tell Daddy and he’ll see if you can stay with Penny or Sebastian. Daddy and Finn can go on their own.’

There is a long pause, then he makes a huffing sound. ‘They won’t know what to get,’ he says.

‘What to get where?’

‘From the shop,’ Isaac says irritably.

Ah. The highlight of any visit. ‘That’s true – and they’ve got some cool models there, and pens and stuff.’

‘When are you coming home?’ he says.

‘In a couple of weeks. And we’ll do something special then, whatever you like.’

‘Bye,’ he says, and I hear scuffling. I imagine him thrusting the phone at Nick.

‘Tell him I love him,’ I say to Nick. ‘Will do.’

‘And I love you.’

‘Love you too,’ he says.

As I lie in bed my mind roams over the conversations from the evening. We should talk to Oliver in the morning, see if he was the first subject for her project. But wouldn’t he have said so? He was there when we explained about the last sighting and the message to Shona. Then again, his English isn’t brilliant. We need to ask him directly. I think of how he slipped away so quickly, of his reticence, the fact that he didn’t answer his phone.

It takes for ever to fall asleep.

Waking in the night with a start, I’m wondering what roused me, when a great whoomph shakes the building and drives me out of bed. Earthquake. There was one here not very long ago, with dreadful loss of life. Another whoomph vibrates through the air, travels though my belly, my chest. My heart bangs hard. Then I hear the clank and grind of construction vehicles. Or, in this case, demolition. From the window, I can see one of the long sheds has been razed to the ground. A cloud of dust hangs over the rubble that is left as a bulldozer backs away. Across the site, two trucks are waiting in position, headlights on, close to the pile of metal, and a grabber with lights on the arm of its scoop swings round, claws filled with a tangle of the stuff. Nothing goes to waste here. I’ve seen people collecting plastic water bottles and others on scooters piled high with cardboard for recycling.

I watch, sitting in the dark, until my eyes grow heavy and my pulse slows, the trucks have been filled and left in convoy with their loads of scrap. And the lights on the grabber are switched off.

Only the neon still shines, flowing endlessly down the towers, as the city sleeps.