Half the World Away

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

It’s as quick to walk back from the ring road through the park to the hotel and pleasanter away from the traffic so we take that route from the bus stop. A group of children are coming our way, six of them with an adult. They all wear red neckerchiefs.

‘Hello, hello.’ One starts the chorus.

‘Hello,’ Tom says, ‘hello.’ And then as we pass, he calls, ‘Bye-bye.’

And there are peals of laughter.

We cross the bridge. The wide grey river gleams, harsh and dull. Men on the promenade are sitting with flywheels big as dinner plates, like fishermen but the lines go up in the air. I’m trying to puzzle this out when Tom points to a kite, up far, far above, the size of a stamp. There are others even higher, tiny black diamonds against the pewter sky.

We built a kite once, Lori and I, from a kit with coloured paper, bamboo dowel and a long plastic tail. And it flew. We took it to the meadows near the Mersey. Lori was delighted.

‘The kids OK?’ Tom says, as we walk on.

‘I think so, missing me. I promised to talk to them tonight. What about you? Anyone waiting to hear from you?’

‘Nosy.’ His eyes are bright.

‘Coy,’ I return. ‘Or is it a secret? Is she married?’

‘Jo.’

‘It has been known,’ I say.

‘Single, as it happens.’

‘Moira?’ I ask.

‘What?’ he says.

‘There was a Moira,’ I say.

He laughs. ‘She’s a business partner, deals with Liverpool. Why are you so interested?’

‘Just making conversation,’ I say, sounding defensive, and I don’t know why, except I’m tired, my skin feels greasy and there’s a blister growing on the back of my heel.

‘Aphrodite,’ he says.

‘Seriously?’

‘She’s a model,’ he says.

‘Course she is,’ I say.

‘A hand model – watches, rings, nail varnish.’

‘Is she Greek?’ I say.

‘Brummie, actually. Lost the accent, thank God.’

I laugh, back on safer ground. Since he left, the longest time we’ve ever been together was the day of Lori’s graduation. We had dinner in Glasgow the night before, Lori and Tom, Nick and I, then went to the ceremony the next afternoon and out for cocktails. No wonder our interactions simmer with antagonism: we don’t know how to be with each other any more.

‘There’s a Cultural Relics bit,’ Tom says, looking at the sign near the park entrance. ‘We could take a look?’

Sightseeing? Is he mad?

‘What?’ he says. ‘It’ll only be a couple of quid.’

‘It’s not the money.’

‘What, then?’ He’s got his sunglasses on and I can’t see his eyes but he sounds annoyed.

‘Sightseeing?’ I say. It seems wrong, skewed. I’m perilously close to tears. I turn away from him, arms crossed, stare at the rows of scooters in the car park.

‘Hey,’ Tom says, ‘it’s just a break. We’re not meeting Shona until three. You go back, if you like. Sit in your room for the next couple of hours.’

I shrug. ‘I’ll come.’

Inside the park, on a small stage, a masked man is dressed in flowing coloured robes, thick with embroidery. Music plays, quick and jangly. The mask, surrounded by a headdress, is stylized, vivid swirls of solid colour, green and white and black and red. He jumps into the air, and twirls, kicks his legs, then strikes a pose. He opens a large fan and swipes it across his face. A clash of cymbals, and the mask disappears, replaced by another, red and black with jagged eyebrows, angry-looking. The man feints to the left, then the right. A scissor kick, another cymbal clash, and a new face.

We buy our tickets for the paying area. I read the leaflet. The park is dedicated to an ancient poet, Xue Tao. There are statues of her among the trees and her grave is here. I shiver in the heat. I don’t want to see any graves.

The path leads into an open area ringed with pavilions, landscaped with large stones, statuary and planting. Forest trees provide pools of shade. A standing stone we pass has characters carved into it, painted green. In the borders around the buildings, grasses and flowering shrubs are planted among bonsai pines. Pinnacles of rock remind me of the dribbled sand we would use to make sculptures at the beach.

Signs point to different attractions – the bamboo museum, the brocade-washing pavilion, the river-viewing tower. The tower itself is beautiful, a soaring four-storey pagoda, richly carved from deep red wood. The sculptures and fretwork are decorated with exquisite colours: white and red, green, yellow and blue.

While Tom goes exploring, I find a bench to sit on below a pergola, alongside the river. Across the murk of the water is the cityscape, the bristling ranks of skyscrapers.

The red stone balustrade at the edge of the water is ornately carved with flowers and repeated block patterns. Seed has been left along the tops of the walls and tiny birds with rusty red heads and fantails flit to peck at the grains, and fly away again. White butterflies dance in the grass.

I stretch and relax, wanting to let go of the tension lodged in my shoulders and guts.

Piped music starts coming through speakers hidden in the foliage and then a man’s voice reciting something. I pick out numbers yi, er, san. Perhaps he is listing the rules of the park, or the attractions to be seen, or some principles of poetry.

I watch the ants running hither and thither around my feet, all the appearance of random panic, though I know they are organized, carefully following trails laid by others, working for the good of the colony. Two ants carry a burden, a grain of rice or perhaps an insect egg, wrestle it to a crack in the paving and release it there.

How much do the police know about Mr Du? Suspicious, half-formed thoughts hover at the edges of my mind, grotesque gargoyles, like the dragons that guard the gates in the park: teeth and claws, leathery scales, sulphurous breath.

Why does everything have to be filtered through Peter Dunne? Can’t they give the investigation to someone who can speak English, who can deal with us directly? I think of DI Dooley and the trip to report Lori missing, the enormity of it.

An ant runs over my foot. I dash it away, stand up and walk round the corner where there is a fountain in a circular pool.

Dawn’s words echo in my head, Weirdo… kept asking if she had a boyfriend. The last person to see her. Did she go back there? Was Mr Du the subject she was ‘making a start’ with?

A siren loops from across the water. Then I notice a break in the noise and wonder if the traffic lights have changed because, for two seconds, the roar of engines and the percussion of horns soaks away and birdsong, with the splash of the fountain, comes to the fore. Closing my eyes, I think of home, of clear, clean air and the peace of the garden. There is no way to concentrate with this barrage of sound. It takes so much energy just to shut it out that there’s little space left for coherent thought.

On the way back we pass a tuk-tuk parked on the pavement, with fruit piled high and a set of old-fashioned scales.

‘English?’ the vendor says, with a broad smile.

‘Yes,’ Tom says.

‘London?’

‘Manchester,’ Tom says.

‘Manchester?’

‘Yes, Manchester,’ Tom says.

‘You know Jackie?’ he says brightly.

We shake our heads.

‘Jackie in London. London, yes?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘Chengdu, like?’

I have a spare leaflet in my bag, and show him.

‘Aah,’ he says sadly.

‘Have you seen her?’ I say, struggling to remember the Chinese. ‘Nǐ kàn jiàn to le ma?’

He pulls a face, shakes his head slowly. We walk on.