Half the World Away

CHAPTER FORTY

I’m up at dawn. The storm has broken and rain hammers down from the glowering sky.

I dreamed of Isaac. A lovely dream. I arrived home, rushed and anxious, to find him sitting at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas.

As he saw me, he smiled and stood up. ‘Look, Mummy, I can fly.’ His face full of glee. And he flapped his arms and cycled his legs and was soaring around the hallway, which was a massive dome hung with chandeliers.

It’ll be after eleven at home but I text anyway: All OK?

Yes, Nick’s reply comes. I’m staying with him. He needs plenty of sleep. Skype when he’s up to it?

Sure.

Penny has emailed to say that Finn is fine:

It must be hard to be so far away when Isaac is poorly but do try not to worry. Nick’s with him and Finn is enjoying the novelty of sleeping on a sofa bed in Gav’s room with Benji in attendance (Gav’s still working in Berlin). We are all thinking of you and hope there will soon be news of Lori. There are some lovely messages for her on Facebook.

In the hotel restaurant I eat some melon, a round of toast, drink tea and return to my room. It is still only seven forty-five. I don’t know what to do with myself.

I practise saying my piece for the press conference. Read it over and over until I almost know it off by heart. Then I swipe through the photos on my phone, Isaac and Finn, Lori, Nick. I read Lori’s blog again, that first entry.

In my defence I’d like to point out that

a) No one asked me

b) I’m really not the alluring type

c) If I am called after a rock then so are the Jades and Rubys and Ambers out there and maybe my rock has a little bit more character than theirs. Maybe. Granite, anyone? Millstone grit?

d) My singing may drive people to distraction but I have never drowned a soul, mariner or otherwise.

Perhaps people who hear the appeal will look at her blog, get more of an idea of who she is.

By the time Tom comes to my door at nine, I have showered and tidied up, and I am watching the construction vehicles working in the rain, demolishing the last of the long sheds. The site is pocked with puddles now, some very large. The lorries that are removing the debris drive through them, causing great waves of spray and sending the water streaming across the ground.

I answer Tom’s knock.

‘How’s Isaac?’ he says.

‘He’s sleeping, no problems.’

‘OK. I’m going to see Mrs Tang, and then I’ll do some leafleting. I’ll see you when I get back.’

‘Did you get an interpreter?’ I say.

He shakes his head. ‘No, I forgot. But I’ll try to find someone later.’

‘And Mrs Tang?’

‘Got this.’ He holds up his phone. The English-Chinese dictionary app.

‘OK.’

He shuts the door. I sit on the bed, feel a swift lurch of misgiving, a flush of heat. What am I doing? It forces me to my feet. I grab my bag and my raincoat from the wardrobe and run to the lift. When I get down to the lobby, I see Tom on the steps outside, his jacket already darkening with the rain. No umbrella.

I race after him. I’d thought the rain would be refreshing and lower the temperature but it’s steaming, like being in the shower.

I catch him at the junction.

‘Jo?’

‘I can’t just sit there,’ I say, breathless. And I don’t want to be on my own.

He nods.

We wait for the lights to change.

The park is quiet, everything sodden. We pass life-size models made of bamboo: a yak, a water-wheel, a cottage, a cart.

Tom is drenched by the time we reach the ring road. My top half is dry but my jeans have soaked up the water and stick to my ankles. My sandals are slippery, treacherous.

We buy our tokens for the bus and take the escalator up to the platform. Curtains of rain cloak the city, blurring the view. Once we are on our way, I see a policeman asleep in his car at the side of the ring road. I want to stop the bus, run over and hammer on his windscreen, wake him. ‘Find my daughter. Now. Find her. Why aren’t you looking? Look now.’

In the grey of the downpour, Lori’s building with its vivid blue tiles is a brash slab of colour, smeared with rust marks, like wounds.

Martin answers the door, and smiles. ‘Hello. Come, come.’ He waves us indoors, takes us through the kitchen into a living room that is divided into two areas: a dining table and chairs and beyond that the lounge area, with two long couches in an L-shape facing a TV. The wallpaper is patterned with tall canes of bamboo, and there is a beautiful fretwork screen concertinaed by the wall next to the dining table. All the furniture is made of rich dark wood, highly polished.

‘Mama,’ Martin calls, and Mrs Tang comes from the narrow hallway. She welcomes us, shakes hands. She is small, wiry, her hair starting to go grey. She wears a stripy jumper, black slacks and tortoiseshell glasses. There are no signs of her hobby here. We are offered tea several times but say, no, thank you.

Mrs Tang has only a word or two of English. Martin picks up the flier from the dining table and his mother talks to him about it. He says, ‘Mama is sad.’

‘Lori talked about photos?’ I mime a camera, then point at Mrs Tang.

‘Yes… Mama…’ He gestures to her and talks in Chinese, clicks his tongue, irritated, I think, that he can’t explain.

Tom opens the dictionary app on his phone, shows Martin, who finds the word he wants. ‘Reserved,’ Tom reads.

‘Shy,’ I say, remembering what Anthony translated the last time we were here, ‘Mrs Tang was shy about doing it?’

‘Animals?’ Tom says.

‘Yes.’ Martin understands this: he talks to his mother and Mrs Tang beckons to us. We go along the hall that leads off the dining area to a box room at the end. The walls are covered with stuffed animals, set out on shelves. Two squirrels, various birds, a snake and something I think is a mongoose. Some stand on small plinths and others are under glass cases. In front of the window is a wide desk covered with tools, scraps of material and the body of a rat, which looks crushed.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘very good.’ But the animals with their glass-bead eyes, their curled claws and stiff poses make me uneasy. I don’t like to think what Mrs Tang has to do to create her models. The room smells of nothing worse than solvents, glue perhaps, a tang reminiscent of nail-varnish remover.

I daren’t catch Tom’s eye after his impersonation of the joke taxi-dermy animals on Twitter.

‘Shall we?’ I point back to the living room.

We stand around the dining table, but Mrs Tang gestures that we should sit on the sofas.

‘When did Mrs Tang last see Lori?’ I ask Martin. ‘When – what day?’

He speaks to his mother and they seem to agree. Martin gets up, goes through to the kitchen and comes back with a wall calendar. The months are marked on one sheet, no pictures, just the dates in red and black, Chinese and English.

He hands it to Mrs Wang and she points.

‘April six,’ Martin says.

‘Sunday?’ Tom says.

Martin checks and Mrs Tang agrees.

‘Is she sure?’ I say.

Martin doesn’t understand me. Tom finds the translation, ‘Definite, certain. Kending.’

Tom hands the phone to Mrs Tang. ‘Kending.’ She nods. She talks for a while to Martin. He thinks for a moment, then explains. ‘Sunday six April Ma go Nanchong.’

‘To work,’ Tom says.

‘Work. See Lori,’ Martin says.

‘See Lori here?’ I point to the window, jabbing my fingers down.

‘Here,’ Martin says. He hums, looks up to the ceiling. His mother says something else and he nods to her.

‘Lori talk… photo.’ He mimes a camera, like I did, his fingers forming a rectangle one on top presses the button. ‘Photo… tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’

I’m confused.

Tom holds out his hand for his phone and Mrs Tang passes it back. Tom looks up ‘tomorrow’ and shows Martin. Martin pulls a face.

‘Photo… small time,’ Martin says.

‘Soon?’ I guess.

‘Soon, soon.’ Martin nods. He says something else to Mrs Tang and she smiles in agreement.

I speak in pidgin English: it seems the best way to make myself understood, ‘Lori say to Mrs Tang, Lori take Mrs Tang photo soon. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ Martin says, but he waves his hands as if there’s more to come. ‘Back Nanchong.’

‘Take photo when Mrs Tang back Nanchong?’ I say.

‘Yes,’ Martin says.

I smile and thank them, but I feel deflated. This tells us nothing about Lori’s movements on the Monday.

Mrs Tang says something and wiggles her wrists. Martin laughs.

‘First photo bike,’ Martin says.

‘Bike?’ Tom says.

Mrs Tang giggles. ‘Jumas dee,’ she says, ‘jumas dee.’ As though we might understand. She waggles her hands again.

‘James Dee,’ Martin says.

‘James Dean?’ Tom gets it.

‘Jumas Dee.’ Mrs Tang beams. ‘Easy Rider.’ She mimes the revving of a motorbike and makes a growling sound. We all laugh. I recall images: Dennis Hopper in his buckskin jacket riding a chopper bike; James Dean, hot young rebel astride his motorbike, fag in his mouth, wearing his leather flying jacket.

Realization slams through me.

First photo bike.

A motorbike. A vintage motorbike.

She was going to shoot me… an old Chiang Jiang 750. Bradley’s words.

It falls through me like slabs of ice. Cold lead weight.

A trap-door opens at my feet.