my job to capture your life, remember?’ Ben replied.
Passengers around them began to stir. A reading light switched on from somewhere behind her.
‘What is your problem exactly?’ Lizzie whispered.
Ben rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t have a problem. I have a job to do. I’m not your friend or your travel buddy. This is not one of those reality soaps where you get to do another take and cut whenever it suits you. I might ask the odd question when I’m filming if I think the viewers need more explanation, but that’s it. I’m quiet, or rude, or whatever you want to call it, because I’m here to capture your story, not be part of it. And what I just heard was the most real thing that’s come out of your mouth so far.’
‘Tell it like it is, why don’t you,’ Lizzie muttered, as her face burnt crimson.
A row of lights along the cabin ceiling flickered on.
The overhead Tannoy crackled above Lizzie’s head. ‘Ladies and gentleman, we will shortly be serving a light meal,’ a man’s voice sing-songed. ‘We do ask that you move your seats up to the sitting position and have your tray tables down ready. Thank you. You may also wish to set your watches to Bangkok local time, which is ten fifteen am.’
Ben shifted back in his seat and disappeared from view. Lizzie lurched forward, another retort teetered on her lips, but Samantha shook her head in a ‘just leave it’ gesture and the quip disappeared. Lizzie blew out a puff of air and slumped back in her seat.
‘I’m not sure making an enemy out of him will make it any easier,’ Samantha whispered, her voice so quiet Lizzie only just heard it.
‘Everything he says rubs me up the wrong way.’ Lizzie bent her head closer to Samantha.
‘Are you sure it’s him and not what he represents? The documentary?’ Samantha replied with her usual dose of common sense.
‘Probably.’ Lizzie shrugged. ‘I know Jaddi thinks we’ll forget about the camera, but I don’t see how.’
‘Hey, we’ll have a good time,’ Samantha said with quiver in her voice that sliced into Lizzie’s heart.
Lizzie opened her mouth to reply but stopped. A cold seeped over her left foot as if she’d submerged it in a bucket of ice water. She wiggled her toes again. This time both feet responded.
‘I’ve got the feeling in my foot back.’ She smiled.
‘Phew, that’s a relief,’ Samantha said. ‘Now we won’t have to leave you behind at the hostel all day whilst we go exploring.’ She grinned.
Jaddi stirred in her seat. ‘What did I miss?’ she said without opening her eyes.
‘Nothing,’ Lizzie said before Samantha could reply.
Samantha
A deep yawn spread through Samantha as she watched her blue backpack trundle along the conveyer belt towards her. The large chrome-framed clock on the wall read three-thirty. If it weren’t for the harsh brightness of the afternoon sun streaming through the glass ceiling above her, she could easily have believed that it was the early hours of the morning, which to her body at least, she supposed it was.
A few metres away Jaddi and Lizzie fell into a cascade of giggles. Their voices, high with excitement, carried through the baggage-claim area. Samantha turned her head to watch them, and just for a moment two strangers stood where her friends should be. It was an alien feeling, one that sent an unease winding through her. Why was she the only one that felt it – the foreboding? It wasn’t as if she’d expected Lizzie to lie down on her death bed and wait for the tumour to get her, but this – the documentary, the cameraman – it didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t just her loathing of cameras, but something else, just out of reach in her mind, a rotting that she could almost smell, almost taste, but couldn’t see. If only they’d been able to afford the trip without the help from Channel 6, Samantha thought, then it might have been different.
Samantha glanced at Lizzie. Her pale face, lit from the sun, shone with excitement. Samantha pushed the unease away. Lizzie deserved to see the world. If they had to have their every movement captured on film for three months to make that happen, then so be it. Lizzie and Jaddi were her family. They weren’t like her family, as Jaddi had said, however many hours ago it had been that they’d stood in the dressing room at Channel 6 together. They were Samantha’s family. The only family she had.
Did her mother even know she was travelling the world? Would someone on the estate have told her? Would she watch the documentary? Samantha doubted it.
‘Don’t expect your room to be free for holidays or visits or nothing,’ her mum had said to her on the day Samantha had wheeled her one large suitcase out of her bedroom and into the gloom of the living room. 9am in the morning, curtains drawn, the screeching voices from a talk show on the TV, the air stinking of body odour and stale cigarettes. ‘When you’re gone, you’re gone,’ her mum had said, glancing away from the screen long enough to appraise Samantha. ‘I got no money to help you. You’re on your own at university.’ Her mother had swished her head and used her mocking posh voice, but it hadn’t masked the North London lilt or the disdain she clearly had for her daughter’s desire to make something more of her life.
Samantha hadn’t expected money, she hadn’t expected her mum to be proud of her, or sad to see her leave, but the words she’d used had still cut deep. It was the last time they’d spoken. In the summers at uni she’d picked up the part-time jobs off campus that the other students had left to return home, or stayed with Jaddi and helped wash cars for Jaddi’s dad. And Christmases and Easters since she’d spent with Lizzie’s family on the Suffolk coast.
Lizzie and Jaddi were her family in every sense of the word. They told each other everything. Almost everything, Samantha corrected.
As her backpack moved into reach, Samantha scooped it up and hoisted it onto her back. The movement caused a pain to grip the top of her arms and images of David’s ‘game’ clouded her thoughts. Goosebumps raged across her skin, her breath caught in her throat. She closed her eyes and the smell of his aftershaves filled her senses. She screwed her eyes tight against the images rearing up, before shaking them away. What she needed now was a hot shower and food that hadn’t been processed, shrink-wrapped and shipped thirty thousand feet in the air.
‘All set?’ Jaddi called out to her.
‘Sure.’ Samantha said with a nod, falling into pace behind the others and fixing her gaze on her feet, avoiding Ben and his camera, taking long, backwards strides a metre in front of them.
‘This place is amazing,’ Jaddi said as they strolled along a glass atrium lined with dark-green trees in large white pots.
Lizzie laughed. ‘It’s just Bangkok airport.’
‘OK, fine, but how many airports have you been to that have things like that?’ Jaddi said, pointing across the terminal and forcing Samantha to lift her eyes from the floor and stare open-mouthed at a three-headed serpent, glistening with gold and jewels, looming over them. Its long body was coiled around a rock and being pulled in two directions by life-sized colourful men wearing pointy gold hats.
The detail of the men, their expressions, their straining muscles, the look of anguish in the eyes of the serpent, it was as exquisite as it was unexpected.
For one minute the unease cloaking Samantha lifted. She forgot about Ben and the camera, David and his game, Lizzie’s prognosis. Staring at the three heads of the creature, the gold spikes on its head shimmering in the sun’s rays, she could almost hear its harrowing screech.
‘Churning of the milk ocean,’ Samantha said, reading the English translation on the plaque below the serpent.
The three