a great idea. Come on, Jaddi, where’s your sense of adventure?’
‘But …’ Jaddi stared between them again. ‘But sitting in a car is not exactly an authentic experience. Besides, it’s also dangerous. We don’t know this guy. What if he’s an axe murderer?’ Jaddi nodded her head towards the driver.
The three of them turned to look at the skinny body of Tic. He grinned widely at them before opening the boot of his car.
‘He doesn’t look much like an axe murderer.’ Lizzie frowned, shrugging off her backpack and passing it to Tic.
Jaddi shrugged, adding her backpack to the boot. ‘Fine, let’s do it.’
Jaddi
‘Welcome to day five.’ Lizzie smirked into the handheld camera. ‘We are currently stranded on a dirt road somewhere in Cambodia, although we have no idea where. It’s five pm and still sweltering. The taxi that was supposed to take us all the way to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, drove off about an hour ago.’ Lizzie laughed at her own words. ‘So it looks like we’ll be spending the night here.’
A gust of hot wind blew against Jaddi’s neck. She half expected to find someone standing behind her with a hairdryer. For the past hour she’d perched awkwardly on her backpack, elbows on knees, head in hands, as frustration had seared through her, while Ben watched and filmed with his ‘I’m here to capture your story, not be part of it’ attitude. Damn him! How could they have been so stupid? Alone on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere with only half a packet of crackers and a few bottles of water between them. What did Lizzie find so funny about that?
Jaddi stood up and stretched her arms above her head. She blew out a loud puff of air and glanced towards Samantha, sat in a similar position beside her. ‘I told you this would happen,’ Jaddi muttered before stumbling down a bank of hardened dirt and into the dense, avocado-green undergrowth, and instantly regretting the spite in her remark.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Samantha said, following Jaddi down the slope.
Jaddi twisted her head in a sharp movement and glared at Samantha. She jabbed her finger in Samantha’s direction, powerless to stop the irritation from boiling out of her. ‘I was the only one who said we should get the bus, like we’d planned to do in the first place,’ she snapped.
‘Yes,’ Samantha nodded, raising her eyebrows, her tone just as hard as Jaddi’s, ‘until you’d sat in the air-conditioned car for two minutes. I don’t remember you arguing for the bus then. In fact, I think your exact words were, “Who cares about authentic? This is the way to travel.”’
‘It’s not exactly worked out though, has it?’ A pressure swelled in Jaddi’s bladder.
Warm sunlight dropped like torch beams through gaps in the tree canopies. An outburst of high-pitched bird chatter screeched from the treetops above.
Jaddi weaved further into undergrowth and kicked at the shrubs covering the ground around their feet. ‘Let’s see, shall we? It hasn’t cost the same amount really, because our happy little driver, Tic, demanded we pay him two thousand Baht if we wanted him to keep driving us to Cambodia. Then, when we said no, he threw our backpacks out of the boot of his car, forcing us to get out with them.’
She threw a glance behind her in case Ben had followed. He hadn’t.
‘You were the one that refused to pay,’ Samantha hissed, also throwing a furtive glance back to the road.
‘Because he would’ve driven us to another remote destination before repeating the same thing all over again.’
‘He might not have done, but since you refused to let us pay, I guess we’ll never know.’
Jaddi rolled her eyes before kicking again at the ground.
‘What are you looking for?’ Samantha asked.
‘Somewhere to have a pee,’ she muttered.
‘Oh.’ Samantha glanced towards the road again. ‘I’ll block you from view,’ she said, turning her back on Jaddi.
Jaddi unzipped her shorts and crouched into a squat.
‘How long do you think it will be before another vehicle passes us?’ Samantha asked.
As Jaddi opened her mouth to reply something brushed against her ankle. She yelped and wobbled before jumping up and kicking the bushes again. No creature emerged.
‘Are you all right?’ Samantha asked, without turning around.
‘Fine.’ Jaddi squatted back to the ground a few paces back from her original position. The frustration and the pain eased as she relaxed the tight hold on her bladder. Perhaps she’d been a little hasty refusing to pay Tic. It wasn’t the money so much as the principle of it. But what was the point of principles if you were stranded on a deserted track with nothing but trees in every direction?
‘How long—’
‘Who knows,’ Jaddi cut in. They’d passed a three-wheeled truck pootling along a few hours ago, but it could have turned off on any number of side tracks since. Jaddi briefly considered whether they should try to trek back to the shack they’d stopped at hours ago for a lunch of soggy rice and either very hardboiled eggs or a meat of some kind. Or did they gamble and continue in the direction they were heading in before Tic pulled over? Neither appealed.
She glanced back to the road. Lizzie had stopped filming her video diary and appeared to be arguing with Ben about something. She’d better hurry up and get over there before it escalated.
Jaddi sighed. Everything that had happened since the day Lizzie had walked through their front door on that blustery October night had been Jaddi’s idea, and like it or not, she was responsible. She hadn’t fully appreciated how draining that responsibility would be. Lizzie’s happiness, her health, their rapport with Ben, how much fun they were having, Samantha’s worries for Lizzie, and how much the camera bothered them, all fell on Jaddi’s shoulders, weighing her down more than any backpack could do.
The burden had been made all the worse by Lizzie’s seizure and the uncertainty it had triggered in Jaddi. All Jaddi had wanted to do was give Lizzie the best last three months imaginable, but it was harder than she’d imagined to stand by as the days slipped away. Were they making a mistake?
Just then, Lizzie leant forward and punched Ben on the arm, causing a laughter to break out between them. The tension snaking Jaddi’s shoulders eased. Maybe they weren’t bickering after all.
Ben had relaxed around them over the past few days, or maybe they’d relaxed around him. Either way, he’d lost the abruptness to his voice and he smiled more. Not much, but more. Although, they’d yet to convince him to have a beer with them when the camera was off.
A moment later, Jaddi stood and zipped up her shorts.
‘What’s going on with you today?’ Samantha asked. ‘You’ve been weird since you got back last night. Don’t tell me you struck out with those blokes? Or are you still peeved about changing plans?’
Jaddi paused and considered Samantha’s question. Why was she being such a moody cow?
The drinks she’d had with the two shaggy, well-travelled Americans the previous evening had been fun at first, but the exhaustion from climbing the temple, along with the formidable humidity, had given her an instant hangover.
She’d left her new friends and walked the streets alone for a while. Her flirtatious banter with the Americans had reminded her of Suk and how much she missed their weekly clandestine meetings in back-street pubs and restaurants in remote parts of London.
Jaddi had meant what she’d said at the airport – she wasn’t ready to get married – but there was more. Jaddi liked the