49

The meeting was at ten thirty and Victoria pulled up in the parking bay outside Milton’s villa in a Jeep at ten. Milton was watching from the window and quietly opened and closed the door so as not to wake Sakura, whom he had found asleep when he returned to the villa after breakfast. Her face had settled into relaxed peacefulness, and he did not want to disturb her. It was evident that she still needed rest.

“All okay?” Victoria said as he climbed aboard.

“All good.”

“Sakura?”

“Sleeping.”

Victoria nodded, put the Jeep into gear and pulled out. She set off down the narrow, potholed lane that led back to the main road.

“This Good Samaritan thing you’re doing?” Victoria said.

“What about it?”

“It’s because of AA?”

Milton gave the question a moment’s thought. “Going to meetings helped me put things in perspective. You know what I used to do for the Group. I have a lot of guilt. A lot of shame. I can’t make amends to all the people I should. The Ninth Step is difficult for me, so I told myself that I’d do it another way. I said that if someone needed me, and I could help, I would. I’ll never be able to atone for the things I did, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

They drove in silence for a moment before reaching the freeway. As Victoria accelerated into the outside lane, manoeuvring her way through a swarm of mopeds, Milton asked her about the meeting they were going to. “Is this one of your regulars?”

“Yes,” Victoria replied. “There’s not that many English-speaking ones. I can manage in Indonesian, but it’s not quite the same.”

“You sounded okay when you were talking to the preman.”

“Far from fluent,” she said with an easy smile.

* * *

They left the Jeep in the parking lot of the Harris Hotel, a modern four-storey hotel and conference centre whose bright white walls stood out among the other, unpainted buildings on Jalan Drupadi. Victoria led Milton down the road, stopping at the Wild-1 café to grab a couple of coffees. The café building was functional, not much more than breeze blocks covered with a thin layer of unpainted concrete. The meeting was being held in a similarly anonymous building, identified by the paper sign outside with the AA logo. Victoria led Milton inside and introduced him to the secretary for the morning’s meeting, a smiling elderly man called Frank. The old man welcomed Milton like an old friend and told him and Victoria they should go inside; the meeting was about to start.