“I’ll survive, thanks.” And she would. She would be fine. How had this come to mean so much to her? Her life would continue just the same, she knew that.

“We’ll be down the pub, if you’re coming.”

“I’ll be there.” She waited for him to go, and rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to ease away the incipient headache. Something heavy was settling onto her, an unpleasant awareness that the world was aslant and she was at the higher end. What could she do?

She looked at the article, at the shadowy picture of Mrs Wong. Keep going. The world would always be unfair, and mostly unknowable, but she had the leverage to make a little more truth come to light, and that would have to be enough. One step, then another. She carefully put the cover on her typewriter, and walked out into the summer’s evening.

5

Stella

They were waiting for her at the airport. She noticed them as she got off the plane, right after the corridor of smiling stewardesses in silly tight uniforms, thanking you for flying Singapore Airlines. There were two of them, men, not in uniform but you could tell from the way they stood awkwardly in their badly-ironed shirts, unsmiling, that they were waiting for someone. One of them whispered something to the other, and they approached.

“Stella Remedios?”

“Yes?”

“Please come with us.”

One of them flashed an ID, too quickly for her to read. It looked official enough that she followed them, one on either side of her, as if she could be thinking of running away, down this narrow passage full of tired, jetlagged people trying to ignore them.

“I didn’t get your names,” she said, trying to be friendly, but they said nothing, like actors who’ve spoken all their lines and just want to get to the end of the scene. Both were in their thirties, she guessed. Bad haircuts and thuggish faces. She wondered who they worked for, the police or something else.

At customs, they were met by a man in uniform who escorted them through a side gate. Stella thought, Well, this looks official, at least that means I’m not being kidnapped. Then, irrelevantly: I won’t get a stamp in my passport. They waited patiently as she picked her suitcase off the carousel, and one of the men even carried it to the boot of the car they ushered her into.

“What’s this about?”

Instead of answering, one of them said, almost apologetically, “You’ll have to put these on.” He removed her cat’s-eye glasses and stuck on plastic ones with something, maybe foam rubber, where the lenses should be. Was she being arrested? They were supposed to read out her rights. Had she done anything?

“Where are you taking me?” She was ignored. What was the point of the goggles? Singapore was too small for
secret prisons.