Three days later she was back in the shop, this time to look at a Japanese stair tansu, a chest in the shape of stairs. It was a good piece, the wood polished to perfection and the fittings made of aged bronze.
Start wasn’t in the shop when she came in but Stop was and she wagged her finger at me to let me know that I shouldn’t waste any more time.
I felt like a gawky teenager even thought it had been more than twenty years since anyone had described me as either gawky or a teenager. I stumbled over the words because I was sure she was going to turn me down but I asked her if she’d go for dinner with me one evening and she said she’d love to and she sounded as if she meant it.
We had dinner in a terrific Italian restaurant down the road from the shop and a few days later we had dinner again and then we went to see a Martin Scorsese movie but for the life of me I can’t remember which one because all I could think about was Noy and the fact that she was on a date with me.
Two months after we first met she introduced me to her parents. We flew up to Chiang Rai and I slept in a hotel while she stayed in their house because her parents were very traditional and, frankly, so was she. Three months after that, we were married.
Anyway, that was then and this is now. If anything I think Noy is even more beautiful now then when I met her. She’s confident, smart, and can make me smile without even trying. I can’t imagine living without her.
She finished playing and stood looking out across the Bangkok skyline, the violin at her side.
‘Beautiful,’ I said quietly.
‘Bach is always beautiful,’ she said, turning around.
‘I meant you,’ I said. I stepped forward and kissed her on the lips. She pressed herself against me, holding the violin to the side.
‘I missed you today,’ she said.
‘I missed you, too.’
‘No, I really missed you,’ she said, pressing herself harder against me.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’
‘Nice?’ she said, caressing the back of my neck. ‘I’ll give you nice.’
So what did I tell Noy? About the hospital?
Nothing.
Not a damned thing.
I carried on kissing her.
We went to bed.
We had great sex.
Then we went to sleep.
I didn’t think about cancer the whole night. Until I woke up.
CHAPTER 19
I got to the Betta English Language School at just after six o’clock. The list that Petrov’s secretary had given me showed the first classes starting at six-thirty and I figured that the teachers wouldn’t be turning up much before then. I was wearing my English teacher’s outfit. Cheap khaki chinos with imitation leather belt, fake Lacoste polo shirt, scuffed shoes and carrying a canvas briefcase. I nodded at the security guard at the main entrance and headed up the stairs. The door to the school was locked but I only had to wait fifteen minutes before Petrov’s secretary arrived. She was wearing a pale blue skirt suit with a white bow holding her hair back in a ponytail.
‘You are early,’ she said.
‘The early bird catches the worm,’ I said.
She frowned and I explained the proverb as she unlocked the door.
Once inside she unlocked the door to the staff room for me before walking along the corridor and opening the classrooms.
I closed the door and went over to the metal lockers. Most had name tags glued to them, other had names scratched into the metal. Jon Junior’s name was on a locker on the bottom row. Padlocked. I’d seen the padlock last time Petrov’s secretary had shown me the room so I had come prepared.
I figured the padlock was significant.
If Jon Junior had quit or been sacked, why would he have left his locker padlocked?
It was a combination lock with three dials. Nine hundred and ninety nine combinations. A thousand if you included treble zero. You wouldn’t have to be a safecracker to open it, just patient. But I didn’t have time to go through all the combinations so I took the boltcutters out of my briefcase and snipped the cheap steel hasp.
There was a photograph taped to the inside of the locker. Jon Junior in his graduation get-up, father to his left with his hand on his shoulder, mother beaming proudly at the camera from underneath a wide-brimmed hat. There was a blue laundered shirt on a metal shelf next to a plastic bottle of ozone-treated drinking water and a dog-eared copy of a John Grisham novel. At the bottom of the locker was a squash racquet and a pair of old tennis shoes.
Nothing that you’d particularly want to take with you if you did a moonlight flit. I picked up the book. There was a Foodland receipt among the pages. A bookmark, halfway through the novel. Not many people gave up halfway through The Firm.
So maybe Jon Junior hadn’t had time to clear out his locker.
Or maybe somebody had prevented him.
The door handle started to turn and I quickly shut the locker.
It was Petrov’s secretary.
‘I can use any of these, can I?’ I asked, pocketing the padlock.
‘Any that aren’t already being used,’ she said. She was holding a computer print-out. ‘Your first class isn’t until eight.’
I feigned surprise. Opened my mouth. Raised my eyebrows. Hardly Oscar-winning material but she got the message. ‘You thought you had an early class?’ she asked.
‘I thought seven,’ I said. ‘Oh well, I might as well go home and come back later.’
She smiled brightly. ‘We have a class at seven and the teacher has just called to say that he’s sick today.’
‘Right…’ I said hesitantly.
‘So you could teach the class.’
I smiled. I shrugged. I frantically tried to think of a reason to turn down her offer but nothing sprang to mind.
‘I thought classes start at half past the hour,’ I said. ‘Seven thirty?’
‘Not always,’ she said. ‘It’s in room four.’ Her smile widened. ‘The early bird really does catch the worm, doesn’t it?’
Indeed it does.
By the short and curlies.
I looked at my watch. Three minutes to seven.
She held the door open for me. ‘Most of the students are already here.’
Terrific.
I followed her down the corridor and she showed me into one of the classrooms. ‘This is Khun Bob,’ she said, by way of introduction. ‘He will be taking your class today.’
The door closed behind me with a dull thud. I smiled. Twelve faces smiled back. Three teenage boys. Nine girls. I looked at my watch. One minute gone. Fifty-nine to go.
So far, so good.
‘So what did you do in your last lesson?’ I asked.
No one spoke. A boy with shoulder-length hair and a diamond earring in his left ear opened his book at Chapter Five and pointed at it.
‘Right then, let’s open our books at Chapter Five,’ I said.
