Anyway, her mate, Satria, lost his job a short while after Yossy quit — for reasons I was never really sure of ‑ and the two of them remained good buddies. Now, I never suspected the pair of them of getting up to anything, and I still don’t, simply because the guy is almost certainly gay.
I knew they were in constant daily contact by phone, commiserating with each other over their bad luck, and I said to Yoss a few times that I hoped she wasn’t always the one to call him as I knew he lived in a boarding house and had no landline phone there. I knew he only had a mobile phone, and if Yoss was calling him then it was bound to be very expensive.
No, she assured me, that wasn’t the case. He was calling her.
Was he ever!
On coming home particularly late after work one night, I was feeling pretty tired and not on top form and so I just wanted some food and then to get to bed. I got home to find Yoss on the phone to our mate Satria, but rather than finish up the phone call (quickly) to him, she simply smiled a greeting at me and proceeded to carry on yapping for another forty minutes or so.
By the time she finally got off the phone I was not best pleased, to put it mildly, and even less so when she informed me that there was nothing in the house for me to eat. This really did put me in an uncharacteristically bad mood and it prompted me to let loose a bit on my feelings regarding her excessive phone chats with Satria.
She was a bit dismissive of my complaints and said, once again, that as he was calling her there was no problem. This really wasn’t the crux of the matter as far as I was concerned, but I did sort of use it as a stick to attack her with.
I told her I didn’t believe her (even though I did) and I wanted to see the phone bill. I didn’t wait for her to find it or, more likely, to tell me she didn’t know where it was, and started rummaging around for it in the dressing room table’s drawers.
When I found it I immediately wished I hadn’t, as I almost did myself an injury upon seeing the amount.
‘250,000 rupiah!!!!!’ I screamed: ‘How the hell could it cost this much?’ That is over eighty quid! I then yanked out all the phone bills going back six months or so and found them all to be much the same, except for one month which was double that!
Yossy had been telling me our average monthly phone bill was a princely 50,000 rupiah at most.
Unbelievable!!!!
I set off on a tirade at her. For the first time in the six years we had known each other I really lost my temper because even with my still somewhat less than perfect Indonesian language proficiency I could understand the statement showed that calls to a certain mobile phone number accounted for the vast majority of the amount.
I was ranting and she was silent. She didn’t say a word, and the only reason I can give for this unprecedented muteness was she must have been in shock at the extent of my anger.
I was shaking with fury and then it occurred to me to ask her something. No, not ask, but demand. I demanded to know there and then exactly how much money we had saved in the bank, to the penny with no fudging, or maybes, or don’t knows.
The look on her face told me what I needed to know.
We had nothing. Not a pot to spit in!
Surabaya, August 1996
We moved on.
As I said, it hurt as much as if she had had an affair, but we moved on. We had to. It was either that or give up on our marriage, and I didn’t want to do that.
Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and perhaps it’s true that everyone makes one almighty humdinger of a mistake in their life; a mistake so big, bold and bad that there can be no possible explanation for it and all that can be hoped for is that no irretrievable lasting damage is caused and that anyone in a position to grant forgiveness does so.
I told Yoss that this was her humdinger, there could be no repeat and now we would move on.
I still kept up my work here, there, and everywhere and slowly I started getting my groove back. I went through a relatively short period where I wondered what it was all for and whether or not I simply could be bothered or motivated to keep going, but gradually I got rolling back into the swing of things.
Then, a few weeks on and more drama. I was in my office at the institute planning my lessons as normal and the phone rang.
‘Hello, Mr. Avery?’ asked a pleasant-sounding female voice.
‘Yep, can I help you?’
‘Yes, this is Clarrisa at MasterCard,’ she said. I was momentarily caught in a flux between slight annoyance and confusion. I had no credit card nor wished to have one and felt marginally vexed that I should be disturbed by what was obviously a cold selling call.
‘Mr. Avery,’ said Miss Pleasant Voice, ‘The reason I’m calling is …’
She ended the conversation and hung up. I held the receiver in my hand and stared at it. The room had gone mute. I began to shake. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run and escape.
I did none of those things and
