Three Eleven E-Book

Margaret Grant

• Herausgeber: Europa Edizioni
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Japan is a country prepared for earthquakes. Strict guidelines govern new building construction and its citizens are regularly instructed on what to do and how to behave. Nevertheless, nobody was ready for what 2011 had in store for the country. That year, on March the 11th, a powerful earthquake off the north-eastern coast triggered a huge tsunami, resulting in a massive number of casualties and the destruction of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima. In the wake of the frightening event, many foreign residents decided to leave the country, fearing the worst was yet to come. 

On that day many lives changed forever, including those of friends and book club buddies - Charlotte, Lauren, Fumiko, Katherine and Sinéad. The five friends had planned to meet on the following Wednesday to discuss their book of the month, Middlemarch, but that get-together was not meant to be. They didn’t lose their homes or their loved ones in the disaster, but the seismic event shook them to their core.

This is the story of the five women and how they each reshaped their lives in the aftermath of this shattering event.

Margaret is from the South East of Ireland where she currently lives. She lived in Tokyo for eleven years and was there when Japan was rocked by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Her experiences on that day and in the weeks and months that followed formed the inspiration for Three Eleven, her debut novel. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and works in education.

Leseprobe

Margaret Grant

Three Eleven

© 2021 Europe Books | London

www.europebooks.co.uk – [email protected]

ISBN 979-12-201-0800-3

First edition: March 2021

Distribution for the United Kingdom: Vine House Distribution ltd

Printed for Italy by Rotomail Italia

Finito di stampare nel mese di marzo 2021

presso Rotomail Italia S.p.A. - Vignate (MI)

Three Eleven

For all my friends, former colleagues

and students in Tokyo and especially

for my Middlemarch class.

PrologueTokyo, March 11th, 2011

Haneda Airport 6.26am

Katherine checked the departures board. She was catching the 7.30 flight to Sendai to spend the weekend with her mother-in-law. In about nine hours, a tsunami would flood the very airport she was flying into. But Katherine was oblivious to this near future event. She ran her fingers through her pixie cut and looked around anxiously for her husband. She expected him to meet her at check-in. He hadn’t come home the night before, but there was nothing unusual in that. Katherine had married a workaholic, a PR Wizard at Mitsubishi Motors who often stayed in his office until dawn. She reached into the pocket of her navy down parka for her phone. It wasn’t there. She found it in her carry-on bag, tucked between her cosmetics pouch and her copy of Middlemarch. Middlemarch was her book club’s choice for March. She was half-way through the novel and hoped to finish it over the weekend. She dialled her husband’s number. He didn’t pick up.

The Hibiya Subway Line, 8.05am

Surrounded by salary men in grey suits, Fumiko clung to a grab handle. She was bound for Maronouchi and her job at TY Logistics. With her one free hand, she loosened the plaid scarf at her neck and undid the buttons of her camel coat. The waistband of her black trouser suit felt uncomfortably snug against her bulging belly. Despite training twice weekly in karate, she had gained a lot of weight recently. Middle aged spread, she supposed. Her bag weighed heavily on her shoulder. She shouldn’t have brought that book – Middlemarch. Now she would have to lug it around with her all day, to the izakaya, where she would meet her friends after work, and on to the karaoke box where they would sing away the stresses of the week.

She thought of texting Takeshi and inviting him along to karaoke. She could impress him with her rendition of Stairway to Heaven. An image of Takeshi’s floppy hair and handsome face came into her mind. She sighed and adjusted the position of her bag on her shoulder. God, that book was heavy. Perhaps she should leave it in the office. She would never get through it in time for her book club on Wednesday anyway. She had struggled through the first chapter, but there were eighty-seven of them in total.

The Seibu Shinjuku railway line, 8.16am

Sinéad sat on an almost empty train heading towards the distant suburb of Tokorozawa and “Sunshine” kindergarten, where she taught English. She was reading Middlemarch, her all-time favourite novel. She wondered if she had made a bad choice in selecting it for her book club this month. Fumiko had excellent English, but a Victorian novel might prove too much of a challenge. And it was so very long. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was the only one to get through the thick doorstopper of a book. Not that it mattered, books were only an excuse for the friends to catch up and have a nice meal. Next month, she would choose something short, a novella perhaps. Sinéad closed the book, took out her compact and applied lipstick and mascara. Her five-year-old students thought she was beautiful. She didn’t want to disappoint them.

Fujimidai, Nerima ward, 11.30am

Lauren carried six-month-old Ken in a sling on her back and held two-year-old Emi by the hand as she trudged down her local shopping street. She yawned. Ken had kept her awake all night. He was teething, poor little guy. Emi tugged at her hand and raised her free arm upwards, indicating that she wanted to be carried.

‘Sweetie, I can’t carry both of you,’ Lauren said.

Emi stomped her foot and started to cry. She had been clingy ever since Ken’s birth. The parenting books said it was normal, it would pass. Lauren hoped it would pass soon.

Kaldi Coffee farm’s blue signboard shone like a beacon a mere fifty feet ahead of her. Lauren thought she could probably manage the two of them for that short distance. She bent her knees and scooped Emi up onto her hip. Emi beamed, victorious. She jostled against Ken, who cast her a side-long glance, but didn’t protest at her sudden proximity.

Lauren struggled onward. As she approached Kaldi Coffee Farm, she saw a shop assistant in a navy apron place a tray of sample coffees on top of a barrel. As soon as Lauren reached the barrel, she put Emi down, closed her eyes for a moment and savoured the aroma of fresh coffee. She took one of the plastic cups and let the sweet warm coffee soothe and revive her. Then she pursued Emi who had already rambled away to explore the wonders of the coffee and fine food store. Lauren grabbed a packet of Lavazza from a shelf, along with a pack of shortbread cookies. Armed with these treats, she thought she might actually make it through the day.

Thank God it was Friday. Naoto would be home all weekend. Lauren would have back-up and might manage to catch up on some sleep and some reading. Not that she would get through that tome Middlemarch by Wednesday. She would join her friends for book club anyway. There would be food and wine and grown-ups. She couldn’t wait.

Rikkyo University, Ikebukuro, 12.56pm

Charlotte walked through Rikkyo University’s ivy-covered archway. She had a meeting with Suzuki san of the University’s International Education section at one. Dressed in burgundy cords, sensible brogues and a grey wool coat; a quarter inch of striped woollen socks showed between the end of her trousers and the top of her shoes. Charlotte never bought clothes in Japan. Nothing fit. And even in the UK, trousers sometimes weren’t quite long enough for her six foot frame. Her battered satchel contained work related documents, a packed lunch and a copy of Middlemarch. She had read the book for A level English nearly twenty years before and hoped to re-read at least some of it before next Wednesday’s book club.

The Pacific Ocean, 70 kilometres east of the Tohoku Coast, 2.46pm

Under the sea a magnitude nine megathrust earthquake occurred. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan. The epicentre was more than 300 kilometres from Tokyo. Yet, it brought the city’s rail, subway and bus system to a halt, forcing many workers to sleep in their offices and others to walk through the night to get home to their loved ones. And that was the least of the damage it wrought.

Neither Charlotte, Fumiko, Katherine, Lauren or Sinéad was wounded in the disaster. They didn’t lose their homes, their families or their jobs. Yet the lives of these five friends changed forever on that day. The ground beneath them shook for six long minutes, during which time they thought they were going to die. The sophisticated and technologically advanced city which they called home was not as safe as they had believed. They lost their sense of stability and with it their balance. It would take them years to regain their equilibrium.

This is the story of those years.

Part OneLove in Amed

The Quake

Charlotte clasped the book in both hands, its shiny new cover, and oh, its new book smell. She really shouldn’t. Her bookshelves had long since overflowed and she had resolved not to buy any more books until she had found a home for some of her old ones. But this memoir was so very tempting. Besides, Sinéad would be coming over on Sunday and would surely take some books home with her, so perhaps Charlotte could buy this one slim volume? But no. The situation was critical. Stacks of books occupied every spare corner of her rather small apartment. She returned the book to the shelf, hurried to the escalator and descended through Junkado’s seven storeys of books, before any others had a chance to call out to her and beg her to take them home.

She exited the bookstore and glanced at her watch. A quarter to three. Tired, after a busy week, she thought how nice it would be to go straight home rather than back to the office. Probably not a good idea though; Griffiths was sure to look in on her section before he left for the weekend. Just the previous week, the deputy director had gathered all the junior managers together in order to harangue them for not pulling their weight. Charlotte rarely left the office before nine, and had worked every Saturday so far this year, yet Griffiths had had the gall to tell them they weren’t working hard enough. ‘I see the senior managers in the office late at night and I see the junior staff, but I don’t see you,’ he’d said. Griffiths never saw them because he was never there himself. He always left the office at five. Unfortunately, no one had had the nerve to point this out to him.

She would go back and write up the report on today’s visit to Rikkyo University while it was still fresh in her mind. She could proofread that circular that Hashimoto san wanted to send out too. She stood and waited for the pedestrian lights to change.

She looked down at her shoes. Her feet appeared to be moving towards her head. She felt dizzy and thought she might be going to faint. Then she heard a rumbling, followed by a rattling noise. She looked up. Drivers were having trouble controlling their cars, cyclists wobbling, pedestrians losing their balance. An earthquake.

When the lights changed and the drivers managed to bring their cars to a stop, Charlotte crossed to the traffic island in the middle of the road. It seemed safer than the pavement, a safer distance from the multi storey buildings on either side of the road. Many pedestrians had congregated there. They focused their attention on the structure directly in front of them. Twenty storeys high and swaying violently.

Next to Charlotte, a salary man tried to make a phone call. To his wife or girlfriend, Charlotte presumed. A teenage girl in a school uniform had her phone in her hand too, ‘Okaa san, Okaa san,’ she called (Mother, Mother). ‘OKAA SAN.’ The girl started to cry. She couldn’t reach her mother. Perhaps Charlotte’s network would work. The girl could use her phone. Charlotte didn’t need it. It was much too early to call her mother and she didn’t have a spouse to call. She rummaged in her bag. Not in its usual pouch, perhaps she’d put it in the front pocket. Not there either, she reached under the heavy files. No. Blast it, where was it? But wait. It didn’t matter. No one around her was getting through to anybody. One phone was as useless as another.

Charlotte planted her feet wide apart to stop herself from falling. A middle-aged woman comforted the schoolgirl, told her not to worry, everything would be okay. A small boy sobbed, his arms wrapped around his mother’s thigh, his head pressed against her belly. His mother told him there was nothing to cry about, nothing at all. An old lady struggled to keep hold of her bicycle as it threatened to roll away from her. The salary man grabbed onto it and together they held it firm.

Around her, people were talking to each other, helping each other, offering words of comfort. No one spoke to Charlotte. All the hours she had put into perfecting her Japanese, and now here she was on a traffic island in the middle of Tokyo, in the middle of an earthquake, and no one was talking to her. And it wasn’t as if they couldn’t see her. She was the tallest, the largest person there. Would someone talk to her? Look at her? Acknowledge her existence?

That building. It was going to snap in two. It couldn’t hold. It wouldn’t hold.

Charlotte knew that these buildings were designed to sway. And she had confidence in Japanese engineering. She had confidence in everything Japanese. But the way that building was swaying, how could it return to its original position? It couldn’t. If it didn’t snap in two, it would crumble. If it crumbled, would they be safe here on their traffic island? Charlotte didn’t think so. The building was too tall, and way too close. This could be it. This could be the end.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She didn’t want it to be over. She didn’t want to die. Not yet. She thought of all the things she hadn’t done. The places she hadn’t visited. The things that were missing from her life. Things like sex and love. Messy things which she was getting along quite well without, thank you very much.

Or was she? Was she really doing fine without these things? Sometimes she felt so...

Sometimes she felt like an idiot. Most of the time actually. A big, awkward, bumbling fool. Soon she would be a big awkward, bumbling, dead fool.

Well at least, if she was going to die, she wouldn’t be dying a virgin.

Nyoman. Their brief romance probably meant very little to him. She knew that. Yet she felt such gratitude and tenderness towards him. He had taken her virginity. For that she would always be thankful.

Virgin. How she had hated that label. Not that she’d gone around with it pinned to her forehead or anything, but being a virgin, she had felt excluded from any conversation remotely connected with sex. The taint of virginity gone; she had thought that her life would be different somehow. It hadn’t changed in any appreciable way. Yet, she had the memory of Nyoman, of the time they spent together. That was something, something she could take with her to the grave, because it looked like that was the place she was heading to, and soon, so much sooner than she had ever expected. She didn’t drink. She didn’t smoke. She ate her greens. She had thought she would live to be ninety at least.

But wait, the ground was no longer moving. The people on the traffic island looked around, assessed the situation and reassured themselves that the earth was indeed still.

Everyone started to move. Everybody knew what to do. They had been drilled in earthquake safety procedures since kindergarten. Charlotte knew what to do too. She had lived there long enough. She had an emergency survival kit waiting in her closet at home. She was prepared.

There would be no going back to the office. She could go home. She heard someone say that the trains would not be running. She would have to walk. That wasn’t a problem. She knew the route, had cycled it often. It took an hour by bicycle. It would take two or more on foot.

No buildings had collapsed on-route, no trees fallen, no holes had opened up in the ground, not in this neighbourhood at least. Nothing out of place at all, except for the office workers huddled outside their places of business, reluctant to return to their desks; the troops of school children, padded hoods or helmets over their heads to protect them from falling debris; policemen cycling around calling out to the walkers, urging them to hurry home, and inquiring if anyone was hurt.

She was passing a park when the earth started to rumble again. The aftershock felt almost as powerful as the original quake, and this park, according to a sign near the entrance, was a designated evacuation zone, so she went in. She stood next to a group of old ladies; their wizened faces turned towards a row of narrow houses opposite the park entrance. Charlotte nodded at the old ladies. They nodded back.

‘Sugoi desu ne,’the obaa chan nearest Charlotte said. “Terrible, isn’t it?”. She looked worriedly across at her trembling home.

‘Sou desu ne,’ Charlotte agreed. It is.

A stooped grandmother of ninety years or more said that she had never seen anything like it in all her years. Charlotte knew then that what they were experiencing must be titanic. What lay ahead of them? Would they survive?

She thought again of Nyoman. She remembered snorkelling with him at the Japanese wreck. He’d taken her hand to guide her and had encouraged her to dive deeper into the water, right down, to touch the coral. She usually felt so clumsy and self-conscious around men. With him she had just felt alive, very much alive.

The touch of his hand on the small of her back or on her hip.

‘You don’t mind my hand here?’ he’d asked.

Charlotte hadn’t minded. In fact, she had liked it. Yet she wasn’t sure if she should allow his hand there. Perhaps it was inappropriate. She had not foreseen then what was to happen between them. She was not the sort of person to have a holiday romance. Not the sort of person to have any kind of romance, really.

To be in Amed now, instead of trembling, crumbling Tokyo.

News of the Tsunami Reaches Bali

Nyoman spotted tourists, a couple strolling along the beach together. They were young or young enough, on their honeymoon perhaps.

He slowed his pace. He listened. They weren’t speaking English. High pitched and sing song, he recognised their language as French. Many French tourists came to Amed. They liked it very much.

‘Bonjour,’ Nyoman said when they came abreast of him.

‘Bonjour,’ they replied.

‘Où allez-vous?’

‘Pour une promenade sur la plage. C’est tout.’

For a stroll along the beach, he thought they meant. Nyoman liked French. He liked the way you pursed your lips to make the sounds. But he knew only a little of the language. He needed to switch to English to communicate properly.

‘Maybe you like to snorkelling tomorrow? I take you to the Japanese wreck. It very nice, very good for snorkelling.’

‘Ah, tomorrow, we go to that temple, what is it called? The Temple of a mille, a million steps.’

Nyoman smiled. They meant The Temple of a Thousand Steps, but he didn’t correct them. It could feel like a million steps, especially on a hot day. ‘After tomorrow then,’ he said. ‘I take you to the Japanese wreck. You like very much, many fishes.’

‘Maybe.’

They were already walking away from him. The day after tomorrow, they might well want to go to the Japanese wreck, but they would have forgotten him. They would find someone else to take them. He needed a mobile phone and a business card. Then he could do good business.

He joined Ketut and Wayan Joe at the bamboo shelter. He needed a nap. He had been up early to go out fishing. He hadn’t caught anything. The people of Amed had depended on the ocean’s bounty forever. Nowadays too many fishermen fished in those waters. Everyone taking, taking, taking. The ocean could not replenish herself. But what to do? He loved the sea. Alone on his little boat, over near Gilli Tarawan, he felt at one with the world and happy, very happy. He wanted never to leave.

Ketut snored. Nyoman poked him with his toe. Ketut rolled over. Nyoman dozed and dreamt of a catch big enough to allow him to buy a mobile phone and to print business cards to distribute to tourists.

The ringing of Wayan’s phone woke him from his slumber.

At first Wayan didn’t understand who the caller was. Then he remembered, ‘Ah Haruto, my friend. You good? You in Bali now?’

Nyoman listened eagerly to Haruto’s answer. Haruto had visited Amed several months before. Nyoman had taken him fishing and Haruto had paid Nyoman handsomely. The Japanese man liked Bali very much. He said he would return. If he had returned already, Nyoman could take him fishing again, and snorkelling too, and soon he would have enough money to buy a mobile phone.

Wayan. Joe concentrated on Haruto’s words. He jumped down from the shelter and walked towards the sea. He then quickly returned, but walking backwards, his eyes fixed on the ocean.

‘Thank you, Haruto. Thank you, my friend. I pray for you. I pray for Japan.’ Wayan put his phone back in his pocket.

‘An earthquake hit Japan,’ Wayan told him. ‘They had a tsunami, very big, many people died. Haruto says the tsunami could be coming here.’

Nyoman sat up and looked at the sea. It didn’t look any different. ‘Wake up.’ He shook Ketut’s ankle.

Wayan did not take his eyes off the waves. ‘Haruto said to run,’ he said.

‘Run?’ Nyoman kicked Ketut. ‘Wake up, Fathead,’ he said.

Ketut shook his ugly head and looked around him.

They hurried along the beach, keeping an eye on the ocean. Ketut’s son, still in his school uniform, came strolling towards them.

‘Run,’ Ketut told him. ‘Warn everyone.’

A crowd gathered around the Dive shop’s television screen. Together they watched the black water surge onwards taking buses, cars, homes, lives. Nyoman touched the pearls around his neck, a keepsake from Charlotte.

Charlotte lived in Japan. He did not think she lived by the sea. The wave would not take her. But the earthquake that had triggered the wave was powerful, powerful enough to knock houses, rip holes in the earth, ignite fires. Though safe from the tsunami, the earthquake might have got her. He closed his eyes and prayed for her safety.

Her hair was a light shade of brown. It was not as exquisite as the luxuriant black hair of the Balinese beauties, nor was it as long. It came only to beneath her chin. But when the sun shone on it, it sparkled like gold. He liked her hair, its waves and curls. She stuck pins in it to keep it back from her face. And he liked her soft white skin with those little brown speckles on it, and the way she laughed when she felt shy or embarrassed. He didn’t mind that she was taller than him and sturdily built. He liked it. Indeed, he felt proud, potent to have attracted such a strong and powerful woman. She was different from other tourists. She was humble. And she was clever. She spoke Japanese and French. She studied Chinese. He hoped she would come again to Amed. He hoped she had come to no harm.

He looked out on the Lombok Strait. It remained calm. The Gods of the Ocean had spared them. They had spent all their fury on Japan.

As the light began to fade, he trudged uphill through the dry scrub, to his humble home, where he told his mother about the treacherous black wave he had seen on the television screen, and the terrible fate that had been visited upon Japan.

Sinéad spends the night

Charlotte registered the broken crockery and glass on the kitchen floor: the toaster oven and microwave toppled from their perch; the books more on the floor than on the shelves. Keeping her shoes on, she walked through to her living room. The television was still in its place, as was her laptop. She turned both on, sent emails to her family in the UK to let them know that she was safe, and remained glued to the screens into the night.

The earthquake was the largest ever recorded to have hit Japan. It had triggered huge tsunami waves in Iwate, Sendai, Miyagi, Fukushima and Ibaraki, with smaller tsunamis reported in Chiba, Kanagawa, Tokyo Bay and as far away as Okinawa. Tokyo had come to a standstill. A fire was raging at an oil refinery in Ichihara. But damage to the capital was minimal when compared with the destruction in Tohoku. There, whole villages had been vanquished. Cars, buses and lorries had been dragged out to sea. A train was missing. An entire train, full of passengers. Gone.

Charlotte’s chin wobbled as she watched the wave invade Higashimatsushima, hurling a forty-five-metre ship over a pier and leaving it aground in the middle of the city; inundating houses, hospitals, schools and collapsing them; taking some inhabitants, sparing others. Charlotte knew Higashimatsushima. She had been based in that city when, fresh from Cambridge, she first came to Japan, on the JET programme. There was a wall near the harbour, built to save the city from tsunamis. They hadn’t been built it high enough.

Saturday too was spent in front of the television. Cereal and chocolate biscuits keeping hunger at bay. The gas supply had been turned off. There could be no cooking, no baths or showers either. It was cold, but Charlotte had blankets.

There were reports about a possible leakage at a nuclear reactor in Fukushima. Later, a nuclear emergency was declared, nearby residents evacuated. Then at 15:36 there was an explosion at the Fukukshima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Later that evening the evacuation zone was extended to a twenty-kilometre radius of the plant. Experts said not to worry. They claimed that this would not be another Chernobyl. Even in the worst-case scenario, the effects would be felt only in the immediate local area.

There were emails to be replied to. Her parents, her aunt Eleanor, various friends and even her brother had sent enquiries as to her wellbeing and the wellbeing of the city she called home. She did her best to answer all the questions that they asked.

Her screensaver was a photo of herself and her aunt Eleanor on a little fishing boat heading off on a snorkelling trip off Bali’s East Coast. Eleanor in the foreground, glamorous in her shades and looking much younger than her sixty-five years. The lifejacket she’d insisted on, covering her halter neck swimsuit.

Charlotte’s face is half hidden by her aunt’s broad rimmed sunhat. Her thick wavy hair blown out like a saucer around her head. Her shades are not as large or fashionable as her aunt’s. Her swimsuit is the very practical one-piece that she bought in Debenhams some years earlier. She too looks well, healthy and happy.

Nyoman is in the photo too, perched on the outrigger of his boat. His jet-black hair cropped short, his smooth brown skin, those high cheekbones. Slender but quite muscular. Not as tall as Charlotte, but tall all the same for a Balinese man.

Sailing in the Lombok Strait, morning breeze in their face, Nyoman at the rudder. It had been wonderful.

On Sunday morning, Charlotte’s phone rang. It was Sinéad. She wondered if she could spend the night at Charlotte’s. She was scared to be alone. Of course, she could stay. Charlotte was scared too. There was much to be frightened about. A meltdown was now suspected at Fukushima.

Charlotte started to sweep up the broken glass and spilled soil and to return books to their shelves. She examined her toaster oven. Its door had come off, and one of the heating elements had cracked and was hanging loose. Irreparable, she thought.

The side of the microwave was dented, but otherwise it looked all right. She plugged it in and turned it on. It seemed to be working. Her gas had been reconnected. She could shower.

‘Katherine is in the affected area,’ Sinéad said.

Charlotte placed the tea tray on the coffee table and made herself comfortable opposite her guest. ‘In Tohoku?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, Sendai, I think. Ichiro’s from Sendai or Iwate or somewhere up north. She’s alright though. She posted on Facebook. You should be on Facebook.’

‘I don’t see the point,’ Charlotte started to explain her views on Facebook.

‘The point is that you can connect with people and share information, important information, like whether you’re alive or whether a television fell on your head and killed you.’

‘You can email that information.’

‘Who uses emails nowadays?’

Charlotte thought that quite a lot of people still used email. She used email at work all the time. But she said nothing. Sinéad seemed quite tetchy. It had been a stressful weekend.

Sinéad took a sip from the cup of tea Charlotte had made for her and wrapped her blanket more tightly around her shoulders. ‘You know what I was thinking when it was happening?’ she asked.

‘No?’

‘I was thinking I should get married,’ Sinéad said. ‘And I spoke to Fumiko this morning and she told me she was thinking the exact same thing. Were you thinking that?’

‘Erm, no.’

‘No? I thought maybe all the single women in Tokyo were having the exact same thought at the exact same time. Hmm. Apparently not.’

‘Marriage isn’t something I can really see in my future at all,’ Charlotte said.

‘No?’

Charlotte shook her head. Quite early in life, she had come to the conclusion that romance was not for her. In her teens, she had frequented youth discos with her school friends. They would all get dressed up, but only one or two of them ever got asked to dance. She had surmised then that romance was not for everybody. Not that it was reserved for the pretty girls, no. Boys sometimes wanted to dance with girls who were not particularly good-looking. But, they conscientiously avoided girls who were odd or who stood out it some way. Being so very tall and so terribly brainy, Charlotte had always stood out.

Sinéad seemed to expect further elucidation.

‘I feel kind of awkward around men,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean, I’m fine around them in normal situations. With friends and colleagues who are male there’s no problem. I like them. I get on well with them. But if there’s even a hint of anything other than camaraderie, I just get so uncomfortable.’

‘But I think everyone feels uncomfortable around guys they fancy.’

‘I suppose so, but in any case, I think men don’t usually think of me in a romantic or sexual way. They see me as a friend. Which is fine. I really don’t have a problem with that.’

‘I’m sure there are lots of men who would find you very attractive. You have so much going for you. You’re multi-lingual, extremely intelligent, involved and concerned about different global issues. And you’re cute.’

Charlotte laughed. ‘You can’t really call someone my size cute,’ she said.

‘You’re not that big. You just feel big because you’re in Asia. Anyway, big can be cute. Look at Saint Bernard. They’re cute.’

‘Saint Bernard. Dogs?’

‘Yes,’ Sinéad giggled. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to compare you to a dog. But you know, it’s hard for us Western women in Japan. I read an article recently in the “Japan times”. It called Japan a sexual desert for western woman...’

‘I don’t think Japan is to blame. I wasn’t exactly popular in the UK,’ Charlotte said,

Once, at one of those youth discos, Charlotte had chatted with a boy. They had chatted for some time actually. They had chosen the same subjects for their A-levels, so they had plenty to talk about. He asked her to dance and they had kissed on the dance floor. First with their mouths closed, then with his tongue gently probing between her lips. She had secretly practiced kissing with her pillow. Now she was kissing an actual boy. She felt so excited. She and this boy might become boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe romance was for her after all. But on her way back from the toilets, she heard his friends teasing him about kissing a fat girl. ‘Fletcher is kissing Fatty,’ they taunted. She wasn’t so terribly fat back then, just a little chubby.

‘You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go home to Tipperary, find myself a nice farmer, settle down with him and bear his children.’

‘Really? You think you might go back to Ireland?’

‘Maybe.’ Cups started to rattle. ‘Fuck. Is that another one?’ Sinéad rushed to open the door. It was important to secure the exits. ‘This is horrible. I just don’t feel safe.’

‘Tomorrow everything will go back to normal,’ Charlotte said. ‘We’ll go back to work. The supermarket shelves will be restocked.’

‘You’re probably right. This is Tokyo, the safest city in the world. Everything will be grand.’

They decided to leave the door ajar and settled down to sleep for the night, Charlotte in her bedroom and Sinéad just yards away, behind the washi door on the spare futon in the living room. Not that sleep came, to either of them.

‘Charlotte, are you still awake?’ Sinéad called.

‘Yes.’

‘I was just thinking’ Sinéad said. ‘I know you have a full life and are fine just the way you are. But maybe you shouldn’t close yourself off to the possibility of romance.’

Charlotte’s throat seized up. She nodded in the darkness, and mumbled agreement. Not that she saw anything wrong with eschewing romance. It was a perfectly legitimate choice. Many exemplary people chose celibacy. The Dalai Lama for example, and Mother Teresa. Not that Charlotte could compare her life to theirs. Yet, in her way she did what she could to make the world a better place. She baked bread and cakes for her friends and colleagues. Cake did wonders to lighten the mood in the ‘Study in the UK department. She volunteered for “Second Harvest” and “Fair Trade Japan”. She wrote letters weekly for Amnesty International. She lived a worthwhile life. She cycled, hiked, wrote sonnets, learned languages, travelled and expanded her horizons.

And yet, in that moment, in her chest she felt a yearning, a yearning for warmth and love and human touch. Maybe Sinéad was right. Romance, love and all that kind of stuff. Perhaps it wasn’t just for other people. Maybe it could be for her too.

Or maybe not. Romantic relationships made people miserable as often as not. Sinéad had been terribly distraught after her break-up with Kotaro and for such a long time. Charlotte felt she would be as well off without all of that. And Katherine’s marriage didn’t seem to make her very happy. In any case it wasn’t as if Charlotte had ever had many suitors.

Of course, there was Nyoman. She smiled under the blankets at the memory of him, of his cheekbones and those strong hands.

But why was she allowing herself to think of Nyoman? Nyoman hadn’t been serious about her. Lonely Planet had forewarned her about the gigolos and Lotharios of Bali. They hung around the beaches and tourist areas flirting with female visitors, especially the older ones, becoming their lovers in return for gifts: t-shirts, jeans, mobile phones, I-pods. Charlotte had expected she might have to protect her aunt Eleanor from some potential toy boy. She had never imagined she would fall for the charms of one herself.

Not that he’d been her toy boy. Nyoman was younger than Charlotte, but only by six or seven years. He hadn’t expected gifts and had insisted on paying for dinner, when he took her to the local warung. The food was cheap, a fraction of what it cost at Charlotte’s hotel. If it had been otherwise, Charlotte would have felt terribly guilty about letting him pay. There was such a great disparity in their financial circumstances.

Was that another tremor? Or was she imagining it? The cups and plates began to rattle. It was real.

‘Charlotte?’ Sinéad called.

‘Yes?’

They were not sleeping in their shoes, but they had kept them right beside their futons, just in case. The rattling stopped. Just a small tremor.

‘Thank God,’ Sinéad said. And they both returned to their silent sleeplessness.

The Previous September

The holiday had been Aunt Eleanor’s idea. She had booked a month-long vacation in Bali to mark her retirement and had persuaded Charlotte to fly from Tokyo to join her for her final week. Charlotte met her Aunt in Ubud, where Eleanor did so much shopping that she had to buy an extra suitcase to cart all her purchases home. Charlotte shopped too, albeit in a more modest fashion. She loved the Indonesian textiles and bought some scarves, a summer skirt and a traditional sarong.

Eleanor wanted to spend some time soaking up the sun before heading back to damp and gloomy England. Charlotte was keen to avoid the overcrowded beaches to the South, so they headed Eastwards to the black sand beaches of Amed.

After checking into their hotel, Charlotte and Eleanor went for a walk on the beach. They were returning as daylight was turning into dusk, when Nyoman approached them.

‘Hello, how are you? Where you come from?’ he said.

‘England,’ Eleanor replied.

‘Oh, England.’ He nodded thoughtfully. Charlotte wondered if he knew where England was. Most of the tourists in Bali were Australian or Japanese. She hadn’t met another Brit.

‘When you come to Amed?’

‘We’ve just arrived’ Eleanor said.

‘Where you staying?’

‘There.’ Charlotte pointed towards the fence.

‘Oh, Coral Garden, very nice. What can I do for you?’ he said.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Eleanor replied, ‘quite a lot I would imagine.’ Charlotte threw her Aunt a reproachful glance.

‘Maybe you want to go snorkelling tomorrow? Japanese wreck, really nice for snorkelling.’

‘Well, young man, we’ve had a long drive. I think tomorrow will be a day for relaxing on the beach. Besides, I’ve never been snorkelling. I don’t know how.’

‘No problem. I teach you.’

‘Is that what you do here?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Teach snorkelling?’

‘I’m a fisherman here. But sometimes I take tourists snorkelling.’

Charlotte quite liked the idea of going snorkelling. Lounging on the beach all day was not her thing. She thought she might be able to persuade her Aunt over dinner.

He told them his name and asked theirs, shaking hands first with Eleanor and then with Charlotte.

‘Are you the mother?’ he asked Eleanor.

‘Yes,’ Eleanor said with a laugh. ‘I’m her mother.’

‘If you want to go to Japanese wreck, remember my name - Nyoman. There’s a lot of people working on this beach.’

‘Okay Nyoman, we won’t forget.’

‘Wasn’t he handsome?’ Eleanor said to her niece as soon as Nyoman was out of earshot.

Charlotte hadn’t really noticed that he was handsome. She’d found him pleasant though.

She consulted her guidebook for information on the Japanese Wreck that the fisherman had mentioned. Apparently, it was an old Japanese patrol boat that had sunk during the war and was now covered with soft corals and home to a large variety of colourful fish. Over dinner, Charlotte convinced Eleanor that a trip to the Japanese wreck would be just the thing for the following morning. She remembered the fisherman’s name, as he had instructed them to do, and was adamant that they bring their business to Nyoman.

‘It looks a bit flimsy,’ Eleanor said at the sight of Nyoman’s brightly painted jukung. ‘What about lifejackets? We need lifejackets.’