Separate Lives (34 page)

Friday December 24, 2010

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Will. I'm writing this to you from Khao Lak, just north of Phuket. It was one of the worst-hit areas during the tsunami—nearly 4,000 people died here. Not that you'd know it now because the beach is just as serene and beautiful as you'd expect a Thai beach to be. Extraordinary really. The locals say that most of the year life goes on as it ever did, and the main reason tourism has been hit has less to do with the tsunami, much more to do with the economy.

If you know where to look, however, there are a few things that will remind you of what happened here. Just yesterday I visited an orphanage specifically for children who lost their parents during the tsunami. Many of the kids are in the process of finding new homes, but many are not . . . You've been close enough to disaster zones that you probably don't need me to tell you how hard it was to keep focused on the job.

I photographed one of the women who works at the orphanage. She told me that after she and her two-year-old daughter were swept off the beach they floated for nearly eight hours, clinging on to a piece of wood
from a broken boat. Eventually, they were rescued by fishermen. Her daughter is now nearly ten, but despite still living close to the beach she has never set foot in the water since. Her mother told me that for several years she would scream if she were ever made to have a bath or a shower.

And then there is a graveyard a couple of kilometers away from where I'm sitting now—the Bang Muang Cemetery, where nearly 400 unidentified bodies are buried and the small, numbered, concrete headstones are quite hard to see; weeds now cover most of them. Very sadly, it's quite badly unkempt. Apparently the bodies are buried in metal coffins inside concrete chambers. The idea was to preserve the DNA, but because 90 percent certainty of identity is needed before a body can be returned to a family, despite once being subject to the world's biggest forensics investigation these are the bodies that, quite literally, didn't measure up. The authorities keep records of their DNA on file in Bangkok, just in case.

Given that both she and Pippa's dad died at Khao Lak, it's not unlikely that this is where Pippa's mother is laid to rest. The first time I visited, I took flowers and left them on a grave. It didn't really seem to matter which one. And I've been back a few times since.

My project is going very well. It's more than just photographs now; it's a proper “body of work.” I've sent some shots to various magazine and newspaper contacts back home and the feedback has been incredibly encouraging. One of my mates is helping to curate a major exhibition entitled “After The Event” at the Hayward—portraits of people who have been through extraordinary experiences—and my picture of the woman at the orphanage has been selected. That's incredibly gratifying because there are some very big names involved, but that's not why I came. It's just a journey I had to make.

Obviously the next couple of days will be testing. Though the stoicism of the Thais is unbelievable, they will certainly allow themselves to remember, and mourn, on Boxing Day.

I'm staying here until New Year, then I'm going on to Sri Lanka for more of the same. I'll be meeting Marta in Colombo. Did you ever meet
Marta? She worked at Lisa's shop, did a bit of nannying and babysitting for—irony of ironies—both Lisa and Pippa. We had been seeing each other for a few weeks before I came here. It was all very easy and—dare I say it?—fun. Who knows where it will go? I try not to plan ahead too much these days.

But enough about me.

There's so much I want to say but I don't know if I can manage to say it all. I'm sitting on a beach at sunset, nursing a cold beer, so . . . But I'll have a bash at it.

I know you've been keeping an eye on Susie. And believe it or not, that's fine by me. It wasn't fine, of course, not for a long, long time—ten years in fact—but it is now. When Dad died, something shifted and lifted. I no longer felt the need to keep up the pretense of being yet another Alpha Fox. I'd always felt I was trying to compete with you for Dad's affection, even though Mum was always on my team. Meanwhile, Guy just didn't seem to be caught up in any of that stuff, and I envied him for it.

And I know about you and Susie. And maybe you even know why—and how—I know? Perhaps there's no need to go there, but . . . maybe there is? Call it closure. Call it whatever the hell you want, Will, but maybe it's time, especially as Dad is no longer around to pass judgment.

It was the mirror. Because even though I wasn't exactly hanging around yours and Marianne's very often, I knew that mirror—for the simple reason that I was with Marianne when she bought it. You may recall that she came home one Saturday afternoon with the mirror in the back of the car and told you how she'd been to an auction with a friend and fallen in love with it and been persuaded to bid far too much for it, against her better judgment, but that she was delighted she had?

Well, I was the “friend” who persuaded her. And I was the “friend” whom she dropped off round the corner just before she came home to you. And yes, I was the insecure, jealous little brother who thought that seducing your girlfriend was a clever game. But Marianne had the measure of me,
eventually. She dumped me, committed to you and that was the end. We'd had our fun but Marianne had the last laugh. At least for a while.

And I forgot about the mirror for a long time. Right up until it arrived in my flat, along with Susie and about 100 bags of clothes and shoes. At first, of course, I assumed it was just an incredibly similar mirror, but it didn't take long to find out the truth. And it wasn't Susie who blew the whistle, obviously. No, it was such a silly, simple thing. The thing Marianne had loved most about the mirror wasn't what it looked like, or even what it reflected—though she did say it was the most flattering mirror ever—instead it was something you could see on it. You probably never even noticed it yourself but on the back there was a tiny metal plaque with the words: “For M . . . From A” engraved on it. We had no idea who “M” and “A” were, but Marianne felt it was meant to be. It was our little joke.

When I finally identified the mirror, about three weeks after Susie had moved in (it was covered in bubble-wrap and it wasn't my place to unwrap it), I was shocked—what were the odds?—and I did a bit of detective work, like asking Susie where she'd got it. She was very dismissive.

“An ex gave it to me. Isn't it beautiful? He's very much an ex, but I kept custody of the mirror. Where do you think it should go?”

And I resisted the urge to say “Out with the fucking rubbish” because I may be many things but I'm not a hypocrite. This was clearly my quick karmic pay-off for the Marianne situation—because I also knew you'd never part with anything of M's unless there was a very good reason—and now it appeared that Susie was the reason. My hunch was confirmed the “first” time you two met, officially, at Ma and Pa's. I watched you both like a hawk. You both went so far out of your way to appear uninterested in each other that you may as well have announced that the opposite was the case. But of course only I could see that because I was the only one watching. I've always wondered what it was you whispered in Susie's ear when you said those overly formal “goodbyes.”

But I loved Susie and time passed and we were together. For example, I never had a moment's doubt that our children were my children. And I
never had any doubt that she had moved on from you, toward me. Until, that is, I did have doubts. At Ma and Pa's anniversary, for example, when you asked Susie to dance and I watched you while I was talking to Guy, and you were both trying so hard to look comfortable together . . . well, it was very obvious—if only to me—that you weren't comfortable together, even after all that time apart. And then when you left the marquee together I had to resist the urge to run after you both, because I knew.

And the only reason I can tell you all of this now is because I HAVE moved on. Really. Susie and I had ten mostly-good years together—and two beautiful children—and that is, I now understand, more of a cause for celebration than regret. Now, though, it's time for all of us to start living a different kind of life . . . so, Happy Christmas.

I love you, mate. I always have. I just got distracted for a while.

Alex X