The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

Grace laughed. ‘That’s no problem, Lisa. You’re my guest.’

Lisa blushed. ‘I couldn’t possibly let you . . .’

‘I insist.’ Grace cut her off. ‘And that’s an end to it.’ Lisa felt like a schoolgirl who has just been rapped on the knuckles for a breach of etiquette, and she lowered her eyes. Grace laughed again and put a hand over hers, giving it a tiny squeeze. ‘My child, forgive me if I bully you, but your father would not be happy with me if I failed to look after his little girl.’

Lisa met her eyes again and wondered if she detected a hint of mockery in their laughter. ‘Do you know my father well?’

‘Well?’ Grace smiled reflectively into the middle distance. ‘No, I should not say I know him well.’ She turned to meet Lisa’s gaze again. ‘But do I know him intimately.’ Again that sense of mockery in the eyes that left Lisa feeling unsettled. And the deliberate manner in Grace’s choice of words had an ambiguity calculated apparently to leave her guest confused and insecure. Lisa drew her hand away from Grace’s and locked it together firmly with her own in her lap. She felt Grace’s eyes still on her, but kept hers averted, pretending that something on the street had caught her interest. She wanted time to sort out her feelings, to know how to respond. Sivara had shattered her young innocence. She would not be taken in so easily again. ‘You will like the floating market,’ Grace said. ‘It attracts many tourists.’

‘I have been before,’ Lisa replied, and she did not need to look to know that Grace was surprised.

They waited by the car at the landing stage while the chauffeur went to hail a water taxi. Crowds thronged the pier waiting for one of the many motor launches that criss-crossed the river. Pop music blared from the speakers of a ghetto-blaster on the shoulders of a young man dressed in peasant black pyjamas and wearing a reed-woven sunhat. Lisa searched vainly among the many faces for one that might be familiar. Eyes full of mischief that had turned to lust. But one in five million, she knew, was long odds. A small boy in shorts and a khaki-green shirt several sizes two large for him pushed through the crowd with a large, circular bamboo tray on his head. Coloured ribbons hung down around its edges. He turned this way and that, arms up holding his tray steady, appealing to each face he encountered.

‘What’s he doing?’ Lisa asked.

‘Selling jasmine-blossom garlands,’ Grace said. ‘The blossoms are associated with good fortune. They can be left at temples as offerings, or kept by the purchaser for good luck – or presented to friends as gifts.’ She waved her hand and called him over. He ran up to them eagerly. Grace haggled over the price. Several exchanges in bursts of staccato Thai. At last the boy shrugged and handed her one of the garlands in return for a few coins. He melted away into the crowd again, disgruntled with his sale. Grace crushed the blossoms gently in her hand and inhaled the heady fragrance with satisfaction. Then she turned to Lisa, smiling, and placed the garland around her neck. ‘For good luck,’ she said. ‘And such a pretty child as you deserves a pretty fragrance.’ Her fingers brushed Lisa’s bruised cheek. ‘Such a shame,’ she said. ‘But it won’t last long – like the blossom.’

Or like my luck, thought Lisa. She felt sure now that she was being mocked. And her initial feeling the previous evening of security, and gratitude towards Grace, was being replaced by a growing sense of unease.

The long, narrow hang yao knifed its way through the choppy waters of one of the larger klongs, weaving between the rice barges and water buses and sampans. And for a time Lisa forgot her misgivings, enthralled again by the sights and sounds of this exotic waterborne culture that engulfed the senses. Women hung from their reed-woven lampshades like fat black light bulbs, squatting in tiny sampans. A canoe, groaning under the weight of a huge load of golden hay, turned into one of the many smaller klongs, heading east to feed the buffalo that ploughed the neighbouring paddies. Grace pointed out the flotilla of Royal Barges housed in a special pavilion along the canal, and Lisa’s gaze strayed up to the giant statues guarding the entrance to the Wat Arun, whose central porcelain-studded tower flashed in the morning sunlight.

The sun had risen mercilessly high in the pale blue sky by the time they reached the market itself. It was cooler on the water than elsewhere, but the heat was still oppressive. Their hang yao had slowed to less than walking pace, bumping its way gently among the hundreds of bobbing craft. Grace ordered their driver to stop by a boat selling headgear, and she bought them each a wide-brimmed straw hat. ‘To protect that pretty white skin,’ she said, brushing Lisa’s hair back and placing the hat on her head, tilting it forward to shade her face from the sun. Lisa was again reminded of her trip with Sivara. She had bought a straw hat then, too.

All around them clicking Thai tongues bargained and fought over purchases and sales, and Lisa became aware of Grace’s eyes on her. She turned boldly to meet her gaze. Grace smiled disarmingly. ‘You must be hungry.’

Lisa nodded. ‘Starving.’

Grace spoke to their driver and he eased their hang yao through the other craft to a sampan selling fresh fruit. They bought a bamboo tray laden with slices of watermelon, papaya, pineapple and halves of lime. As they ate the juicy red flesh of the watermelon and squeezed lime on the papaya, Grace reclined, supporting herself on one arm, and gazed speculatively at Lisa. ‘What brings a young English girl to the other side of the world to find a