When her hands left her hair she felt his eyes across her shoulder. The soft hair braid lay like a gift of intimacy between them. It was quite contrary to her intentions.
She read the open page. Clause 5. iv. Pursuant to any change in market conditions the vendor shall …
A lawyer? She wouldn’t have guessed. They would have no currency to exchange whatsoever. She opened the cover of her own book but had no inclination to read it and closed it again.
‘So your first trip?’ He seemed no longer able to concentrate on the merger documents.
She narrowed her almond eyes and nodded. She had never had the opportunity to go back.
‘Family?’
So simple a question but not so easy to answer. There was no family, no relatives, in fact; no one to visit. There never had been; how easily small openings in conversation could hit a nerve. A stewardess of an over-painted age stopped to offer drinks and Ed leaned in to pass her one as he asked how long she would be away.
Knowing that after the flight they would leave as strangers, she recognized an open opportunity to tell him anything she liked – a gift. What truths you could tell a stranger when a friend might pass judgment. A license to download. And so, without editing or exaggerating, she could talk to him more freely.
‘Six weeks or so. I’ll be teaching primary in the autumn,’ she began, applying the free lip balm generously.
Ed’s firm had sent him out to live in Tokyo the year before and he would probably stay another couple. So she might know someone on arrival – someone who would speak the language who she could call on if she had a problem. She weighed up whether he would offer to take her round. It was more likely they would leave the flight as they had begun, as strangers.
‘There was lot of work after the Oshika Peninsular incident.’
The reference sailed passed her until he explained.
‘Tohoku. The Great Eastern Earthquake.’ He hammered it home: ‘Last year the earth shifted almost a foot.’
She was wide-eyed. Her lips parted.
A foot – virtually the space she took up in her seat. It shocked her.
He drew attention to her book, changing the subject.
‘The Pillow Book?’ The spine was pristine.
For some reason, she did not want to mention that this love story was a departing gift from Tom. She and Tom had been together since school and lately she had wanted to ask him what she really meant to him but had never managed to bring it up. She thought she loved him but she had not yet learned to love herself. They were kind of cut adrift together. She had left him behind to finish his dissertation and house-sit the flat that was now hers.
‘From a friend.’ She tapped the cover casually.
Ed tried again – ‘Visiting friends here?’
She shook her head. But hoped for a place to stay, where her welcome would be whispered over rustling kimono silk, where a bamboo waterspout played over samisen music and delicacies on celadon-turquoise porcelain perfectly fitted her hand.
In reality she was travelling towards a void where she would know no one. And because she was part Japanese she felt foolish, as if she had been left standing waiting too long on a street corner. Hers was a history of carelessness. How reassuring it would be to say she was headed somewhere familiar.
‘And so your parents …?’ he asked.
She stopped him with a look.
She had lost her mother quite recently, and the words would still not come.
At her response he looked away and mouthed his apologies.
‘I‘ve arranged a kind of homestay, sort of hostel.’
Ed was well trained in the art of disguising when he was unimpressed but the edge of his mouth curled down; Hana ignored it.
Four hours in and green tea was offered. Ed passed across the plastic cup.
‘Sen no Rikyū would be upset. The Zen Master of simplicity.’
Hana’s eyebrows quizzed him.
‘Founder of the tea ceremony would have banished plastic.’
‘You’ve been to one?’
‘The whole ritual is played out very slowly. At half tempo.’
After a pause she interrupted him ‘My mother lived in Shimokitazawa.’
‘Nice area. You must have great photos.’
Of course there were photos. Photos of boots slipping from her tiny feet, on yellow-wellington days, bright enough to scare the wildlife halfway across the South Downs, where they spent rented weekends. But she had never seen a single photo from her mother’s time in Japan. Not a photo, not a face, found among her possessions to suggest she had ever lived there. Hana shook her head.
‘What did she do in Tokyo?’
She hadn’t told her very much. ‘Well … she did work on a … a teahouse.’
The seat-belt sign bleeped – turbulence – and as the plane bucked, half his green tea escaped across her jeans. As his apologies tumbled out he pushed his napkin softly against her thigh until they both looked up suddenly as if as each of them had been called from opposite ends of the plane. She liked his reserve. She trivialized the accident and holding his napkin to her jeans and continued.
‘I’m not a great traveller.’
He touched her sleeve with genuine concern.
Aware that she responded to his attention, they fell into an abrupt silence.
She watched him contemplate the ceiling vents. They were a good way into the journey and the air was stale.
‘You’ve done some miles then.’
‘Yes. A lunar mission only takes three days,’ he complained. ‘That’s half a million kilometres.’ She could tell he was the sort to be making constant calculations.
‘We’d be about a third of the way right now,’ he offered.
‘To the moon?’
‘Yes. You’ll find Japan as familiar – and you might as well be travelling through time too.’
It was effectively what she wanted to do: travel through time; find a piece of her mother; find a piece of her own history. She had always accepted the thin yarn of a story her mother had offered, and over the years she had darned and patched it until it fitted her needs. This was how they had always lived together, patching and making do.
Hana woke on the descent over the daytime Pacific to find her head lay on Ed’s shoulder. She smiled sleepily at the intimacies of the flight; his stomach filled with her untouched dinner, which he had tidied away. The honesty of their conversation.
She was not embarrassed until Ed opened his eyes and she shifted quickly to a safer distance.
‘You ‘ve got the address for the homestay – right? I’m really sorry – I would offer … but I’m going in the opposite direction.’
She was disappointed. She had imagined she would have a guide – at least to the centre of town.
‘But we should hang … definitely,’ he added.
It was such a little offer – she wouldn’t press him on it.
The plane dipped sharply sending her body temperature up until she felt a little sick. Below were the rice paddy fields and from this height it seemed there was little change in what she had left behind.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m