Constance. Rosie Thomas

       FOUR

      Suitcases and boxes of film equipment almost filled the hotel lobby. Taxis and 4x4s were waiting to sweep them away, Angela and Rayner and Simon Sheringham, the complaining actress, the creative duo who were hiding their hangovers behind dark glasses, and all the rest of the cast and crew.

      ‘Thanks for coming to see us off,’ Angela murmured to Connie in the hubbub of departure. ‘Think about what I said, won’t you? I mean, it’s beautiful here, but it’s not home, is it?’

      ‘Yes,’ Connie said, ambiguously.

      Miraculously, the mounds of luggage fitted into the vehicles and people variously scrambled for places in the cars that looked as if they would have the best air-conditioning. Only two minutes ago it had seemed as if the point of departure would never arrive, and now everyone except Connie had piled into a seat.

      She stood back and waved. Angela blew her a kiss and Rayner Ingram lifted one hand before adjusting his Ray-Bans. People shouted goodbye to her and then hastily wound up their windows to keep out the flies and the gusts of hot, steamy air. The convoy of cars rolled forwards and Connie saw Ed looking at her through the rear window of the last 4x4. He touched two fingers to his temple in an ironic salute.

      Connie stood still as silence descended. There was no clamour of mobile phones, no crackle of walkie-talkies, and no one was shouting. There was only birdsong, and the faint scrape of rough-edged leaves spreading in the sun’s glare.

      She drew in a long breath and then exhaled.

      The week had been like a runaway train ride. She had been right to be apprehensive. She had been very thoroughly shaken out of her equilibrium.

      Maybe she should have gone back to Ed’s room last night.

      She muttered to herself, ‘How many more chances d’you think you’re going to get?’

      Then she saw that the doorman was glancing curiously at her. She gave the man what she hoped was a composed smile, and set off down the hotel drive towards the village street.

      Connie didn’t have a car. As with her choice not to have a pool, her European neighbours (Kim and Neil who were in property and rentals, the French couple who owned a gallery in the main street, Werner Baum the sculptor, and all the others) regarded this as wilfully eccentric. But Connie liked walking, she had a bicycle for errands, and on the island she was never in a hurry. If she needed to go further afield there were the public bemos, small buses that ran fixed routes all over the island, and taxis were cheap.

      The main street was quiet this morning. She passed a couple of dogs lolling in the shade, and a young woman sitting on her step with two smooth, plump toddlers playing at her feet. In front of the Café des Artistes a group of tourists in shorts and Birkenstocks were consulting a map and talking about a visit to the monkey forest.

      ‘They bite,’ one of the girls warned the others. ‘And then you get rabies.’

      ‘Noooo? They look so cute.’

      Connie crossed the road and took her favourite route through the village’s central market. She loved the blazing colour and exuberance of the enclosed square. Two-storey buildings with open fronts were hung from ground to roof with dresses and T-shirts, ikat weavings and multicoloured sarongs, and the paved space in the centre was jammed with blue and red parasols. In the shade the stallholders were selling racks of beads and earrings, woven baskets in all shapes and sizes, plastic toys and cheap CDs. It was too early for the tourist crowds to be out in any force and the vendors were quietly gossiping with their neighbours. Connie was heading for the flower stall in the far corner. The blooms made a wall of brilliance beneath a sun-bleached awning.

      Recognising Connie, the broad-hipped woman who owned the stall sprang up and began yanking stems of orchids and tuberoses out of buckets and pressing them into her hands. Business wasn’t good for any of these traders. Tourists had almost disappeared after the Kuta bombing, and they were still not coming to the island in the same numbers. Connie went through the ritual of praising the flowers for their freshness and the elegance of their blooms and at the same time firmly putting them back in their places.

      She saw what she wanted at the back of the stall. They were scarlet cannas, blisteringly bright, offset by ribbed bronze leaves. When she had chosen an armful and told the stallholder what she wanted them for, the woman wrapped them in a swathe of white tissue brought out from a special hiding place, and finished off the bouquet with a stiff crepe-paper bow. Connie counted out rupiah notes, worn as soft and floppy as thin cloth.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said.

      She ducked out of the market, waving to two or three of the shoppers, and walked on towards Kadek Daging’s general store. He was back in his usual place after his week of driving for the movie people. As soon as he saw her coming he bustled out from between his sacks of rice and drums of oil.

      ‘Selamat siang, Ibu,’ he beamed. ‘Glamour all finished for you and me. Back to ordinary life.’

      ‘Selamat siang, Kadek. I don’t know about glamour. We had a busy week, though, didn’t we?’

      Kadek glanced round and lowered his voice. ‘I did not see her myself, but she was here, wasn’t she? Working in the film?’

      ‘Who?’

      He checked again to make sure that there was no one eavesdropping from behind a tower of detergent packets and then whispered,

      ‘Penelope Cruz.’

      Connie considered this. ‘I’m not sure. In a bank commercial? I certainly didn’t see her.’

      Kadek stood back with a satisfied nod. ‘Yes. I knew that she was. I heard it from the mother of one of the young girls. Very beautiful. Not as beautiful perhaps as Angelina Jolie, but still. I expect you didn’t get the chance to work with her?’

      ‘No,’ Connie agreed. ‘I didn’t, unfortunately.’

      ‘Never mind,’ he consoled her. ‘Films are being made all the time, here in Bali. Perhaps next time. Those are very good flowers. Are they a gift, wrapped like that?’

      ‘I’m taking them to Dewi. Wayan Tupereme told me last night that she has a son.’

      ‘Yes, the birth was yesterday. I hear the baby is very small. You will be needing some first-quality rice.’

      ‘That’s exactly why I’m here, Kadek.’

      They spent five minutes debating a suitable choice, and then Connie made her way onwards with the two-kilo package under her other arm. The quickest way to Dewi’s husband’s family house, on the far side of the village where the paddy fields opened up, was to cut through the monkey forest. She walked briskly to where the street petered out in a clutch of little shops and open stalls.

      The same group of tourists was now at the margin of the forest enclosure, negotiating with a small boy over the price of bunches of finger-sized bananas to feed to the monkeys.

      It was cool and shady under the canopy of tall trees and the dirt tracks were easier on the feet than the uneven paving of the village streets. Connie often walked here, enjoying the quiet and the scent of damp leaves and trodden dust. She slowed her pace to a stroll, but she always kept an eye on the monkeys who sat in the branches or knuckle-walked at the edges of the paths. From behind her came a thin scream of alarm and then a chorus of shouts. She smiled; without even turning to look she knew that a troop of monkeys had executed a classic distraction manoeuvre followed by a pincer attack, and had successfully snatched the bunch of bananas from the grasp of the most monkey-friendly of the tourists.

      In the middle of the forest was a temple complex. It