Backpack

by Barr, Emily

• ISBN13: 9780452282933
• ISBN10: 0452282934
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-12-31
• Publisher: Plume

Summary

Emily Barr's irrepressible first novel follows the trials and tribulations of Tansy, a Londoner who leaves behind her horrible boyfriend, too-trendy friends, and hotshot media job to find herself a continent away. But when blond Englishwomen in Asia start turning up dead, what began as a grand adventure suddenly becomes a real-life murder mystery . . . and blond Tansy wonders if she'll live long enough to tell the tale of her travels.

Excerpts

Chapter 1 On the day we buried my mother, I deduce, I have poisoned myself with alcohol and drugs, and woken up in the hospital. I console myself with the knowledge that it's what she would have wanted. This must be a hospital, mustn't it? I'm in a single bed, strapped in tightly by sheets. I can't move, any more than my mother can. I'm in my own coffin. Nothing is particularly sore except for my stomach. I feel sick, but I haven't got a discernible injury. One of my legs feels bruised, and I am suddenly scared that it's a phantom pain on an amputated limb, but there is a leggy bump under the sheet. I think I'm intact. I have a blinding headache, and I feel fuzzy, much more so than on a normal New Year's Day. This place smells of disinfectant, but not in a reassuring way. Half disinfectant, half sick. I'm attached to a machine. It must be a hospital. This is alarming. The only thing I want to do is to burst into tears. I try to remember why. I should be happy. I force myself to be happy. It's only the comedown that's making me sad. I was happy last night. I was relieved. I don't think I even made it to midnight. What a way to greet the year: passing out and probably forcing some doctor to inspect the contents of my stomach as the clock struck twelve. I wish I was at home, nursing this monstrous hangover. Mum was ill; I'm not. I don't want to lie here and do nothing. I can get up and go. That's all I need to do. I'll get up in a minute and find my clothes. I have a hazy memory of being in an ambulance-a quick flash of lying down, driving fast, drifting. Someone with me, trying to make me sick. Shouting at me to wake up. I couldn't do it. I went back to sleep. Now I feel, appropriately, like death. I will get up in a minute-I have to-but I'll just have a rest first. I've always wanted to go in an ambulance. I'm half-heartedly cross not to have been awake enough to appreciate it. I suppose most people aren't. A broken leg or something would be the optimum ambulance experience. Cars swerving out of the way, me storming through the red lights, lots of people concentrating only on me, and all because I took a line too many of coke, or had one too many vodkas, or both. I can't believe I missed that. I often feel like I do now, but not so dramatically. I know if I drank enough water and juice and coffee, and filled up on carbohydrates, I'd be all right by tonight. I need a full English breakfast at the café. The very thought makes me heave. I wonder how to call a nurse; I don't think I've got much of a voice. I can't remember how, exactly, I got into this stupid state. I know yesterday was the funeral. I certainly didn't collapse then. I made a supreme effort to be as dignified as possible, and I think I carried it off extremely well, though it appears that the dignity didn't last until the sun set. That's unfair, it probably did, since that would have been at about 3 p.m. but not much beyond. It was a hypocritical service at the church in Hampstead, an establishment I happen to know Mum last attended on Christmas Eve twelve years ago, and then she only went to get a glug of Communion alcohol. "Ghastly!" she exclaimed on her return. She banned us both from attending in future. God lost her soul by serving bad wine. He must be gutted. Yesterday, the ban lifted, I sat in the front pew, smelling the old musty smells, and I rejoiced. I sang the hymns I'd chosen for her: Lord of all hopefulness, Jerusalem, All things bright and beautiful. These are the hymns you know if you don't go to church. I sang them loudly, discarding my self-consciousness. I was glad she was dead. Glad for her, glad for me, and glad for the fact that my boyfriend, who left me three weeks ago, came back to comfort me. Tom sat next to me, looking suitably sombre. His presence beside me electrified me. Tom always dominates any space he's in. He is a big man, and in the past few years his waistline ha