Free Monkey Business by Kathryn Ledson

concerned, it wasn’t.
    I rushed down the road to Crown and through the casino, which was already busy with gamblers at poker machines. I hurried past restaurants and shops and skidded to a halt in front of a travel agent, where I scanned the posters in the window. There was a map of Indonesia with Bali highlighted; photos of blue sky, beaches, tanned people and local colour pinned to it. But I peered past those photos at the map itself, which included the top of Australia, East Timor, and a tiny island just south of Timor: Saint Sebastian. I stared at it, as though doing so might produce answers.
    Inside the shop two staff members were sitting at their desks, chatting. The man looked up at me and smiled as I entered.
    â€˜I was thinking about a holiday in Saint Sebastian,’ I said.
    He stopped smiling. ‘Why would you go there?’
    I shrugged. ‘I read an article about it somewhere.’
    â€˜What about Bali?’ he said, addressing his computer. ‘There are some fantastic deals right now.’
    â€˜Okay. Well, thanks. I’ll think about it.’

    While Rosalind was changing into her new suit, office door closed, I googled Saint Sebastian. It was a tiny oblong-shaped speck in the Timor Sea. Tiny, but with a big history. War-ravaged from an Indonesian invasion in the seventies and troubled ever since. There was a substantial Australian military presence on Saint Sebastian for a while, and a small Australian military base remained. A couple of travel blogs popped up – backpackers diarising their trips. Because of its shape and because it’s so densely green with jungle, Saint Sebastian was nicknamed ‘Emerald Island’, and this seemed to give a few unsuspecting travellers the idea that it might be a nice place to go, which apparently it isn’t.
    I wished I knew where Jack and Joe had been staying. Or maybe they were camping in the jungle or something? Saint Sebastian seemed to be more jungle than city. Maybe it was like being in Bali. Kind of third worldy but touristy at the same time. Where was Jack right
now
? I tested the unthinkable: was he dead, as JD thought? My heart and stomach switched places. No. That wasn’t possible. I kept searching the net. No current news about fighting or war or anything on the island. So, why did Jack go there? I wished I’d pushed him for more information.
    For the rest of the day, Rosalind kept catching me staring off into space. During those staring moments I was mostly trying to convince myself that there was nothing to be done about Jack, that it wasn’t my business, that he knew what he was doing, that he probably didn’t even want me in his life. Intermittently, I’d try both Jack’s and Joe’s mobiles, but they were still switched off.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    I lay in bed at one a.m. staring at the ceiling. When my alarm went off at seven, I was still staring at the ceiling. I got up and left a message on Rosalind’s office phone saying that I was sick and wouldn’t be coming to work. I sat at my dining table with my laptop and looked up travel agents, scanning the options. I was really just sussing it out. I didn’t actually intend to go there. Not really. Not consciously. But when I called the travel agent who ‘specialises in unusual travel’, he didn’t think going to Saint Sebastian sounded so strange. ‘Adventurous backpackers go there all the time,’ he said. He gave me the prices and times, leaving the very next day, and there was something about the way he said, ‘Shall I go ahead and book?’ that made me say yes.
    I sat in shock while the travel guy ran through the details and I gave him my credit card info, sounding like a robot. He said, ‘You should take malaria tablets.’
    After the call, I sat staring out the window, thinking about deadly mosquitoes. I did that for about an hour, and decided to call Lucy. It wouldn’t be a pleasant