The People's Princess

The plane was not new. It was the oldest plane Lizzie had ever seen. The cabin crew were not new either. They were the oldest cabin crew Lizzie had ever seen. They were two women who were the most overweight people Lizzie had actually ever seen in a plane. She wondered how they were going to move up and down the aisles with ease. They were like two mothers, waddling along and calling everybody 'Hon'. One of them called Lizzie 'Hon' and she started to cry. She was frightened of flying, she felt sick and her head was spinning. She wanted somebody to take her in their arms and tell her that everything would be all right. She knew that the doctor had been right, that she should not fly with concussion. Her head would probably explode at take-off.

It did not explode at take-off but Lizzie felt worse. The one flight attendant who had called her 'Hon' came and offered her some nuts but Lizzie could not speak by this time and the woman asked, 'Are you OK, Hon?'

Lizzie said, 'No,' so the flight attendant said, 'You come to the back with me, just come and sit down, you'll be all right,' so Lizzie went and sat at the back, where they were getting all the nuts and drinks out of the cupboards and the attendant made her sit down on the cabin crew's seat and said, 'Now, I think you need a beer, you'll be all right once you've had a beer,' and poured her one, and Lizzie said, 'I am scared of flying.'

'No need, Hon,' said the flight attendant. 'My name's Maddie. I been flyin with this airline since 1959. I'm still goin.'

1959. That was the year Lizzie had been born. She took the beer and asked, 'No crashes?'

'No crashes,' Maddie said. 'Not even nearly any crashes. You drink that beer, Hon. Poor kid. Have to fly around, with your job?' Lizzie nodded. 'Don't like it, do you?'

Lizzie shook her head.

'Gotta do your job,' Maddie said. 'At home, I got horses. Got a whole stableful. That's all I want to do, once I've retired. Gotta daughter, bout your age. She does the horses now. Feelin better, Hon?'

Lizzie nodded. 'Bit,' she said.

'You sit there,' Maddie said. 'You can help us carry out the nuts, if you want, and get the glasses down.'

So Lizzie pulled down the glasses, carried the nuts up to first class and pulled out the meal trays all the way from Tokyo to Seoul.

From the air, Seoul looked a bit like South-East London on a bad day. Lizzie was terribly disappointed. She thought, Japan is obviously like some pearl in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The rest of Asia is probably poor and shabby in comparison.

She changed her mind a bit when she saw the Westin Chosun Hotel. It was in the middle of town, seemed to Lizzie, at any rate, in amongst tall, modern buildings like in Tokyo, bright lights and city life, large screens at the top of buildings, showing advertisements and music programs. It was noisy and full of thousands of cars, and the Westin Chosun had style, class, a little like an old colonnial building.

Inside, it was full of Caucasians.

Lizzie stopped and stared around her. There were no end of Europeans here, and Americans, Asians as well of course, and many of them were talking English, and they did not even seem to be noticing her, not like in Japan, where you greeted any other Caucasian when you saw them. Lizzie was stunned. Did they not see that she was a European woman? Did they not want to stop and talk to her, at least say hullo? Lizzie wanted to talk to all of them at once. She wanted to say, Hi, it's me! Look! My name is Lizzie and I would like so much to talk to you! Please notice me.

The man at the Front Desk smiled at Lizzie and entered all her details in the computer. His English was almost perfect. Lizzie felt that she could almost burst with happiness, except that she felt very sick and her head was aching. She was shown to her room, which was much less impressive than her room in Tokyo, but she thought, It is so friendly here. By the time she had put down her bags she knew that she had a temperature and that she was going to be sick. It will be better now, she told herself over the toilet bowl, now I will go to sleep for a little, and things will be better.

Lizzie felt a lot better when she woke up. She switched on the television and immediately found about five English-speaking channels. She ordered some room service and pressed for a pay film.

She had already seen Clueless five times but it would be wonderful to watch it again.

She had come to Paradise.

The phone rang. It was Woodrow. He said, 'So, you get to Korea OK?'

'Fine,' said Lizzie. She wasn't telling him anything. She did not know where she stood with him anyway. Before they had come to Korea, she had said to Woodrow, Do you know of anything we can do in the evenings? And Woodrow had answered, Well, we can go out together the first couple of days but after that I usually tend to wander off and do my own thing. Woodrow had a lot of friends in Seoul, he came here several times a year. Lizzie would have to find her own thing.

'Well, what do you think about eating something?' Woodrow asked. 'Could meet you down in the lobby. They have some good restaurants here.'

'Fine,' said Lizzie again. 'I could meet you in about twenty minutes.'

The lobby gave onto lots of bars and restaurants. One was an Irish pub, one was called the Circle Rose and looked like an old English library. In about the eighteenth century. One was a sort of Italian with a buffet-style restaurant. Woodrow said, 'Any preferences?'

'We could just eat here,' Lizzie said, looking at the open buffet on display in the Italian. It was a long time since she had seen so much edible food, and at such close quarters.

The waitress asked, 'Smoking or non-smoking?' and Woodrow said, 'Non-smoking,' at the same time as Lizzie said, 'Smoking,' and then she said, 'Oh Woodrow, would you mind?' and he said, 'OK, it's just like being together with Anna again,' and they sat down together at a large smoking table.

Anna was actually part of Lizzie's department in Germany. She was supposed to be responsible for Korea and Taiwan, but for some reason Honoki-san had asked Lizzie to train in Korea this time. Anna was going to Taiwan. Lizzie had no idea why. She knew that Richard and Anna hated each other and that was why Anna, although part of their group, did not actually sit in the same office, nor indeed in the same building. Apparently she could not sit far enough away from Richard, seemed to Lizzie at any rate.

Lizzie was terrified of making a mistake with Woodrow, because she had Anna to follow as an act, and Woodrow as usual had been completely wooden, and had not let on a single word as to his personal feelings on this issue. Issue was one of Woodrow's favourite words. He used it to mean everything. If some sort of financial problem occurred, Woodrow said, 'It's kind of a budget issue.' If somebody was late, Woodrow said, 'It's a bit of a timing issue.' Mostly he just said, 'There's some issues I'd like to discuss,' then you knew it meant that he had a lot of questions and you had to provide all the answers, immediately, but if he said, 'It's a responsibility issue,' you knew there was serious trouble brewing.

His other favourite word was facility. He was always saying things like, 'I booked the facility for your training,' or 'The facility is free on that day.' Lizzie would say, to wind him up, 'Oh, you mean I have to train in the toilet?' and then shake in her shoes for his response. 'You mean the restroom,' Woodrow would reply, managing to express no emotion at all. 'Oh the restroom,' Lizzie would reply. 'I thought that was the room with the cabins on the 7^th floor of TIME38, you know, the one with the massage chairs and the CDs of relaxing dolphin music.'

So now she had Anna to follow. After they had ordered from the menu, instead of selecting from the buffet, which was too expensive, Woodrow said, 'You know, I used to eat breakfast with Anna when we were on the road together. Like, I would eat breakfast and Anna would smoke.' He took a swig of his water. 'Puff smoke in my face while I was trying to down a roll and marmalade.'

'She ever eat anything?' Lizzie asked.

'Nope,' Woodrow replied. 'You know, she even used to smoke in the training room.'

'In the training room?' Lizzie was astounded. Like, if she even hinted that she might have the intention of smoking in the training room, she could imagine being deported very quickly via one of those grey taxis, or if it were Japan, there might not even be any need for airport tax, just leave. 'What did everyone say?'

'Oh, you know,' said Woodrow. 'People sort of would watch her for a bit, then everyone else would light up to keep her company. So it wasn't a problem actually.'

'What time do you want to start tomorrow?' Lizzie asked. Their meals arrived. Bliss, spaghetti bolognese at last.

'We have a tight schedule,' said Woodrow. Woodrow always had a tight schedule. 'We should leave here at eight. You know, the partner company starts work at seven. That's seven a.m.  They finish at four, of course.  So you have a little time for shopping.' He made the appropriate gesture between finger and thumb for little.

But I have no money, Lizzie thought.

'There's some great shopping around here,' Woodrow went on, biting into his canelloni. 'Lotte department store. We have a Lotte right around the corner from the hotel I believe. I'd like to go to Lotte World though, it's one of the biggest stores in Seoul, and it's just a few blocks from the office.'

Right, thought Lizzie.

'Plus, I was at a tailor's last night,' Woodrow continued. He wasted no time apparently. 'Always get something made up when I'm in Korea. You choose the material and the style. Gets put together in about three days. I'm getting a cashmere jacket done this time.  Very nice.' He popped some more canelloni in his mouth. 'Getting the whole thing done for about two hundred US dollars.'

It's no good, thought Lizzie. I can't cope with this dollars thing any more. 'You'll have to tell me how much that is in yen,' she said. 'Then I've got a chance of converting it into deutschmarks.'

Woodrow didn't miss a beat. 'Well, I geuss it's about two hundred thousand Korean won. So that's about twenty thousand yen. Can you figure that out?'

It was OK for Lizzie. They were just going to have to do this four-currency-thing whenever they talked about money.

'I got an awful lot of won earlier,' Lizzie said. 'When I changed money at the cashier's here. I only changed two hundred deutschmarks but seems like I got about a quarter of a million.'

She found out the reason for her wealth later on when she returned to her room. There was a note under her door saying, Please call the Front Desk. Oh no, Lizzie thought, it was the children.

But it wasn't. A friendly male staff member who spoke amazingly fluent English informed her that her deutschmark traveller's cheque had been mistaken for Australian dollars and that they were very sorry, but she needed to pay a lot of money back.

'Can't I keep it?' Lizzie asked. 'It was your mistake, after all.' It was an attempt.

'Very sorry, Ma'am,' the cashier said, laughing. 'That would be nice, but we have to ask you to return it, and we deeply apologize for any inconvenience caused.'

It was a pleasure to hear so much English. Just because of that, 'It's no problem,' Lizzie said. 'I'll let you have it when I come down in the morning.'

Woodrow had not wanted to stay long in the restaurant. 'Jay Leno's on at ten o'clock,' he'd told Lizzie. And he was. He was here, personally, on NBC, to entertain Lizzie, because he knew how desperately Lizzie needed him. Lizzie fell asleep in bed with Jay Leno still telling Clinton jokes. Woodrow had said, 'I'll see you at eight, in the lobby.'

Apparently, Princess Diana was still dead. Lizzie learned this when she picked up the Korean Times that had been pushed under her door while she was on her way to the bathroom the next morning. The paper said, Diana's Driver Drunk: Prosecutor, whatever that meant, and there was a large photograph of an enormous amount of flowers and some mourners outside Kensington Palace.

There was also an advertisement for a restaurant at the Westin Chosun clipped to the newspaper, The Korean Grilled Barbecue. In the Lower Lobby. Below the directions and phone number, the advertisement instructed you to CHOOSE YOUR DINING PARTNER WISELY.

OK, Lizzie thought, I will remember that.

Woodrow was in the lobby already, sitting outside the Circle Rose and reading the Korean Times. He did not offer to carry Lizzie's large bag of papers and documentation for her training. He said, 'Ready to go?' and they went out through the revolving doors and past the taxi stand, at which Lizzie looked longingly. 'Subway's just down here,' Woodrow said.

It was a grim, dim looking subway entrance and it seemed to get no better as they made the long descent to its depths. 'No escalator?' Lizzie asked.

'No, subways don't tend to have escalators in Seoul,' Woodrow replied. It reminded Lizzie of an old subway station in East Berlin, or in Milan. Except that several street sellers were already putting out their wares on the floors, mostly hair clips and bands and small, interesting jewelry, colourful scarves and ties and tee-shirts. No food, Lizzie thought. Where am I going to get breakfast?

The subway was very cheap. You threw a few hundred won into a machine and got your ticket. Nothing was as slick as in Japan. And there seemed to be so few people. As they drew nearer to the platform, they could hear the female train announcer speaking, it seemed, incessantly. And she seemed to be saying over and over again something like, 'Dung Wong Song, Ke Ing, Ke Ing, Chong Sung Dong.'

Woodrow had warned Lizzie about Korean girls. 'You should see the girls on the subway in the morning. They wear the strangest make-up. Like they outline their lipstick with black pencil. And the clothes! It's very interesting actually. I kind of enjoy the subway ride.'

All the girls in the subway looked to Lizzie like the most beautiful girls she had ever seen. They were stunning, all of them. This was something she really could not say about Japanese girls. Many of them were very tall, with black hair of course, but not dyed like about forty percent of the Japanese population to brown, red, or blue. Their features were sharp and clear-cut, many of them completely perfect, like very beautiful Italians. Lizzie thought, I must look like a bad sample of a sub-species to them.

They had got into the subway at Station 2, which might have been Isa Dong, or perhaps Insa Dong, or even Dung Wong Song, but perhaps something Dong, which Lizzie geussed might mean street. They were getting off at Station 20, which was Samsung. So that was easy. Except the train announcer pronounced it Sam Sung, Sam Sung. Seoul seemed to be on a large river, which they had had to cross. It did not look like Tokyo at all.

Except when they got off at Sam Sung and made the massive ascent to the street again up endless flights of grey stairs past the street vendors. This was the business area of Seoul, Woodrow explained. Lizzie had never seen so many vast skyscrapers in one place, not even in Tokyo, and worse, they all looked the same. She would never be able to find her way around here, if she left the subway at another exit. There were no street signs in English, and Korean script seemed to consist solely of small circles and lines arranged in different combinations.

Their office was on the 7^th floor. They had to wait ages for the elevator, just like in the hotel this morning, Lizzie thought. Some elevators only went to certain floors. All of them were full. They had to wait at the glass doors to get in, because they had no security card. 'We won't be given a card either,' Woodrow said. 'It's a security issue. This is the partner, not CPB. And this is not Japan. 'Don't forget,' Woodrow continued. 'They are also our customer. So we have to be very careful how we handle them. Just play it very carefully. We have a little bit of a responsibility issue with Korea.'

Right, Lizzie thought. Serious shit.

Woodrow had said, You can't pronounce Korean names. Don't even bother trying. Everyone has an English name as well as their Korean one, so just call them by their English name. He had given Lizzie a list of all the translators' and coordinators' names. There was Hilary, Tonya, Ann, Lizzie, Colin...  Lizzie, Colin? Lizzie's heart had almost stopped. She had been certain that Woodrow was trying to pull some bad joke here, but then Colin was really the guy who met them at the door in the end. His English was poor, but it turned out that it was actually better than anyone else's. Lizzie's heart sank. This was the translation partner, after all. They were translating the system from English to Korean. And Colin was the technical coordinator, so he was not even involved.

There followed a major exchange of business cards between Woodrow and Colin, and two other technical staff, who appeared not to speak any English at all, and Lizzie ended up with three new Korean business cards. Everyone looked at her expectantly, and Lizzie said, feeling really stupid now, 'I'm sorry, I seem to have left my business cards in the hotel. I will bring them tomorrow.'

Woodrow came as close as he could to showing emotion. His eyes almost rolled and the words seemed to ooze out of the side of his mouth in disgust. 'Yeah, really,' he said.

I bet Anna carried a stack with her everywhere, Lizzie thought.

She realized instantly that this was not Japan. To start with, there was no carpet in the entire office, only linoleum floors. The desks were made of metal and fixed into the tiny booths. With a PC on the desk, almost no space remained for anything else. There was a coffee machine in one corner, which produced around a hundred millilitres of coffee for 200 won. Neither she nor Woodrow had been provided with a desk, let alone a PC or a telephone. So they stood around in the middle of the room for a while, while Colin set up some connection at a spare desk, and finally he said, 'You use this PC. You can read mail here.'

'Half an hour?' Woodrow said to Colin. 'We can start training in half an hour?'

'Huh?' Colin asked.

'Half an hour,' Woodrow repeated. He always spoke very fast, and without consideration for idiom, regardless of which country he was in or of the level of English understanding of his adressee. It usually meant he had to say everything twice. 'We can start the training in half an hour, if you want.'

'OK,' said Colin. 'I tell translators.'

That's why we came, Lizzie thought. That's why we got up at seven o'clock this morning and crawled our way out of subways without breakfast. Don't make it sound like it's such a surprise that we're here.

Woodrow sat down at the PC and called up his mail. Lizzie thought, Well I suppose I will just go have a coffee then. There were various different buttons on the machine, all in Korean, some probably said Black Coffee and some probably said With Sugar. Lizzie pressed one of the buttons, any button, and went into the little smoking room in the corner of the office. This was not Japan either. It had low wooden benches instead of chairs, and ashtrays containing damp serviettes instead of water. She sat down in one corner, feeling lost and hungry.

It is a bit bleak here, she thought.

The door opened behind her and a Korean gentleman in suit and tie entered. Lizzie paid him very little attention except to note that, like all the other Korean men she had so far seen, he was very good-looking. It was amazing, that. Just about all Koreans of both sexes seemed to be somewhere between handsome or pretty and stunningly beautiful.

'Good morning,' the Korean gentleman now said directly to Lizzie. It was in a voice that commanded Lizzie to attend and acknowledge, but she just said, Good morning in a very small voice and looked away again, out of the window at roadworks and building sites and... more skyscrapers.

The Korean gentleman sat down opposite her.

'Are you here on business?' he asked.

Lizzie acknowledged that she was.

'What area are you working in?'

He certainly had a quick chatup line. Lizzie said, 'I'm in translation. Technical support for translation.'

The Korean looked at her. He said, 'I'm in Sales. Head of the Sales Department. We're short-staffed, so I'm also the Consulting Manager.'

Lizzie was impressed. And he was talking to her. If only he knew I am nothing, she thought, he would not be wasting his time.

'It's very difficult for us,' the Sales Consulting Manager continued, 'in Asia, to assess European women, their age, and so on. I would geuss you are in your early thirties. May I ask you a personal question?'

Oh God, thought Lizzie. Surely he is not going to ask me already if I am sexually frustrated? I really only just met him.

'What?' she whispered.

'Are you married or single?'

I did not really want a date tonight, Lizzie thought. If anything, I was actually hoping that Hyung Je Sohn would be my date. Not that he knows anything about it yet.

'Well, I...' Lizzie faltered. 'I'm er...'

'I think you are single,' the Sales Consulting Manager bulldozed on. 'Because you-'

'Thank you,' Lizzie said. She had had enough. She wanted to say, I have two children at home. Do I not look like a responsible mother? 'I have to go now.'

'See you later,' replied the Manager, unfazed.

'Woodrow,' Lizzie murmured, standing at his side by the PC.

'What's up?' he did not take his eyes off his mail.

'I just got er... harassed. In the smoking room.'

'Why, what happened?' he was not really interested.

'This guy came in. Sales Manager, or something. He started straight away asking me questions like, how old was I and was I married...'

'Oh that's normal in Asia,' Woodrow responded. 'First three questions, what do you do, how old are you, are you married or single. Like, you have to get that sorted out first.'

'Could I read my mail, please?' Lizzie asked. 'I would like to write a quick mail, just quickly, I need to send something off this morning.'

'Sure,' Woodrow said. He clicked out of his mail and logged off. 'There you go. It's all yours.'

Lizzie wrote a mail to Hyung Je Sohn. It said, Hi, this is Lizzie. Peter Wendler from CPB Japan gave me your name and said you might like to go out? Please could you let me know if it would be all right for tonight? But only if you have time. I am staying at the Westin Chosun.

Woodrow had asked, 'Do you want to eat western or Korean?' and Lizzie had said, 'I'm sorry, do you mind if we have western?' Woodrow had said, No, there would be plenty of opportunity to eat Korean, so they ate lunch at the Renaissance Hotel opposite the office and ordered burger and chips, and Woodrow said it would be OK if they had a beer each, as they were not with the partner/customer. The hotel must have had at least five stars, probably ten, Lizzie thought.

'Nice place,' Woodrow said admiringly. 'Should try it out some time. It would also be very agreeable if they banned mobiles in the restaurant. Provokes a bit of a personal space issue.'

Koreans seemed to spend all their time on the phone. Lizzie wondered how you could possibly know so many people who would call you, any time or any place. At least once every three minutes, it seemed, a phone went off around them. But not normal ringing tones. The phones, black phones, pink phones, bright yellow phones, so small they looked like the slightly bigger brother of a keyring mascot, played Für Elise, Roll Out The Barrel, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Edelweiss, to mention just a few.

The training had not gone too badly. Except that nobody had asked a single question, except for one girl called Jenny, who seemed to speak the best English, which made Lizzie wonder if the girls had understood anything at all. They were all beautiful, of course, particularly the one called Lizzie, and they had a way of holding each others' hands and stroking each other, like little girls clinging to each other for comfort and confidence. As soon as Lizzie said, 'Let's take a break,' (she did not smoke in the training room) all the girls put their heads down on their desks and instantly fell asleep. I must be very boring, Lizzie thought. Or perhaps it is just because they have to start at seven in the morning, so they must have to get up at five, especially if they have as long to travel to work as in Tokyo. Only the girl called Lizzie had stood up and left the room and when the break was over she wordlessly handed Lizzie herself an apple juice drink, bought from the machine.

Lizzie had braved the smoking room again, and Mr Sales Manager had been there, but he had been standing in a group with other men, and he had completely ignored her.

There was a mail for Lizzie from Hyung Je Sohn. Lizzie had finally been able to read it during the afternoon break while Woodrow was visiting the restroom.

It said, Hi Lizzie, I didn't know you're already in Seoul. This evening is OK with me. If you're OK, pls call me to 3823-1857. Then, we can talk in details for this evening. Welcome to Seoul.                    

Best regards, HYUNG JE

When Lizzie rang, Hyung Je said he would come to the Westin Chosun at seven o'clock. He said, I'm looking forward to it.

So when Woodrow asked, 'What shall we do for dinner tonight?' Lizzie said, 'I'm sorry Woodrow, I have a date.'

'Guy in the smoking room?' Woodrow asked, not missing a beat.

'No,' Lizzie said. 'Guy I met in the restroom.'

Lizzie wanted sex. Not because she was frustrated, she told herself, but to exorcise Colin. If she could just have sex, it would be OK. If somebody wanted to have sex with her, it would be OK, and it would prove Colin wrong, and it would mean that she was OK and she was attractive, please let her just be halfway attractive, and it would just mean that she wasn't Colin's type, or that he really was in love with someone else. It would mean that she was not ugly as sin and that was the reason Colin couldn't bear to have sex with her. And then maybe Colin would leave her brain, give her some room to think about something else, anything else, night and day.

Almost anybody would do. Except Woodrow of course. That would be a bit of a political issue. If, for example, Hyung Je was good-looking, maybe he would do.

She kept her navy-blue suit on because it made her feel smart but also quite sexy at the same time. It might also make Hyung Je think that she was an attractive businesswoman and not a tart who wanted sex. Lizzie looked at herself in the full-length mirror outside the bathroom and thought, I don't actually look too bad at all. She drank a beer from the minibar quickly to strengthen her nerves.

There were lots of people in the lobby of the Westin Chosun at seven o'clock but Lizzie found Hyung Je immediately because he stared at her as she came in and then smiled. 'Lizzie?' he said, and shook her hand, his face all smiles, as if were really pleased and relieved that she didn't look too bad after all. 'I'm Hyung Je Sohn. I'm very pleased to meet you.' He put his hand in his pocket and extracted his wallet, from which he took his business card. It said, Hyung Je Sohn, Legal and Contract Specialist, Finance and Administration Operations, and the same on the other side in Korean, with the little circles and lines.

'I'm sorry,' Lizzie said. 'I don't seem to have my business cards with me. I seem to have a real problem with them.'

Hyung Je laughed. 'It's OK,' he said. Then, 'Where would you like to go?'

'Would you like to eat something?' Lizzie asked. 'Something western. I'm sorry, I am not very adventurous with Asian food.'

'It's OK,' Hyung Je said again. He looked at Lizzie, she thought admiringly, and said, 'Well. I am really surprised. It is so nice... Peter didn't tell me you were... it's very nice to be meeting you like this.'

Good, Lizzie thought. She looked down and tried to blink away the pinpricks of tears that had started in her eyes. A date, like her first date with Colin all those months ago. A very nice man, her age, she was surprised to note, in a very smart suit and tie, taking her for dinner in an exciting Asian capital city. She wondered if she could fall in love with Hyung Je, as easily as she had fallen in love with Colin. He really was very nice.

They walked down the ramp of the Westin Chosun and Hyung Je said, 'What I like about the Westin Chosun is that it is downtown. There is a lot going on here. Over there,' he pointed across the road to a multitude of shops and noise and lights, 'over there is a very famous shopping street, you know, young people, lots of things to buy... would you like to walk around there for a while?'

'Yes please,' Lizzie said. 'Yes, I would like to see the shopping street.'

They had to go through the subway to reach the other side of the four-lane road, down all the steps again and Lizzie asked Hyung Je about the lack of escalators, but he laughed again and said, You get used to it.

It was dark now, and the lights flashed everywhere around them. Lights from the signs outside the shops, lights from the large screen advertisements over the streets. Every shop seemed to have its own stereo center and music blared out all over, Korean music, western music. There was colour everywhere, and so many people, like Shimbashi Station in the rush hour, thought Lizzie. She had to squeeze through the masses, and worried that she would lose Hyung Je but he was always smiling and waiting for her at the other side of a throng.

Lizzie could not look around her enough, there were gadgets and tee-shirts and make-up and hairbands galore, things she had never seen before, and there were beggars, usually men with no legs or no arms, which shocked her, and she had to keep stopping to give money to them. One man seemed only to consist of a head and a torso and one arm, and Lizzie had to swallow back the tears, she was angry too, and then she turned to Hyung Je and said, 'Why are they all like this? Why are there are so many of them?'

'We had the War,' Hyung Je explained. 'You see, the War in the 1950's. A lot of men, the ones that survived, were very badly injured, and the government doesn't really look after them. It is normal here in Seoul. You see, even now,' he went on. 'Here in Seoul we are only thirty kilometres from the border of North Korea, and sometimes... sometimes it is very frightening for us. There is still fighting going on up there, and people are starving, but down here in Seoul we have everything, and things are becoming more and more westernized, we have it very good here.'

Lizzie had not thought about the Korean War before. It had not occurred to her that Richard or Honoki-san would send her to a place that was verging onto a war zone. It had not occurred to her before that she was actually in any danger here.

'Sometimes,' Hyung Je continued. 'A bomb goes off very close to the border, and then people realize how very close everything is, and it is quite... scary.' He laughed again, as if to try and cheer her up, seeing her expression. 'But I think we should eat something now.'

He took her to an American restaurant, a TGI Friday's. It was full and there was a line of people waiting outside. Hyung Je wrote his name and the number of persons in the book at the entrance, and he said to Lizzie, 'They will call us when they are ready. Would you like to sit outside?'

It was dark outside, but still very warm, and they sat at a small round table opposite a skyscraper with mirrored gold walls, and a large statue outside. 'It is beautiful,' Lizzie said, looking at the statue and the gold mirrors. Everything here is so beautiful.' She took out a cigarette and was about to light it when Hyung Je leaned over and lit it for her. He said, 'I smoke, too,' and laughed again.

He took a drag of his cigarette and watched Lizzie for a moment. Then he said, 'You don't mind, doing this?'

'What?' Lizzie asked. She wondered if he meant, going out with a strange man, sitting outside a restaurant or being in a city very close to a war zone.

'Smoking in public,' Hyung Je said. 'In Korea it is very strange for a woman to smoke in public. You know, it kind of shows that you are a... particular type of woman.'

'Oh no-' Lizzie began.

'I don't mean that,' Hyung Je went on hastily. 'I don't mean that about you. I just mean... I think it is wonderful that you smoke in public, that you don't mind.'

Lizzie was about to reply when Hyung Je's mobile phone went off. It was black and did not play Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree, fortunately, but made a normal telephone noise and flashed a red light.

'Excuse me,' Hyung Je said. 'I just have to take this call.'

It sounded like a very angry call. He did not raise his voice but he sounded extremely agitated. He finished the call very quickly and turned back to Lizzie, all smiles again. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I hope we won't be interrupted again.'

'It's OK,' Lizzie began, but Hyung Je was already fishing in his wallet again and pulling out photographs.

'These are my children,' he said, and Lizzie was taken aback. 'This is my little boy, and this is my little girl. They are four and six years old.'

'Oh, they're beautiful,' Lizzie said, taking them and examining them. 'Actually,' she decided to admit, 'I also have children. A boy and a girl.'

'Really?' Hyung Je said. They had something in common now. Lizzie wondered if they would spend the whole evening talking about children. Poor Eddie and Julie. She had been on the point of renouncing them.

'Where is your wife?' Lizzie asked, with a sinking heart, realizing that sex was almost out now, unless he said, Oh she died, it was very sad, or I am a single father actually, she left me, or She went to live in North Korea.

'I think she's taking the picture,' Hyung Je said, frowning, looking hard at the photo.

Right, Lizzie thought. So just a nice meal then.

There was a table free now. The food was actually superb, although Lizzie felt that eating a meal was rather a sin when there were people thirty kilometres away starving.

'Why are there are so many schoolchildren out at this time of night?' Lizzie asked. She had noticed hordes of teenagers in their school uniforms, roaming the streets in threes and fours, the girls clutching each others’ hands or using their little pink mobiles to make phone calls.

‘School goes very late in Korea,’ Hyung Je explained. ‘You know, when you get to tenth grade or so, school often goes until eight-thirty at night. All these children are actually on their way home. You know, and when they get home and they have to help their parents in the house. Cook, clean, wash dishes. It is a hard life for children.’

‘But why?’ Lizzie asked. She could not imagine such a long day at sixteen years old.

‘It is very difficult to get into a good university,’ Hyung Je told her. He mopped up his steak sauce with some bread. ‘Do you want some dessert after that? They have very good cheesecake here.’

Lizzie thought, I will burst. I am eating more in this one meal than three days in Japan. I might get fat here. She glanced over to the next table and for a moment was startled – a man was staring at her, a man who looked just like Mr Sales Manager in the office. Lizzie smiled and said, Hullo.

The man laughed directly at her and turned to his companion and said something so that they both laughed, then they both stared at her. Lizzie wanted to disappear under her chair, felt herself turning crimson. ‘I am so sorry,’ she whispered to Hyung Je. ‘I thought it was someone I knew.’

Hyung Je was grinning. ‘Koreans are very direct,’ he said. ‘Not like the Japanese. We don’t like the Japanese way of thinking – we feel it is two-faced.’ He finished his steak now. ‘You need to study in Korea,’ he continued. ‘It is very important to get a good job, so everybody works as hard as they can to get to university-‘ he broke off as his phone rang again. His whole voice, his whole demeanour suddenly changed. He was really angry now. He almost started to shout. Lizzie ate the remnants of her salad quietly and waited patiently. He would probably have to suddenly leave, probably a customer was demanding that he come now.

Hyung Je clicked the phone off, and turned back to her, all smiles again. ‘I am very sorry,’ he apologized. ‘It is my wife. I am very sorry that she keeps interrupting us like this. She wants to know where I am, but I am not going to tell her. I am switching the phone off now.’

They walked back through the throng, all the schoolgirls clutching each other for comfort, laughing and phoning on their little pink mobiles, the boys hanging around outside stores where the music was at its loudest. Hyung Je had insisted on paying for dinner, so Lizzie had some money over to give more Korean war veterans. There were no Caucasians about, perhaps they all just hung around in the Westin Chosun, Lizzie thought.

That was where they were headed now. Hyung Je had wanted to go to a bar downtown but it had become clear to Lizzie in the last hour that there were marital problems all over the world apparently, and she did not want to be involved in one of them. They walked past Lotte and Lizzie said, That’s where my colleague wants to go shopping.

‘Lotte is very good,’ Hyung Je said. ‘You will like it. You should go shopping there, buy some Korean clothes, also they have some good French designer things.’

The sentence was so redundant that Lizzie did not answer. Hyung Je continued, ‘You know, around Seoul there are some interesting old buildings to see. Historic things. If you like, I could take you to see them some time.’

‘It would be nice,’ Lizzie said. Woodrow was ‘out of town’ at the weekend.

The Westin Chosun loomed up in front of them, and Hyung Je, even more bouyant than he had been at the start of the evening, if that were possible, said, ‘Well Lizzie, would you like to go for a drink in the bar here?’

I thought you should be getting home, Lizzie thought, but she said, ‘OK, that would be nice.’ She wondered if he would actually try to make a pass at her. Perhaps he already had and she had not noticed. Perhaps if he did, she would even respond, because as the night grew older and Lizzie more relaxed, she really did not care any more. So many unusual things had happened to her that one more surely did not count. And anyway, there could be no bad end to this evening. Even if she went to bed alone there would be some American show on TV.

The Circle Rose bar was the nicest bar Lizzie had ever been to in her life. There was an American jazz band playing and the chairs were made of leather. The lighting was dark enough to be discreet but bright enough so that you could see everything. It was just noisy enough to make you feel that you were out on the town but you could still have a good conversation. It was nearly midnight.

She had kind of hoped to see Woodrow in the bar, so that Woodrow would see that she was out with a handsome Korean businessman, but a quick check told her that Woodrow was probably in bed watching David Letterman or someone else on NBC. Unless of course, he secretly roamed the streets at night or visited places of ill repute like Richard did.

Lizzie ordered an orange juice and Hyung Je had a cocktail. He was telling her about his job, that sometimes he had to go to Japan, a few times he had been to America and twice he had been to Germany. He found Germany difficult and he didn’t speak any German. His red phone light was flashing. How can he not see it, Lizzie thought. It is lighting up the whole table.

‘Have you been to New York?’ Hyung Je was asking. ‘It is becoming difficult to smoke there now, in public. The same in California. It is not like this in Asia yet. So many Asian people smoke-‘

‘Your phone,’ Lizzie interrupted. ‘Your phone is flashing.’

Hyung Je looked down at it and emitted a small cursing sound in Korean. ‘So it is,’ he said. ‘More men than women, though,’ he continued.

‘I think you should answer it,’ said Lizzie. She was kind of exhausted now, giving up. She had nothing to do with this relationship, it seemed strange to be monitored in this way by someone whom she would never speak to, never meet, would probably always live thousands of kilometers away from.

Hyung Je looked at her for a moment, as if he, too, were giving up. ‘All right,’ he said finally.

This time his voice was calmer, quieter. The phone call was very short. ‘I have to leave now,’ he said. ‘I am very, very sorry. It was a wonderful evening.’

Woodrow was in the lobby reading The Korean Times, which today announced: Viet Airliner Crashes: 63 Feared Dead. About five centimeters above this headline Lufthansa advertised Daily Flights From the Heart of Korea To the Heart of Europe. So many planes had crashed in the last few weeks that Lizzie wondered why she worried about anything, with so many opportunities to end it all by just taking a business trip. Princess Diana was only on Page 4: Paparazzi Pushed Back 1^st Officer on Crash Scene: Police. They were calling her The People’s Princess.

Woodrow got up as soon as he saw Lizzie and started to make for the door. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Lizzie apologized. ‘I had to wait about ten minutes for the lift. Elevator. Facility.’

She could tell Woodrow was losing patience with her. He seemed just to be losing patience anyway. I wish there was some way I could feel that he liked me, she thought. I wish I could find some way to make him show some kind of emotion, just give some hint that he thinks I’m OK. It was so much stress with Woodrow, feeling as if she were under pressure all the time to do better and better, to prove to him that she was as good as Anna. Although perhaps she wasn’t.

She had put on her Laura Ashley dress today, black with pink flowers and a pretty circular-type skirt. She had gone a bit over the top and worn her black jet necklace as well, in the hope that it would improve Woodrow’s assessment, that he would think, Well she is making the effort to look nice at least, even if she has an issue with that business card story.

They missed the train because Lizzie couldn’t distinguish between 500 Korean won and 500 Japanese yen. They both looked exactly the same to her. You actually had to read the Kanji or Hangul round the edges to see what was what, seemed like to her at any rate. Her purse was full of all kinds of currency anyway. She had put the yen into the ticket machine and then taken ages to find some won. They had to wait for the next train.

‘Why don’t you take out all the yen,’ Woodrow said. ‘Just take it out and leave it in the safe.’

I will do that first thing tonight, Lizzie promised herself fervently.

‘You have your business cards today?’ he snapped.

‘Yes,’ Lizzie replied breathlessly. ‘I got everything today.’

Woodrow stared into the airspace ahead. It was more interesting than Lizzie obviously.

The train did nothing to alleviate Woodrow’s mood, except that they got seats today, because it was a later train and not so full. A businessman who had not been so lucky and who had positioned himself so that as he stood his torso was located almost in front of Woodrow’s nose had a mobile that played ‘Waltzing Matilda’. During the twenty stations between Isa Dong, or Insa Wong and Sam Sung the phone played ‘Waltzing Matilda’ four times. Finally Woodrow turned to Lizzie with his teeth gritted together. ‘Jeeesus,’ he breathed. Lizzie could tell it was a personal space issue and that his tolerance level was getting very very low.

‘Good morning,’ he grinned at Colin, who opened the door to them. ‘How are you today.’

‘Oh I fine,’ Colin replied. ‘How your evening in Seoul?’

‘Not bad, not bad,’ Woodrow countered. ‘Early night, little TV.’ You should not give the customer the impression that we are here on vacation.

‘Oh,’ Colin laughed. ‘You should go… out… see some night-life after-dark downtown.’ He was very up on the exciting vocabulary.

‘I know downtown,’ Woodrow rejoindered. ‘No, I’m getting a couple of jackets and a suit made up. Tailor I always go to when I’m here. Picking it up next week.’

‘Ah,’ said Colin. Lizzie was not sure if he had understood more than every fourth word.

‘What about training?’ Woodrow asked, snapping back to business. ‘Half an hour?’

‘Huh?’ Colin asked.

‘Training,’ Woodrow repeated. ‘Start in half an hour? That OK with you?’

‘Fine,’ said Colin. ‘I tell translators. You get coffee?’

‘Sure,’ Woodrow said. ‘Can I read my mail here?’

Lizzie went to the smoking room. She would have to pull it today. Obviously she had not impressed Woodrow yesterday. He would be thinking, God I wish Anna was here. The smoking room was full and Mr Sales Manager was in it. He was talking to a colleague but he said Good Morning! to her in a loud and commanding voice and Lizzie replied and went to sit on the wooden bench by the window. It was funny that there were never any other women in here. She remembered what Hyung Je had said the night before – perhaps they really all thought she was a particular type of woman because she smoked in public.

She wrote a mail to Hyung Je. Thank you very much for last night. If you and your family would like to visit some of the old buildings around Seoul I would be very happy to meet with you at the weekend.

The training seemed to go better today. The girls had started to speak a little bit, in fits and starts, all giggling when one of them plucked up the courage to say something in English. There were thirteen of them, plus just one male. Woodrow called him The Guy. He called himself Wolfman. It was his English name, apparently. He was The Technical Expert, helping all the girls when they had problems with their PCs, explaining concepts to them in Korean that Lizzie had spent the last two days trying to explain to them in English, but which had not made it to North-East Asia. Most of them still all put their heads on their desks and went to sleep when Lizzie called for a break, but some of them came up and spoke to her. They were called Hillary, Tonya, Kathy, Marie, Ann… their PC screens were all divided into subsections containing the Internet, address books, notepads, and finally the CPB system which they were translating. Their phones rang constantly and they spoke into them in very quiet voices. At the end of the morning, Lizzie visited each of them individually and tried to help with any problems they might have with the exercises. Many of them nodded their heads in reply to her question ‘Is everything OK?’ – they were the ones who did not want to speak English. But Jenny called her over and said, ‘Lizzie, can we ask you something?’

Two of them had been whispering with their heads down low together, watching Lizzie, and now they were smiling.

‘Yes?’ Lizzie asked, coming over. ‘Do you have a problem?’

‘Ah… not really,’ Jenny answered. Marie, on the other side of her, beamed up at Lizzie. ‘We wanted to ask you… do you have a date tonight?’

‘No,’ Lizzie replied. I had a date last night. Maybe they wanted to invite her out to see some night-life after-dark downtown.

‘Oh,’ said Jenny. ‘It is just… you look beautiful.’

They had lunch in the Renaissance Hotel again, burger and chips. ‘I am so sorry, Woodrow,’ Lizzie had said. ‘I just would really like to eat western.’

Woodrow’s mood had distinctly improved. ‘Training seems to be going well,’ he pronounced. She geussed it was as much of a compliment as she was going to get. ‘They have some double-byte problems here apparently. I have to get on the phone to Tokyo this afternoon, try to get that cleared up.’

Tokyo! It seemed lightyears away. Of course, they would be returning there in less than one week. By that time, Colin would surely not be angry with her any more. She looked up to see Woodrow staring into space next to her and chewing very very slowly on his food. This had happened at least twice before, and she had always asked if everything was OK, it was quite frightening really, but Woodrow always just said Yes and continued like that for several minutes without saying anything.

This time, he said, ‘I have a problem with my throat. Sometimes things get stuck.’

‘Would you like some water?’ Lizzie asked. She could not perform the Heimlich maneuver, at least she had never tried it and she did not want to start practising now, but perhaps it would become necessary.

Woodrow did not speak. He tried to swallow and then lurched at his soda. Then he continued staring into space and chewing very slowly again. ‘It will be OK,’ he said. He tried to swallow two or three more times. He looked as if he would cry. He made a funny sound and gulped at his soda again. Lizzie thought, He is so ashamed that he is making a fool of himself in front of me. ‘Can I do anything?’ she asked.

Woodrow did not reply at first, just continued chewing very carefully. Finally he said, No. She continued to eat her food, trying to pretend that everything was fine, that there was no chance that she might leave the Renaissance Hotel on her own and Woodrow might leave it in an ambulance. Eventually, he coughed four of five times in succession and wiped his eyes. ‘It’s OK now,’ he said. Woodrow was really a human being after all.

He was fully recovered by the time they returned to the office. This afternoon was going to be a discussion period, where everybody could ask questions, Well that will be a fast five minutes, Lizzie thought, and Woodrow, or rather Tokyo, would sort out double-byte problems and Lizzie would show the coordinators, the other Lizzie and Colin, how to set up the system for translators. They would all sit in the translators’ area for this, around the little desks in which the girls and Wolfman had managed to create their own mini-appartments, each in their own individual style.

Almost all the girls were taller than Lizzie, and no bowing was involved at all, not like in Japan. None of them smoked, at least not in the smoking room, only Wolfman, who accompanied Lizzie now on every visit, perhaps giving her some credibility with Mr Sales Manager, not to mention protecting her against all oncomers. He had studied in America, and he wanted to become a consultant.  Lizzie could imagine that, it could not be much fun being looked down on by all the men in the office for doing A Girl’s Job. He asked her where Anna was. In fact, many people had asked her where Anna was. Lizzie had said, She is in Taiwan. It was the truth.

Woodrow had just come off the phone and seemed enormously cheered up that he had made contact with the Mother Country. Lizzie was explaining some technical points to Hillary and the other Lizzie when the other Lizzie suddenly interrupted, ‘Can we ask you a question?’ Since it was unlikely to be of a technical nature, or to inquire whether she was sexually frustrated, married or single, Lizzie could only geuss that it also related to the issue of a date. ‘Certainly,’ she replied, all alert. They certainly had some good questions in Asia.

‘Is Anna your mother?’ the other Lizzie asked.

There was a kind of loud unusual chortle from Woodrow’s seat and he wound up this show of amusement by cackling to himself. ‘Yeah right,’ he managed between chuckles. ‘Mom. Mom! No, Anna is not her mother.’

Lizzie tried not to laugh. ‘Anna’s not my mother,’ she said. ‘Why do you think so?’

The other Lizzie and Hillary seemed puzzled at all the mirth. All the other translators were looking around now, joining in the thrill of discovering the answer to the question that had obviously been burning them up with curiosity for days.

‘But… you look just like her,’ Hillary replied. Another loud explosion from the Woodrow quarter. He was murmuring, Mom, Mom… to himself.

Lizzie realized that probably most Caucasian women looked the same to them. It had taken her at least half a day to sort most of the girls out from each other.

‘Anna is not my mother,’ she explained carefully. ‘Anna has a daughter, who also works for CPB, but it is not me. I also have a mother, but it is not Anna.’ She was confusing not only herself, but the translators too, by the looks on their faces. She decided to go the whole way, maybe they knew already that Anna had a daughter who worked for CPB, maybe that was the reason they had asked. ‘Anna’s daughter is called Kim,’ she explained. Now she knew she had really confused them. Kim was a very common Korean name.

Woodrow said, Let’s go shopping in Lotte. This time they took a cab all the way back to the hotel, dumped their briefcases and went to the Lotte across from the subway. On the outside of the store, a scenic glass elevator, lit up like Cinderella’s coach, sped up and down the height of the building. The entrance to the Lotte from the subway was like a fairy-tale cave. Everywhere Lizzie looked there was gold, and mirrors, and glass and fountains. All the lights were reflected in the mirrors and glass and the fountains too seemed to be full of gold and lights. She had never seen anything manmade so beautiful for free.

Lotte inside seemed to have at least eight floors. Most of the groundfloor seemed to be selling handbags, umbrellas and leather goods by French designers, as mentioned by Hyung Je. On the second floor, there was a nail bar, where you could go and sit and have a manicure or your nails painted. Lizzie and Woodrow spent a lot of time in the household department, where Lizzie bought some flat Asian style dishes with a Chinese bamboo design. They would, of course, be unbelievably easy to transport on the many flights she would be experiencing until she reached home again.

‘In Japan,’ Woodrow explained. ‘Women hold the purse-strings, you know. Men often don’t even know how much they earn, most of them can’t cope with it anyway.  It’s the woman’s job to look after the house and the money. On Saturdays women go shopping, that’s a kind of number one hobby. You go shopping.’

It was a joy to go shopping in Lotte. If I worked in Seoul all the time, Lizzie thought, I would never have any money, and I couldn’t afford to keep two children.

Woodrow did not buy anything at all. He was just having a good time looking.

They decided to split up and meet an hour later. Lizzie tried the fashion floor, but it didn’t seem to be the kind of fashion that was popular in Europe. A lot of the clothes looked as if they were of manmade fibre, although they might not have been, and there were very few patterned materials, only the boring pastels and browns and beiges that she had seen in Japan. Or they were really extravagant, much too colourful and outrageous. And they were all way, way too expensive. How can anyone afford to live here, Lizzie thought. And there were some Japanese designs. But Lizzie knew they didn’t look good on her, after she had tried on the Japanese dress in Harajuko with Martin. That all seemed like so many years ago. Suddenly with a pang, she missed Martin badly, wished she could talk to him again, now.

Instead, it was time to meet Woodrow again. She was still feeling unconfident with him, waiting for a sign that he would give her a good report, that he respected her… that would be unlikely. Although today had been better.

Woodrow said, ‘Well, shall we eat dinner? What would you like, Korean or western?’

The question was so redundant by now, Lizzie was surprised he kept asking it. ‘That would be nice,’ she replied. ‘Maybe we could eat in the hotel? I saw that Irish Pub place, round the back of the lobby, maybe that would be good?’

Woodrow didn’t miss a beat. He never reacted to her choice of western, never said, You are so unadventurous. She wondered if he really preferred western himself. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Let’s check it out.’

The Irish Pub was behind and around the corner from the Italian, where they had eaten the first night. It looked cosy and friendly and had a large board outside advertising some of the delights. It seemed just like the Circle Rose, only bigger, and with larger tables, for eating of course. Apart from Chicken Curry and Rice and Steak and Kidney Pie, Sushi and Yakatori also seemed to be on the menu. And as they waited outside to be allotted a table, a Japanese pair who had obviously reserved swished through in front of them.

‘Oh dear,’ Lizzie said incautiously. ‘Not Japanese. Please not Japanese. I really didn’t want to be reminded of Tokyo right now.’ She laughed to try to put a light note on it.

Woodrow swung round. It was the nearest she had so far seen of him about to be really angry. ‘Some of us actually enjoy living there,’ he snapped.

She had lost it. She had lost everything. It had been going so well, she didn’t possess a better daytime dress so she couldn’t ever impress him any more with looks. She couldn’t train any harder than she had done today. She had been prepared to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre over lunch to save his life. He had had a laugh at her expense (or maybe at Anna’s expense, Lizzie was not sure). She had managed to make the Korean translators speak. She had made friends with Wolfman. They seemed to have bonded while shopping in Lotte. She had always let him have the PC to read his mail, while she wasted quality time, money and respect in the smoking room fighting off Mr Sales Manager and paying out 150 won every time for 100ml of bad coffee. He still hated her. He still couldn’t bear to be here with her, on the road as he called it, he would still rather have Anna puffing smoke in his face while he tried to down a roll and marmalade. She was ten minutes late every morning, she was always carrying too much stuff, she couldn’t sort out her currency, she couldn’t distinguish won from yen, she hated the subway, she couldn’t deal with the business card issue, she spoke English with a stupid British accent, called the restroom the toilet and the elevator the lift, she lacked every ounce of self-confidence, spoke too quietly except when she was training, couldn’t remain neutral but was always too personal and imaginative and now she was complaining about Japan. Jeeesus.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. She looked down. She would never make it in business. There was something. She didn’t have. Woodrow had it.

They were called in, shown a table. It was near the bar. It was a small table, at least. Nobody else could sit at it. They ordered, Woodrow an Irish Stew and Lizzie Chicken Curry. It would be delicious. Everything western in Korea was delicious. She decided to keep the conversation as neutral as possible, try to smile and laugh as she had been trying all the time now, maybe she had been trying too hard.

Woodrow had snapped back to normal as if nothing had happened outside. He talked about neutral stuff, and he talked some about the translation company, the customer. He never talked about himself, normally. Except now, he told Lizzie that he would be out of town from tomorrow night, the whole weekend, Lizzie had known that already, Woodrow was the type who informed you in advance, as one would expect, not like Richard, who kept you up all night waiting for dinner and then told you a day later that he had happened to meet some woman. So Lizzie would not be expecting to go out with Woodrow for the next three days, in fact, he would not see her until Monday morning, got that? He was going to visit friends outside of Seoul, they were a family he had known a long time. Yeah, a Korean family. Friends of his. Yeah, he came to Korea several times a year, he liked it actually. It wasn’t too far from Tokyo, just a couple of hours flight, no time difference, you could get good suits made up and everything was very pleasant.

‘Just shows you… beauty gets you nowhere,’ he said, as part of the conversation, a propos of nothing, it seemed to Lizzie.

‘How do you mean?’ she asked.

‘That woman,’ Woodrow answered. ‘Sitting at the bar. See her? That one with the black dress.’

Lizzie turned around. There was a very beautiful woman on a bar stool, quite near them, in an exciting black dress, drinking a short, by herself.

‘She’s been there a good half-hour,’ Woodrow continued. Lizzie wondered how he had managed to concentrate on the woman while carrying on a conversation with her, she had not even noticed his attention wandering to the bar, or anywhere else, and she had been concentrating very hard on keeping things relaxed and neutral and on Woodrow’s attitude. It must be one of those Guy Things that Woodrow often referred to.

‘She’s on her own,’ Woodrow said. ‘She’s being trying to make contact since she got there. Just goes to show. Beauty didn’t do it.’ He swept up the last of his Irish Stew. Lizzie had finished the Chicken Curry. It had been wonderful. She had put on two kilos since she arrived here, according to the bathroom scales. She had trying to do that for the last two years, unsuccessfully, at home.

At this point, the woman finished her short, slipped down from the bar stool and left. ‘See,’ Woodrow said. He wiped his mouth with the paper serviette and said, ‘Well. So how’s it going back in Germany then? How are The Guys?’

Lizzie swallowed and picked out a cigarette. Richard and Andreas? Did he mean them? ‘Er,’ she said. ‘Well, you know.  Richard went on vacation for seven weeks. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s… kind of difficult.’

Woodrow took a swig of his beer. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I can imagine. Well, Richard. Andreas is a help though, isn’t he? He got that assignment issue cleared up for us the other day.’

‘Oh yeah, sure,’ Lizzie said. It was still like, neutral. It was still, I love them. I can convince even myself, especially in this mode where I am pretending and acting every minute of the day.

‘And how’s Anna fitting into all this?’ Woodrow continued. He was going over that Woodrow limit. He was going into the realms of non-neutral. He was approaching deep waters. And he knew it. Lizzie started to be a little nervous. She took two drags of her cigarette in fairly quick succession.

‘Oh you know,’ she responded. ‘She kind of doesn’t sit with us. It’s OK, you know. It’s like, Anna’s fine I geuss. I don’t really know how she fits into the big picture, you know… But that was funny today, wasn’t it? I mean, fancy thinking Anna was my mother.’ She tried to giggle in the way she imagined a neutral-thinking, person-with-no-interest type of person might giggle.

‘Yeah, hysterical,’ Woodrow said, deadpan. He looked around. He was wishing he could leave, Lizzie thought. He is about to say, Jay Leno is on, let’s go, eight o’clock in the lobby tomorrow morning.

‘Training went well today,’ he said. ‘Very well.’ He came back to his beer, took the final slurp. ‘You want one more beer?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ said Lizzie. She couldn’t believe her luck. She must have scored a point. Woodrow wasn’t going to sit with her and drink another beer if he hated her guts as much as she imagined.

Woodrow clicked his fingers and ordered two more Heinekens. They had only had one beer after all. And the beers were small. Woodrow was hardly going to let either of them ever get even remotely tipsy in a bar situation on the road. He was far too cautious and professional for that. Jay Leno would follow this.

‘How do you rate the translators?’ he asked. Me? Lizzie thought, I should rate the translators? I can’t even rate the currency of the ticket machine in the subway.

‘Oh, I think they’re fine,’ she said. She lit another cigarette. Normally, she tried to keep the nicotine consumption down in Woodrow’s presence. ‘But, you know, I mean, I don’t know how this will go on… I mean, I don’t know… maybe you don’t want me to come back to Korea again… be technical support for Korea, I mean… er, I mean maybe I don’t need to like look at it too closely, maybe you want Anna to come back to Korea next time…’

Woodrow gave a small snort. ‘Mom,’ he almost spat the word out. ‘Mom. No. Mom is not ever going to come back to Korea.’ He took a swig of his new Heineken. ‘They got The People’s Princess now.’

Lizzie stared down at the table, stunned and speechless. It was definitely one of the five nicest things that anybody in the whole world had ever said to her, in her whole life.