The Pearl Sister

A grieving sister flees London with only a dead father's clue

CeCe is on a plane, alone for the first time, heading to Bangkok en route to Australia.

A grieving sister flees London with only a dead father's clue

CeCe is on a plane, alone for the first time, heading to Bangkok en route to Australia. Pa Salt died months ago; his letter directed her to investigate a woman called Kitty Mercer in Broome, on Australia's northwest coast. A photograph of two unidentified men beside a truck was all his Geneva lawyer had given her. But the real wound is Star — her closest sister has moved on to a boyfriend and a new life, and CeCe, dyslexic and self-doubting, feels unmoored from the one person who always translated the world for her. In Bangkok, the prospect of Australia and its infamous spiders proves too much. She rebooks her flight and retreats to Railay Beach in Krabi, Thailand — the one place she'd once felt happy.

A cave exile leads CeCe into a stranger's hidden compound

Security guards haul CeCe from the Cave of the Princess at dawn — she'd sheltered there during a storm after losing her room at the Railay Beach Hotel. A tall, bearded man she's noticed watching sunrises alone intervenes, speaking fluent Thai to the guards, who immediately release her. He leads her through a hidden gate into a compound of luxury pavilions, a black infinity pool, and jasmine-scented gardens concealed behind Phra Nang Beach. Over coffee on a shaded terrace, CeCe learns he is half-Thai, half-European, from Battersea in London — her own neighborhood. He asks only for her discretion about where he lives. She doesn't yet know why, only that he seems as lonely as she is.

Ace reads CeCe her ancestor's story, then kisses her at midnight

Over dinners of king prawns and lemongrass soup, CeCe and Ace orbit each other's sadness — both adrift, both reluctant to say why. When CeCe admits her dyslexia, Ace orders a biography of Kitty Mercer from a Phuket bookshop and reads it aloud to her. CeCe is furious at first, feeling her privacy invaded, then relents when curiosity overtakes pride. Through his voice, the story of a Scottish minister's daughter sent to Australia in 1906 begins to unspool. On New Year's Eve, they share one glass of champagne on the shore. Ace kisses her — tender, urgent — and CeCe, who has never particularly enjoyed physical intimacy, discovers that something has shifted. For the first time, she has a person of her own.