I am awake while Dr Logan amputates my finger at his miniscule research unit in the village. The ten-square-metre hut is an eyesore of Western medicine, plonked down in a luscious ecosystem teeming with critters; previously undisturbed by pharmaceutical paranoia.

‘It’s very simple.’ I get his spiel of reassurance while he lays his out implements in size order on a piece of blue paper towel.
‘This procedure is so simple, in fact, that it’s hard to relay to you how complex the gesture is and–’ he pauses to draw thick white fluid into a syringe, ‘–worthy. It’s worthy, what you’re doing.’

As he talks about the plan for my finger, science beyond my understanding, grateful distraction, he tugs on a flaccid, meaty hand so numbed by anaesthesia it’s no longer my own.
‘This is not just a finger.’ he says. It makes a vulgar thud as it hits the metal tray. ‘In these hands, it’s hope.’

Hope is for Gathot, whose whole foot has been eaten up by the fungal plague. It’s disgusting to look at, oozing and gnarled and completely inhuman. He’s been swallowed by it and the others villagers have shunned him in the name of not being able to contribute to the community anymore. I think the truth is that they don’t want to have to look at it. That evening Gathot and I have our photo taken together. He doesn’t smile but I am certain it is gratitude I feel radiating as I put my arm around his shoulder for the camera. I am the woman who has saved his life. It means more to me than anything else I have done.

The first thing I do when I board the plane in Jayapura is order a coke. I could have had a can of coke hours ago in Sorong but it is the little plastic cup, full of western safety, that I craved; the luxury of ice; the momentary tenderness of the flight attendant. I’ve already been travelling for 16 hours. My journey back to London happens in small increments. When I’m on foot, still in the dark, wooden slatted villages are growing tin roofs. From the car, as my body flops around to the rhythm of the makeshift road, tin roofs become concrete buildings. Shortly after day breaks – pinkly, softly over verdant hills – we settle into a decent speed on tarmac.

I’ve joined paths with a group of three golden Australian men. Towering over everyone, their limbs are coated with white­blond hairs and their lips are pale. Divers, I deduce from neoprene rucksacks and broad rubber watch straps.
‘I’m all about the shut­eye.’ One is saying to another. As he lifts his thick arms above his head to stretch he inadvertently reveals his torso. A honeymooning English couple join the convoy in Jayapura, hanging on to one another for dear life, preparing to be ejected from the wedding chute onto the tarmac back at Heathrow. Have a nice life! He is macho and she is pretty, in a boring way. They are like Ken and a more realistic edition of Barbie.

At the sight of them Louise flickers in my peripheral vision and without knowing why, I remember her holding back my hair when I vomited, drunk, a long time a go at a party.
‘Whatever you feel like now, you won’t feel like it forever,’ she was stroking my back, kneeling next me, pristine and fragrant when I was shuddering and sick­stained. I would have done the same for her except she never needed me to, because she is superhuman. I had been dumped, probably, although I cannot be sure. There are too many to remember them all. Not long ago, Louise’s husband shattered his legs in accident. She’ll have him back on his feet soon enough. I picture her comforting him, bringing soup and patting down his forehead with a damp flannel. Coming up with a yoga routine to rehabilitate him between the day to day of being top dog at work and mother of the year. It’s been a long day. What would Louise make of my borderless territory of airports and jungles? I buy a postcard and write to her.

‘Dear Lou, I’m in Jayapura, thinking of you. Do you remember when you told me feeling bad doesn’t last forever? I am still holding on to that one, hoping it’s true and that we really will be friends always, I said that to you once. Do you remember? K x’

I don’t have a stamp. It’s the only job I give myself to do when I next change planes.

The western people in the airport terminal stick out. The clues are in the skin colours, the clothes, but also in unnamed things, obvious even from a distance. Perhaps it’s in our posture or the way we walk. We are bound together by our alien race and I am loathe to admit we are the only people I recognise.
Moving listlessly, in and out of the thick air of the airport, we stand up so we can sit down again, not making eye contact, waiting for the next flight.
Wet air stifles, but I savour every sweaty bead as it rolls down my back while I still can.
From the plane that night, a glitter of lights comes into view. Jakarta from above is luxurious; boastful with everything that cities promise to all people and deliver to so few.
I look at the westerners and consciously shift my hand onto the armrest of the chair, vying for eye contact in the hope I’ll prompt someone to ask about my bandage. I wish I could tell someone about my finger. Praise might convince me I did the right thing. I should be congratulated. Human flesh had to be offered up, a sacrifice had to be made. It’s an honour, I remind myself, that it was mine.

In the weeks before my Papuan adventure was conceived, my self loathing hit a new high. Or a new low, I’m not sure which way you measure self­-hatred.
‘What we want to be able to do in the not too distant future is mobilise resources. That’s the medium term goal.’ I wanted to punch my boss. ‘Then, we’re looking to supplement those resources with annual fundraising rounds...’ The words didn’t mean anything, ‘...collaboration with big enterprise, and then, longer term we’ll have people on the ground coordinating local efforts to ensure that the funds are spent appropriately.’
I hate myself, I thought.
What would they say, the people whose livelihoods we were talking about? If we could have clicked our fingers and had one of them with us, to confabulate about their aid money in that aggressively air conditioned room, what would they have said?

‘How was your day, love?’ the man in the cornershop asked as he rang up my crackers, hummus, ice cream and cigarettes. After the meeting I’d been through all the names in my phone book looking for someone who could get drunk with me on a barstool. I wanted to get shouty, stripping down Jackie the boss, and her big­, bloody-­enterprise.
’It was fine, thanks.’ I told him as he packed my things into my reusable bag. I needed a friend to pull everything to pieces and then put it back together again, so I could return to my ergonomic chair the next day with a hangover and the resolve that it could be worse.
‘Are you hitting the ice cream tonight?’ I’ve never learnt his name, the man who seemed to know me so well. He made me a cup of sweet tea and called the police the day my phone was ripped out my hand by a kid on a skateboard. He said all I had to do was point him out and he’d chase him down with the baseball bat he keeps under the counter. It was sweet; it made me laugh through my tears.
I remembered then, that I had meant to buy wine. As I shuffled back to the shelves to find something cheap, but bearable, I made up my mind that I was getting out of there. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was going.

Now I’m back in London it’s like none of it ever happened. November has taken hold and the pavements are slimy with filth and rain. I buy some basic winter clothes and fight the urge to enjoy the experience of shopping. It’s a dangerous lure back to the golden cage. Post has piled up in my flat, and among it I find a postcard from a girl I taught in the village at the beginning of my trip. I am amazed that it has reached me at all and as I read it, tears roll down my cheeks like turgid Indonesian rain. The neat handwriting is familiar, practiced under my watch, in a classroom I built.

‘To Kerry, Thank you for teaching us... I love you’

‘What’s happened to you?’ The man in the corner shop asks me when he sees my bandage. I am surprised he remembers me after all this time away. Perhaps he doesn’t.
‘I had an accident.’ I say. ‘All fine now.’ Now I have the chance, the truth becomes trapped behind a furry ball in my throat.
‘Had a few too many?’ He laughs. It’s sport that’s all, and I nod half­heartedly as he hands me my change.

Inside the front door, sticky with rain, I drop the bags on the floor and stand still for a few moments, unsure what to do with the seemingly infinite years that remain of my life. I take a bottle of wine from one of the blue carrier bags, leave the rest unpacked at the front door, and return to the post­ pile.
The heating has started to work its magic at last. With the warmth, smells I had forgotten are stirred – stale perfume not worn since forever ago, carpets coated in dust, even the faint metallic ooze of the radiators is sewn tightly into the tapestry of England. There is a card from my mum, postmarked a month before. On the front it says Thinking of you and there is a picture of a typewriter. The paper in the typewriter is covered in hearts. The message inside is says;

‘Kerry, Hope you’re well. Keep in touch. Love Mum and Bill. PS. I’ve tried to ring you, and on the email, and haven’t heard. Please let us know that you’re OK as soon as you get back from Africa’.

I’ve never been to Africa.

I make plans to meet Louise for dinner just before Christmas. The postcard is zipped inside the inner pocket of my handbag along with the few cubic millimetres of Jayapura air that might have got trapped in there with it. I’ll give it to her in person, I decide, and I’ll tell her to read it when we’ve parted.
In anticipation of going up against her mightiness, I anaesthetise myself with wine before she arrives. She bustles in rosy with family, and with love for me which I don’t deserve. When I see her honest face, the kind my Father would be proud of, I wish I had stayed sober. I try to tell her about my finger.
‘I’m so sorry,’ She says, because she’s missed the point.
‘You would have done the same.’ I say, and it’s true, she would have once. But not now.
The moment for the postcard never comes.

Trent appeared at the village school the week I was due to leave to see my old Dad who was at home, fresh from the surgery he’d insisted he didn’t need. Dad probably told anyone who’d listen he was doing what he was told.
I planned to care for him at home while he recovered. Tea and toast and Countdown. I imagined fixing up the scraps of the past before it was too late and he was dead, but I knew it was a farce. He’d sting me within the first twenty­-four hours with something razor sharp, making me wish I didn’t know him.
Trent, or Dr Logan as I call him at the beginning, sat quietly while I talked myself into staying in West Papua while Dad fended for himself. Johnnie had already gone back.
‘It’s not working out.’ I blurted . ‘I don’t want to marry him.’ I don’t know why I was telling Trent. He was still a perfect stranger. ‘I feel like I’m more useful here. There’s so much to be done. But the school’s built now and I’ve trained two teachers already.’
And that’s how I learned about the project. It was difficult to say no when he laid it out in medical terms.
In this world there are very few places that you can visit and not find someone that really needs you. Some pocket of misery waiting for god, or for money, or both. All they need is a little nudge in the right direction. It might be a water pump. It might be a phone line. That’s how it seems to me. That is what I torment myself with.
I tried to explain this to Trent, who had brought a bottle of whiskey with him. He had access to more, he said, through his fortnightly delivery of pharmaceutical disposables. So we drank the whole bottle one night and probably had sex, but I don’t remember.
‘You are a very special person.’ He said, rubbing a large, clean hand firmly through my hair. He rocked me to sleep that night, in his safe, American arms.