'BOOM! IN THAI, YOU DIE'

6th February 1993

To my dearest parents, grandparents and brother,

I am going to ask you the hardest and very last thing from you all. I do not want you to forgive me, what I have done is not excusable and above all else I knew better than to do what I did. I have not been wise and I am asking you all to please forget that you ever had a daughter, granddaughter or sister. I know that this will come as a shock. I am so very sorry for the shame I have brought on you all.

I needed to come home with my pride and this seemed the easiest and quickest way to do it. I have not been well for months now and have been so terribly homesick. I love you all and God, I do miss you, but please never mention my name again. Try to do as I say and act as though you never knew me and throw any photographs of me away. I cannot do five, ten or twenty years like this. You produced a wonderful human being who wanted to change the world, but has instead messed it up.

I am so very, very sorry.

Sandra

Every few minutes the evening trains slip in and out of the darkness in Hualumphong Railway Station in Bangkok and I watch them roll on their tracks, bursting with commuters. Masses of dark faces emerge, like spectres, from the carriages and they stare at me as they amble through the station. Except for the grind of metal and iron the only thing I can hear is the sound of my own heartbeat. I am sticky, wet and very tired.

It is rush hour at Hualumphong and the effort of standing here alone, while waiting for Robert is unbearably painful. My thoughts stray to home, in West Yorkshire, and to my mother and father and grandparents in Scotland, and how I will be seeing them all soon. I run my fingers across my new travel bag. The bag and also my new clothes – a white cotton shirt with tiny blue, purple and green flowers on it, a pair of baggy cotton trousers and a pair of green suede court shoes – help disguise the way I am feeling. In a way they have turned me into someone else, someone innocent.

I pace up and down the small stretch of platform, flexing my legs, sensing the light bead of perspiration on my upper lip. Does anyone have any idea what I am planning? Can they see it in me? Does every glance I make, searching for Robert, give me away?

'It's not really you carrying the drugs,' I repeat over and over like a mantra. 'Just a few more days and you will be home.' I am 27 years old and I almost believe it.

Where is Robert? He is late. For an hour I have been standing here at the express train ticket point, where we have arranged to meet. Ruth, his girlfriend, is coming with him and we will all fly to Tokyo together. What will I do if they don't appear? One thing's for sure: I won't go to the airport by myself.

The light is fading as the last express train pulls away. It is well after 6pm and we should have been on it. A knot the size of a small child's fist appears again in my stomach and I sigh nervously. A small man walks by me, staring. I'm sure he knows.

On the platform next to where the trains are leaving, I feel completely alone and I want to abandon the plans I have made. It would be so simple. All I need to do is walk away from the station, and return to my apartment. I still have time to throw this terrible stuff out of my body, away and out of my mind and my life for good.

Suddenly, frantically, Ruth is running towards me, waving her arms. My stomach heaves again. Ruth, with her bleached-blonde hair and rugged features, is wearing a pair of very tight jeans and a T-shirt, and she looks more frightened than me.

'Where have you been?' she demands, as she gets closer, her face contorting with mild fury.

'I've been here for over an hour waiting for you and Robert,' I reply, slightly annoyed by her tone.

It turns out there are two express train ticket offices and we have been standing at different ones. Robert, meanwhile, is frantic and angry, his face like an exit wound. He virtually ignores me when we catch up and I sense he blames me for the mix-up. Things are not going well but I'm in too deep to back out now so I suggest we get a taxi to the airport.

'No!' he snaps, picking up his bags, 'we'll get a train.'

Robert dashes around the station, across the rails and up the tracks while Ruth and I trail behind, like useless acolytes. Eventually he finds a train that is going to the airport area of Bangkok. The three of us, hardly saying a word, clamber aboard. Faces, heads, hands, elbows are hanging out of the windows and there is little in the way of air.

Again, I wonder if anyone suspects anything. Have they any idea what I'm attempting? I can feel the packages inside me. Do these people – who are brushing against my legs, touching my hands, breathing on me, breathing on windows – do they have any idea I am carrying heroin? Would they care?

Chunks of metal grate against the tracks, and the train crawls onwards, stopping at each station; perhaps, more hopefully than anything else, I think we will miss the plane. I still have time to walk away and my family will never know. No one need ever know. I will have to live with the secret.

Leave them, Sandra. Leave them.

Weeks earlier I developed acute pains in my abdomen, which were excruciating, and now they are intensifying. It's a monster pain, like nails splitting through my flesh, and it's getting worse as the train rattles to its destination. It had been high in my stomach but now it has travelled down my right-hand side towards the bottom of my ribcage. I lean over the back of a seat with one of my bags rammed into my ribcage because the pain is so bad and I barely have the strength to make a fist. I can hardly stand up straight.

The train might slow down, Sandra; it might even break down.

The heat inside the train rolls back and forth across my face while the number of passengers multiplies at every stop; they become my co-conspirators. They do nothing to stop me.

'Get off the train,' I whisper to myself. 'Take a taxi, a motorbike, a tuk-tuk taxi, anything, but just go.' I want to be braver than I have ever thought possible, but I can't.

Halfway to the airport a scuffle breaks out and the train comes to an unscheduled halt. A group of men jump off, grabbing a young man who is fleeing and he is dragged back to the carriage. They sit him down in a window seat, while one man from the group sits next to him and the others surround him. It's a citizen's arrest.

Eyes popping and scared, the young man is very agitated. I look at Robert, but he just stares through the grimy windows, so I shut my eyes and try to forget the thoughts I am having. The packages concealed inside my body are becoming increasingly...