Tessie feels lucky her employers are a Chinese-Singaporean and his wife, who both work long hours away in the city as bankers. Their child of eleven is no trouble. Tessie has a whole room to herself, and a day off once a week to meet friends, go shopping. But is this all her life will be? Years of looking after other people’s children and mopping floors, then back to the Philippines? Sixty is the cut-off age for her work visa.

The water of the canal ripples, tickled by the rise-and-shine sun. The sight lifts Tessie from her worries about the future. For now, she and the morning are still young. Joggers smile, making way for her as she pulls a wheelie bag of wet-market purchases along the shared pathway beside the canal. They weave easily between walkers and the slower mothers with prams. Beyond, housing blocks stretch to the sky as if taking part in a mass fitness exercise. Branches of tembusu trees high-five each other. The air is charged with possibility. In the afternoon, thunder and lightning will clash, and afterwards, the earth will be damp and hot, as if steam-cleaned. Tessie likes the fresh cool after the storm’s passing. It will happen today.

Clouds are massed over the distant west coast, the edge of Singapore that meets the South China Sea. Strange to think of that sea extending all the way to her homeland. If Tessie followed the length of the canal to its very end, she would come to mangroves. Just like home. And there would be little boats, their paint peeling, and old men crouching in them, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, their eyes distant. A bamboo basket might be slung to one side, a flash of silver scale within.

A man might call to her, ask her to slip away with him to one of the offshore islands. And then on and on, boat after boat taking her away from this place, till she washes up on the shore of her birth home.

Tessie shudders. That home was not a happy one. She was always fearful, eyes downcast. It was a dark place and she never wants to go back. But her first sight of Singapore changed everything, its new buildings shimmering as she peered out the plane window. Everything was shiny, even her future. True, there was the landing, coming down to earth, and the reality of the maid agency. She sat in a dowdy uniform with several other Filipinas while potential employers stared through a window as if they were chocolates to choose from a box.

Tessie feels a tear on her cheek. On this sunny morning with the fast rising heat, as the trees rustle at the coming drenching, Tessie reaches for a tissue in her pocket. She mourns the loss of what she’s only now allowed herself to dream of—a husband, a family, a place here. How she would love to walk by this canal as one of those mothers pushing a pram, to smile at the baby within it, and whisper to her, “We made it out.”

The sound of violent splashing and squeaking rips through Tessie’s daydream. Something beyond the steel fence that separates the asphalt path from the grassy banks of the canal draws her attention. Here the canal is as broad as a tree-lined river. A crowd has gathered. Runners, walkers and bikers stand there, transfixed.

Always curious, Tessie makes her way to the railing, finding herself in step with a tall man in his early thirties, in drenched running gear, clearly also curious. She might not have noticed him at all, except that with one hand, he pushes a very impressive, hooded stroller with thick tyres. He reaches the fence first, and then she is beside him. In another life, he could be her husband. They both gaze out towards the splashing water in the canal, sounds that can’t be from the usual birds and lizards.

She has never seen such creatures. Elongated bodies, powerful tails, wet fur of brown-black, slicked back and oily, their faces—part-rodent, cat, and strangely, dog. Six or seven cavort in the shallows by the grass. Some are in the water, some out of it, big as dogs. Tessie is sure no such animals exist on her island home in the Visayas, maybe not even in all of the Philippines.

They play, calling to each other with high-pitched squeaks, and then, almost in coordination, they descend upon one large, lone monitor lizard sunning itself on a knoll. The slippery animals crowd around it from all directions, and in response, the bewildered reptile recoils and snaps, curving its scaly body as if to attack, first one on this side, then another on that.

But it’s all just for show, a pretense of strength. The creature is outnumbered, and the bullies know it, squeaking almost with derision. They nudge and push it, eventually forcing it to surrender its place. The lizard sidles to the water, biding its time, pausing before it finally gives up. And then it slips silently into the canal.

It is nature in a small performance, its sheer, bristling diversity coming together in a scene so recognisable, it’s almost human.

Tessie can’t help but blurt, “What are they?”

Beside her, still facing forward, the man has both hands clenched on the rail, but at Tessie’s words, he meets her eyes in a slow glance like he has come from a different place entirely, awakened from some nightmare.

“Otters,” he says, his voice hoarse and low.

Tessie registers his distress, turns away and then repeats the word in a whisper to herself.

“Otters…” She fixes her eyes on the wriggling, squealing, wild things.

Moments later, she hears an intake of breath and then a low sob from this man. She senses his shoulders shaking and looks up to see tears fall from his face on to his sweat-drenched shirt. She glances at the stroller behind him, and somehow, she is not surprised to find it empty.

Tessie backs away without a sound. She leaves the stranger his own space, to think his thoughts and feel his feelings beneath this blue sky. Grey clouds loom in the distance. She sighs.

Wind laces itself through branches of blossoming banaba trees and small pink blooms drift down, landing on her path. Tessie walks without looking back. This endless path by the canal extends before her, but also behind her, for years before she arrived. Every day for years to come, she will walk this path, she realises, like so many others have, too many times to count. The canal, the water way, its trees and its creatures—it will become part of her, and she of it—for better or worse, even after she leaves. Whenever that might be.

• Tags: fiction, Free to read, Issue 35, Linda Collins, New Zealand, Noelle Q. de Jesus, Philippines, Singapore