by Ann Massey
First published in Australia 2010
This edition published January 2010
Copyright © Ann Massey 2010
Cover design, typesetting: Chameleon Print Design
The right of Ann Massey to be identified as the Author
of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to that of
people living or dead are purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Massey, Ann
White Amah, The
ISBN: 1456578065 EAN13: 9781456578060
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61789-779-5
pp324
contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Chapter 1
SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE, SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY ...
The funky tune blaring from the boom box could be heard as far away as the English block and irritated teachers closed their windows. The first full dress rehearsal for the Rock Eisteddfod School Challenge was underway and the girls performing the hectic routine were having fun, showing off in the gold Lurex outfits they had made in home ec, thrilled with the greasepaint and false eyelashes their teacher had ordered in bulk.
A late student strolled down the corridor, seemingly in no hurry to get to class. She pushed open the door to the dance studio and was stunned. The familiar room had been transformed overnight, with strobe lighting, dry ice and a cage suspended from the ceiling, courtesy of the design and technology boys who were rapt to have an excuse to hang around the dance students, by far the hottest chicks in school.
‘You have to sign this, Miss,’ yelled Crystal, trying to make herself heard over the deafening music.
The teacher signalled to a student to turn it off. ‘I didn’t recognise you. What a transformation,’ she said, trying to keep the disapproval out of her voice.
Crystal’s waist-length cloak of silky black hair had been bleached and crimped into a mane of wild, platinum-blond curls. Disapproval turned to horror when the teacher realised the star of her next production was leaving school for good.
‘What about the Rock Eisteddfod?’ she said, collapsing into her director’s chair. ‘It’s only a fortnight away and you’re singing two solos.’
Crystal tossed back her bouncy blond tresses. ‘Get Shannon to take over, she’s the understudy.’
‘But it’s only three weeks before your final exams. Are you moving?’
‘If you must know, I’ve got a job. Look for yourself.’
The teacher scanned the letter offering Crystal a place in the White Diamonds tour of South-East Asia. ‘Surely your father isn’t going to let you travel overseas on your own,’ she asked. After all, Crystal was only seventeen.
‘Why not? This is my big chance. You’ve heard of the Bluebell girls, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have. They were a legend, the most famous dancing troupe in the world.’
‘Well, the White Diamonds are as big in Singapore as the Bluebells were in Paris. Dad’s proud of me. It’s really hard to get in. Places hardly ever come up. It doesn’t matter how good a dancer you are, they won’t look at you unless you’re tall and blond. I was really smart – I wore a wig to the audition or I wouldn’t have got through the door.’
‘You’ve always been resourceful,’ said the teacher, who had spent the weekend marking assignments. Crystal’s was blatantly plagiarised, but it was too late to worry about that now. ‘You’re so close to graduating, Crystal. At least with a school certificate you’ll have career options. Show business is a very precarious way to earn a living.’
‘If Dad’s okay with it, what’s it to you? Are you going to sign the release? I’ve got to get all my other teachers to sign this too before I can leave school.’
‘I’m not happy about you backing out of the school production at such short notice.’
‘Life’s a bitch!’ Crystal’s friend Tess called out and the class convulsed in laughter.
Watching anger flash across the teacher’s face, Crystal decided it was time to get out of there. ‘Can Tess come with me to get the rest of the signatures?’
‘Just go, both of you.’
‘I thought she was going to have a hissy fit,’ giggled Tess when they were out of earshot.
Crystal dropped down on the lawn in the great court beside her friend. ‘She’s making a big deal over nothing, like usual. Shannon knows all the songs and routines.’
Momentarily Crystal’s dazzling eyes dimmed. The set was amazing and the girls looked great in their spunky costumes; this could be the year the school finally won. The Eisteddfod was a big deal. The star of the winning production could walk into any of the performing-art courses. Frustration churned inside her. It would be just her luck for that snake Shannon to end up at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. In her mind she saw her rival accepting the shield on behalf of the school, taking her bows, accepting the bouquets, the centre of attention.
Nervously, Crystal twirled a strand of hair around her finger. It felt dry and lifeless. She anxiously inspected it for split ends. She wouldn’t admit it but she cringed every time she looked in the mirror and saw her blond hair, but the troupe’s director Jimmy Wong had insisted. The pint-sized Singaporean, in a creased linen safari suit and wearing enough gold chains and rings to stock a jeweller’s showcase, had exhaled a pungent clovescented cloud and looked her up and down in a way that made her feel uneasy.
‘Asian men like blond girls with long legs,’ he said. ‘Fix your hair and the job’s yours. I’ve got a friend with a salon. Tell him you’re one of my girls’ – his eyes flickered over her possessively – ‘and he’ll do it pretty damn cheap for you, lah.’
It’ll probably break, she thought, tucking her hair behind her ear and vowing to buy the most expensive conditioner she could find. ‘You haven’t told me what you think about my makeover, Tess. Tell me the truth, Tess. I won’t get mad if you say you don’t like it.’
‘All you need is a beauty spot and you could be Cindy Crawford’s twin sister,’ replied Tess, eyeing Crystal’s crimped platinum hair. Most of it was piled in a loose, high chignon with the rest tumbling in ringlets to her waist. ‘I wish Mum would let me dye mine. You don’t know how lucky you are, living with your dad.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Crystal, who got tired of listening to her friends moan about their mothers. The only girl at school with
a mother who’d run off to join a commune, she’d accepted living with her father as long as the compulsive workaholic didn’t interfere in her life. After ten years she could hardly remember her mother and there was nothing left to remind her. Soon after the split she and her father had moved from the homely, welcoming cottage set on five acres of timbered parkland, with a winter creek and a paddock for Crystal’s Welsh pony, into a glass-and-steel apartment in the city close to her father’s office. Every photo and piece of clothing or jewellery had been thrown away; even the furniture had been replaced. An interior decorator her father was dating had furnished the rooms like something out of Home and Garden. The apartment had nothing of her mother’s quirky taste, but worse than the absence of mementos was the conspiracy of silence.
On her eighth birthday her Auntie Rose had taken her aside and told her that she must stop asking when her mother was coming back. ‘Your father can’t take much more after what your mother put him through,’ she warned. ‘You could move in with me and Uncle Bill … but that would mean your cousins sharing a room and they wouldn’t like that. You know how they fight.’
Crystal had often heard her father complaining that his lazy good-for-nothing brother-in-law should ‘get off his arse’ and provide a decent home for his sister. She couldn’t bear the thought of living in her aunt’s cramped housing commission duplex and she could still remember her father shouting at her mother, ‘Get out, you tramp, and don’t show your face here ever again.’ Crystal wasn’t taking any chances and never asked about her mother again.
‘I still can’t believe your father’s agreed to let you go to Singapore on your own,’ said Tess. ‘I mean, it would be different if you were going with me. We could look out for each other.’
‘You’re making it sound like Dad doesn’t care what happens to me,’ said Crystal. ‘The only reason he’s letting me go is because he thinks it’s an unbelievable opportunity. Who knows what it might lead to: Broadway, Vegas, Hollywood … Mr Wong said there’s no way they’d have taken on a beginner if Lucy Andrews hadn’t sprained her ankle.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Tess, narrowing her eyes. ‘Have you told Taylor the news?’
Crystal Brooke and Taylor Ardross had been an item since year ten. Everyone thought of them as a pair: big, sturdy Taylor, captain of the school footy team, and stunning, talented Crystal. The school’s very own Romeo and Juliet.
‘I’ll tell him tonight.’
‘You better give him something to remember you by,’ said Tess. ‘There’ll be lots of girls wanting to hook up with him.’
‘And I suppose you’ll be first in line,’ accused Crystal.
‘Are the stars out tonight, I don’t care if it’s cloudy or bright, for I only have eyes for you, dear.’ Tess sang the Broadway hit in a sweet soprano, which seemed odd coming from the sharpfaced, surly teenager.
Crystal smiled. ‘Why don’t you wag school tomorrow? Come round to my house and I’ll tell you everything, and I do mean everything!’
Crystal could tell Taylor was riled the minute she got into the ‘sin bin’, Taylor’s nickname for the burnt orange panel van fitted out with shagpile carpet and a foam mattress.
‘When were you going to tell me? Were you going to send me a postcard from Singapore?’
‘I suppose Tess told you. It’s only for twelve weeks,’ she answered, embarrassed at losing the initiative.
‘Three months!’ he said. ‘I thought you were my girl.’
‘You know I am.’
‘If you love me you won’t go.’
‘I don’t know why you’re being so … unreasonable. You haven’t even begun to try to understand what it’s like to want something so badly you’d do anything to make it happen.’
Taylor winced as if he’d been kicked in the guts. Crystal was the reason he’d turned down the offer from Collingwood Football Club to play for the Colts next season, even though he wasn’t sure if he’d be picked up by a local club.
He fixed her with a look loaded with disbelief and indignation. ‘If you go, we’re through.’
‘You’re not breaking up with me.’ Huge tears welled up in eyes of a hue as dark and inky as cloudless sky at midnight. ‘I don’t want us to end like this.’ She moved closer and kissed him softly on the neck, giving it a little flick with her tongue before moving up to his ear lobe and nibbling it gently.
Taylor knew he was lost if he kissed her back. ‘Damn you, Crystal,’ he said, too aroused to hold out, and he brought his lips down fiercely on hers. ‘Let’s get in the back’ he whispered. Once they’d made love she’d forget about show business. Right.
Chapter 2
CRYSTAL ARRIVED IN SINGAPORE IN HIGH SPIRITS. On the plane the young British stock trader in the next seat had tried his best to impress the beautiful blond dancer and kept the bubbly coming. She giggled her goodbyes dizzily, teetering on high-heeled platform shoes. The hotel driver was waiting in the arrival lounge holding up a sign with her name on it. He helped her load her baggage into the mini bus.
This was Crystal’s third visit to Singapore and she felt like a seasoned traveller. The first time she’d stayed at the Raffles, the most luxurious hotel in the Lion City. There was a photograph with her as a small girl with her parents in the hotel’s foyer in front of a magnificent Christmas tree. She kept it hidden in the bottom drawer of her dressing table because her father didn’t like to have photos of his ex-wife on show.
When she was older her father had forked out for a cruise aboard the Pacific Queen operating out of Singapore, not just for Crystal but for her aunt, uncle and cousins as well. While they were in Singapore they stayed at the Shangrila, just a short walk from Orchard Road, Singapore’s premier shopping precinct. Every day she and her aunt hit the malls and bought up big time: fabulous clothes and shoes to die for. What did it matter if Dad and his latest girlfriend were skiing in Aspen when she was having so much fun?
It was raining when the mini bus turned into the Cathay Hotel in Changi Village, not far from the airport. Crystal looked at the hotel entrance. Usually a major-domo, neatly dressed in an immaculate uniform, held the door open for her like she was a princess and looked after her luggage. But there was no one in sight. Uncertain whether to scream or stamp her foot, Crystal lugged her suitcase inside. Her heart sank. She could only hope there’d been a mistake. The dim, dingy foyer was as congested as a Tokyo train station at peak hour.
A harassed reservation clerk was checking out a party of Japanese businessmen. They gawped when they spotted the blond babe in the skin-tight velvet pants. As one, they took out their cameras. For a moment Crystal considered turning round and heading back to the airport, but she couldn’t turn tail. How would she face her father and friends?
Twenty-five minutes later, when the Muslim clerk condescended to check her in, Crystal was fuming but she didn’t know that Jimmy Wong had a long-standing arrangement with the management. All his acts stayed at the Cathay at a very substantial discount, too low to demand much in the way of service.
She found her room on the eighth floor. It was a family room popular with the parents of large families. What a dump, she thought. All right, her bedroom at home often resembled a tip, but this was something else. The original beds had been replaced by bunk beds; that way Jimmy only had to shell out for one room. It looked like the combined wardrobes of five fashion victims were either hanging out of drawers, strewn haphazardly on the floor or piled up on the beds. The open door of a miniscule bathroom revealed a vanity covered with a conglomeration of cosmetics and hair products. Damp underwear hung from a line over the bath. The smell of cheap perfume was overpowering.
Crystal went over to the window and tried to open it but it was sealed shut.
‘Who the hell are you?’
Crystal spun round and gaped as the cabaret star sauntered into the bedroom like a Sultan’s prized houri.
‘I’m Crystal Brooke from Perth in Western Australia. Didn’t Mr Wong let you know I was arriving today?’ B
lushing, she averted her eyes. She thought the naked woman should have felt awkward, but it was Crystal who felt vulnerable and seriously intimidated.
‘Are all those cases yours?’ The statuesque showgirl surveyed Crystal’s gear coldly and kicked her night bag out of the way. ‘This place is already like a sardine tin.’
Acting as if Crystal wasn’t there, she shrugged on a peach-and-black satin kimono, knotted it tightly round her diminutive waist and tied back her long blond hair in a scrunchy. Without a scrap of makeup, and with a nasty sneer pasted on her face, she was still the most stunning woman Crystal had ever set eyes on.
‘Give the kid a break,’ said a friendlier voice from the top bunk. A tousled blond head emerged from under the duvet. ‘Hi, I’m Melanie, and Miss Congeniality is Imelda.’ She swung shapely legs, toned and tanned, over the side of the bed and jumped down. ‘You’re probably hanging out for a cup of tea and a bickie. That was Lucy’s bed,’ she said, picking a mess of clothes off the bed and dropping them on the floor. ‘Push your case under the bunk,’ she instructed on the way to the bathroom to fill up the jug.
Dizzy from champagne, lack of food and the shock of finding out that she was expected to live in such sordid conditions, Crystal wondered if it was worth even unpacking. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was ten to eleven, recess. Back home she’d be on the oval watching the guys play football. Normally Taylor would be looking around, hoping she was watching, and he’d kick the ball out of play just to have an excuse to be close to her.
Melanie noticed Crystal’s glum expression. ‘It’ll seem better once you’ve had a shower and a cuppa.’ She sashayed up to the sofa, endless legs exposed in an impudently short skirt. Carefully, she put down a tea tray set with surprisingly delicate teacups. ‘I was a waitress at Fat Joey’s when I met Jimmy,’ Melanie said, chatting as easily as if Crystal were an old friend. ‘I tell myself I got hired on the strength of the jazz ballet classes I took back in Oz, but to tell you the truth, kiddo, it was the size of my tits.’ She winked and lit up a cigarette.