by Cath Ferla
Li Hua drove east along the ring road. She slipped a hand onto Sophie’s thigh, stretched her fingers wide. Sophie leaned back into her seat, tried to settle the pounding in her head and heart. They travelled in silence, Li Hua’s hand on Sophie’s leg, until they reached the airport.
At the baggage check, Sophie fought hard not to crumble. She fumbled through the check-in, dropped her passport, blurred her signature with tears.
Li Hua rubbed her back. ‘Breathe,’ she said.
They walked together to the departure gates. ‘I hate goodbyes,’ said Sophie, a rock in her throat.
Li Hua took Sophie’s hands in her own. ‘It’s not goodbye,’ she said, her own voice soft with emotion. ‘You and I, we are connected, we have a guanxi. Even though you will move, the connection will not break. It will change, but it will not break. Distance may even make it stronger.’
Li Hua released Sophie. She held her right palm in the air. ‘Hold up your hand,’ she said.
Sophie held her left hand up, so that her palm faced Li Hua’s.
‘Closer,’ said Li Hua. Sophie followed. Their hands floated, only millimetres apart.
‘Close your eyes,’ said Li Hua. ‘Feel the energy, think about your hand and mine. Feel the energy between us.’
Sophie tried. She felt nothing.
And then, a gentle warmth, soft but electric. It pricked Sophie’s nerves, like the faint tingle of Sichuan pepper on the tongue. Sophie concentrated. It felt as if their delicate, shared energy created a bridge between them.
‘This is our connection,’ Li Hua said, her voice even. ‘Keep your eyes closed and focus on it. I will move my hand – try to follow.’
Sophie concentrated on the warmth between her palm and Li Hua’s. She felt a magnetism as Li Hua moved her hand slowly backwards. Eyes closed, Sophie tracked the movement and her hand moved forwards. She imagined a tangible object, thin as a sheet, separating their cells. It was true. She could feel it. They were connected.
‘Open your eyes,’ said Li Hua.
Sophie raised her lids. She saw her hand moving in fluid motion, as if connected to Li Hua by a thread. If Li Hua pulled back, Sophie’s hand followed. When Sophie’s wrist flipped under, carrying the weight of the energy, Li Hua’s palm floated on top, caressing the space between them with her fingers. Sophie watched. The energy they carried felt strong enough to see. She strained. What was that?
Li Hua brought her hand closer to Sophie’s. Their palms met. The electricity faded, leaving a warm glow.
‘You see,’ Li Hua said, ‘there is a connection between us. It doesn’t matter where you go, no distance can break it.’
She leaned forwards so that their foreheads touched. For a moment they stood there, breathing in each other’s scent. Calm pulsed through Sophie like a slow-moving river. She knew that the time had now come.
She picked up her cabin bag and walked towards the departure door, turning once. Like Mrs Lu against the cabbages, Li Hua stood motionless – stoic and strong.
Sophie lifted her hand in a wave. Li Hua raised hers. They stood like that, distance between them, hands in the air, an imaginary string binding them tight. Then Sophie lowered her arm.
She walked through the doors to the departure lounge without looking back.
First day of the new term. Early enough for weeknight clubbers, hospitality workers, backpackers and hopeless party-drug addicts to be making their way home. Sophie walked the backstreets of Surry Hills, warm coffee in its paper cup taking the sting out of her hands. She passed kids in wide-legged reflector pants, a couple of drunks. She inhaled the smell of piss mixed with the straighter, kinder scents of coffee and baking.
Sophie sipped hard on her coffee, savouring its temperature and caffeine kick more than the slightly metallic taste. She’d spent four days in bed with a cold. The fever had pitched and rolled and she’d faded in and out of dreams until yesterday, sometime in the afternoon, when the fever broke. Last night had been sleepless. In the cold hour before dawn, a decision had formed. The slashed tyres may well have been a coincidence, but the connection between Wendy and the girl posing as Han Hong seemed more significant. Two imposters at two separate language schools. One girl dead and another girl missing – there had to be a connection.
She had forty-five minutes before class and she intended to spend them asking questions.
The familiar scent of fruity chewing gum greeted Sophie in the stairwell of Sydney Central English. She mounted the stairs fast, ignoring the protest in her lungs.
In the foyer, the receptionist welcomed Sophie with a roll of her eyes. ‘You’re back,’ she said through a mouthful of breakfast muffin. ‘What exactly did you say to her? Here’s me the other day telling you that Han Hong girl was a stayer, then I’m eating my words. She withdrew.’ The receptionist licked her short fingers.
‘You mean she’s disappeared?’
‘She withdrew.’ She eyed Sophie over the top of her glasses. ‘I’m assuming whatever poaching strategy you used worked. Like I told you last week, I’m leaving so I don’t care, but I am curious – are you back to steal more of our students?’
Sophie rested her elbows on the top of the desk. ‘I came back to speak to Han Hong again,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea where I could find her?’
‘No idea, love. She’s gone.’
Sophie watched the receptionist’s pink tongue flick at brown crumbs. This woman cared little for the students she encountered within these walls. They represented numbers on her computer screen and countless administrative tasks. These people were her weekly pay cheque, the money that poured out of her purse and into breakfast muffins. They were the gradual dent she chipped in her mortgage. No overtime for her. No drinks at the student bars down the road. No eye contact in the elevator. These students meant nothing. Their accents had no meaning other than making the arduous task of listening that little bit more difficult. To this woman, Han Hong was a number.
Sophie opened her satchel and grabbed her phone. She laid it on the counter. Han Hong’s image appeared on the phone’s screen. ‘Do you know who this is?’
The receptionist peered at the image. ‘Should I?’
‘This is Han Hong,’ Sophie said. ‘She stopped attending this school a fortnight ago. I’m trying to locate her.’
The woman grunted, took a long time to confer with her records.
‘You’re mistaken,’ she said. ‘Han Hong has attended class regularly. You know that because you spoke with her yourself.’
‘Whoever that girl was, she wasn’t the girl in this picture,’ said Sophie.
The woman sniffed. ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘That picture isn’t very nice.’
鬼
Michael Disney sat alone at a student desk in an empty classroom, laptop open in front of him. He looked up when Sophie knocked and waved her over.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, pointing to a white paper bag resting on another seat.
Sophie moved to the bag, picked it up, peered inside. ‘Pumpkin seeds?’
‘Salted.’
‘I haven’t eaten these since China.’
Disney smiled. ‘English teachers love them. Reminds us of the fun times we spent in Asia.’
Sophie popped a seed into her mouth. She cracked it between her teeth. Nostalgia flooded her senses, along with the salt. ‘They remind me of my mum. She liked these.’
‘Most Chinese people do.’
‘Come again?’
He flashed a grin. ‘Your mother came from Hong Kong. Pete told me.’
‘I didn’t know he knew.’
‘I’ll make this quick,’ said Disney, flipping open a folder on the desk. ‘I’ve had a look at your roll book and everything seems to be in order. No unreported student absences. I assume you follow school policy in relation to absenteeism?’
Sophie nodded. ‘I’m a play-by-the-rules sort of girl.’
Disney grinned. ‘All of the time?’
No. ‘These days.’
<
br /> Sophie noticed laugh lines at the corners of Disney’s eyes. He had a kind, open face. Slightly weathered skin told of someone who liked the outdoors. He was older, somewhere around fifty-five, she guessed.
‘Did you know her?’ he asked.
‘You mean Wendy?’ Had she known her? Clearly not very well. The girl she thought she’d known had a life outside the classroom that Sophie had become a small part of. And yet she’d been a fake, a woman pedalling another’s identity and hiding some very dark secrets of her own.
‘I taught her and I guess you could say I befriended her,’ Sophie said. ‘We went out to dinner.’
‘Did she give you any indication that she was unhappy?’
‘None that seemed obvious. She had a boyfriend and a sense of humour.’
‘Other teachers have said she was always sleeping.’
Sophie nodded. ‘That’s not unusual,’ she said. ‘So many of our students work night jobs.’
Disney made a note in his exercise book.
Sophie watched him. ‘Do the police have any ideas who she was?’
‘Her real name was Lisa Zhu. She entered Australia on a tourist visa but…’
‘Her reason for coming here had nothing to do with the Barrier Reef.’
‘It doesn’t appear so.’
‘Are there records of what she’s been doing all this time?’
Disney shrugged. ‘In China she worked in administration but she wasn’t overly qualified. If she was working, I doubt the job was glamorous.’
Silence for a moment, heavy.
‘Sex work,’ said Sophie.
‘Unfortunately there aren’t many records of the names of sex workers in this city’s brothels. But if there were, we’d probably find Lisa’s name on some of them.’
It made sense. The student’s style, her carefree attitude, even the track marks on her arms. She’d been working as a prostitute and perhaps she’d become addicted to drugs in the process.
‘What was she doing, pretending to be Wendy Chan?’
Disney cracked a seed between his teeth. ‘That I don’t know.’
‘Do the police have any ideas?’
‘If they do they’re not going to share them with me. I’m asking these questions out of curiosity. Amateur detective work.’
Sophie smiled. She knew about that.
Disney leaned forwards. ‘We all know amateur detectives rarely get it right,’ he said. ‘I should mind my own business. My real job is to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.’
But it had. At Central English. A girl named Han Hong was missing. Another girl was there in her place.
‘Do you think the visa fraud goes further than this school?’ she asked, taking a chance.
Disney nodded. ‘All I can say is I’m working on it and we’re going to bring those responsible to account. Relax, I’m confident we’ll sort all of this out.’
He pulled out a card, green like a leaf. ‘Here,’ he said, pushing it across the desk. ‘My business card. I’m giving it to all the teachers. If you notice anything suspicious, please give me a call direct.’
女孩
In the common area, students mingled over morning coffees and snacks. The scent of dried papaya made Sophie’s stomach turn. She passed Chuck’s room, heard the boom of his voice. Had Su Yuan turned up today? Sophie spun back and rounded the corner into Chuck’s room. Several students sat in chairs, forming a circle around a whiteboard. Su Yuan was not among them.
‘Hijacking my class now?’ Chuck said from the whiteboard.
Sophie waved a hello. She felt foolish standing there in the middle of his classroom. She had students of her own to prepare for. ‘Looking for Su Yuan,’ she said. ‘When she gets in, ask her to come see me in Room 302?’
Chuck nodded. ‘I’ll pass it on.’
She brushed past a couple of girls as she moved out into the common area, headed to her class. As she reached the closed blue door to her room, the sound of Chuck’s voice calling her floated above the buzz. Sophie turned and spied Chuck at the door of his classroom. He beckoned her.
‘Are you blind or something?’ he said. ‘Su Yuan’s here. You passed right by her on your way out.’
Sophie’s stomach lurched. She dumped her books on a lunch table and stepped into Chuck’s room.
Chuck pointed to a girl in the corner. ‘She’s one of the early birds, eager like you said.’
The girl in the corner didn’t look eager. She sat bent over her desk, hair draped across her face. Sophie noticed a hand poking out from a sleeve, pale and scabbed. Not the same hand that had gripped hers and held on tight. Not Su Yuan’s.
Sophie reeled back.
Chuck prodded her. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Did you want to speak to her or not?’
It’s happening again and I don’t know how to stop it.
Sophie pulled Chuck out the door. His face darkened.
‘Sophie, honey, what’s wrong?’
‘Bring me your roll book.’
‘What’s going on?’
There was no time to explain. Any attempts to make sense of the jumble in her head would fail. She needed to know that the adrenaline coursing through her veins like vodka was based on something real.
‘Just bring it.’ Her voice, raised, sounded panicky. Chuck registered it and closed the door on the classroom. Sophie took a seat at a lunch table and brushed some grains of cooked rice from the tabletop.
‘I’m guessing you know what you’re looking for?’ Chuck slid into a seat opposite. He passed Sophie the roll book.
Sophie flipped to the back section of the folder. She skimmed her finger down the list of names, mostly Korean and Japanese. There it was. Su Yuan’s full name, printed officially in twelve-point font. Sophie turned to Su Yuan’s file. Fire in her gut, hot and raw.
The plastic pages slipped through her fingers. Before her, Su Yuan’s familiar script looped and rolled. She skimmed through Su Yuan’s test results and essays and found the application story she’d written about her hometown, Kunming. She saw another script, too. There, signing off on the file in blue ink, was Sophie’s signature, the one she’d developed as a teenager when she still had dreams of joining her father in his private investigation business.
Before it all went to shit.
Sophie closed the file. ‘The girl you have in your class is a fake.’
The words escaped as though spoken by another. She felt removed from herself, from the hard plastic chair and the table with its specks of rice and soy; from the building, with its faint smell of ammonia; from these students, who still crowded and jostled and breathed sweet fruit smells in through their nostrils and out through their mouths. And in the moments before Chuck responded, Sophie registered a rush of thoughts: she sounded hysterical, affected by Wendy’s death, irrational, confused.
Chuck chewed the inside of his lip.
‘I’m not with you, honey,’ he said. He reached a hand towards her, tentative, like he thought she might strike it.
He was right. She’d gone mad. Sophie sensed a ringing in her ears. The noise around her became muted. The rush of air through her nostrils seemed to boom with each breath.
‘That girl,’ she said, her voice echoing through her eardrums. ‘She’s not Su Yuan. I don’t know who she is, but she’s not Su Yuan.’
‘Sophie, honey, what are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that the girl in your classroom is a fake. She’s pretending to be Su Yuan.’
Chuck placed his hand on Sophie’s arm. With the other, he pulled a neatly folded handkerchief out from his pocket and offered it.
‘Honey, you’re sweating. A woman should never sweat.’
The knot between Sophie’s shoulders loosened. She accepted the handkerchief and pressed the cool, clean cotton against her forehead. She inhaled its scent. Oranges and musk. Masculine with a hint of something sweet. She leaned back into the plastic, felt the chair mould into the curve of her back. The ringing died to a fain
t buzz. Thoughts crawled into focus.
‘It’s all so strange…’ Her voice cracked. She glanced at Chuck.
He traced a grain of rice around the table with a finger, screwed up his face as he became aware of himself. ‘Gross,’ he said. He flicked the rice away, wiped his hands on his pants. ‘Maybe admin got the class list wrong. Did you think of that?’
‘That would be one explanation.’
He folded his hands. ‘I know it’s terrible to have somebody die and to not know who they were,’ he said. ‘But why do you think Pete made such a fuss the other day?’
‘He wants us to be on top of it.’
‘Wrong. He wants to cover his butt in front of the cops, make it look like his school is following the rules.’
‘But Michael Disney’s running an audit. Pete can’t exactly hide from that.’
Chuck sighed. ‘When you’ve taught as long as I have, honey, you’ll know most language school admin is a crock and it goes all the way to the very top,’ he said. ‘Schools confuse students, often on purpose, to get around visa requirements. Why forgo a student fee just because some kid doesn’t want to turn up? Mostly no one notices or cares, and people like Michael Disney are part of the whole flawed system. If it weren’t for that girl topping herself, nothing would’ve changed.’
Sophie pointed to Chuck’s classroom. ‘So you think Pete knows something about the girl you have in there?’
‘I think he knows more than he’s told us,’ said Chuck. ‘And I don’t think he was as surprised as he let on when the cops told him Wendy was a fake.’
‘You’re talking like you’re alright with all this,’ said Sophie. ‘Like you’ve been turning a blind eye yourself.’
Chuck raised his hands, gave a weak smile. ‘I’m not here to make a fuss. I’ve taught in schools like this all around the world,’ he said. ‘This job pays my bills and I love it. I don’t ask too many questions.’
‘But what if something’s happened to Su Yuan and she’s in trouble?’
‘Honey, no offence, but you’re more of a drama queen than I’ll ever be,’ said Chuck. ‘More likely she’s off working and Pete’s agreed to take her money in exchange for keeping her visa intact. But if it makes you feel better, I can go talk to Pete and see what he has to say. I’m not often wrong but there’s always a first time.’