Covet (27 page)

Wednesday morning, still bright and early, and Mak was seated on the deck of one of the famous Star Ferries, leaning her elbow on the rail and admiring the impressive view as the ferry bobbed along through the darkly polluted water of Victoria Harbour. Gleaming skyscrapers of glass and steel rose from Hong Kong Island behind her, offset by blue skies and lush green hills in the distance. She had already snapped half-a-dozen photos with her digital camera, and she raised it now for one more. She was on the way to Kowloon, along with the local rush hour crowd, mostly businessmen and shopkeepers on their way to work. She planned to do some sightseeing on the other side, and perhaps a bit of shopping, though she knew that earrings and handbags would be the only things that would fit her.

Snap.

She checked the image on the tiny digital screen. The city looked gorgeous. Small boats bobbed through the water, bathed in morning sunlight. She was having a great run of luck with the weather.

They were halfway across the harbour to Kowloon now. The ferry rolled in the wash of a passing tug.
Lurch.
Thoughts of the weather vanished as Mak felt her stomach churn.

The boat swayed.

Her mouth started watering.

Her tongue squirmed.

Makedde gripped the rail. A cold, clammy sweat broke out over her whole body.
Oh no.
The early morning queasiness had not yet passed. She had been a fool to take a ferry. She felt sick. She felt like she might…

With a buzzing in her ears and an uncontrollable urgency in her belly, Makedde began vomiting into Victoria Harbour. She gripped the rail and leaned out over the side, the rocking motion and the direction of the wind leaving a line of brown and yellow sick across the side of the ferry.

Oh God, how mortifying.

No one bothered her, or tried to help, for which Makedde was grateful. There was nothing anyone could do anyway until her body decided that it was through.

At last the ferry docked at Kowloon. Pallid and shaken, Makedde followed the other passengers towards the gangplank, wishing the line would move faster so she could escape this crowd of strangers who had witnessed her embarrassing display. As she passed a rubbish bin, she tossed away a still full styrofoam cup of latte. The very thought of drinking it brought the bile to her throat once more. Paper napkin at her mouth and
her head down, Mak stepped gingerly onto solid ground.

Her first priority was finding the nearest women’s toilet. It was a humble ferry-terminal ladies room, and a not very glamorous one at that, but to Mak it was an oasis. There was running water. She was alone—or so she thought at first. In the corner, a diminutive Chinese woman of perhaps eighty stood watching quietly. The old woman followed her to the sink to hand her a paper towel when Mak went to wash her hands. At the side of one of the sinks sat a dirty upturned cap, half filled with small change. Mak cleaned herself up as best she could with soap, and gargled the tap water, wondering if that was what had done her in. She placed a Hong Kong dollar in the cap before she turned to leave.

‘
Dor jeh
,’ the old woman said as Mak walked away. Thank you.

Mak paused and smiled at the ancient stranger.

She had never seen such incredibly fragile-looking skin, so weathered and thin, like wrinkled crepe paper. There seemed to be dirt in the creases. But the red-rimmed eyes were kind. Mak paused to search for the words. ‘Umm…
m sai haak hei.
’ You’re welcome.

‘
Nay hoy mmm hoy some a
,’ the woman said, and put her hands to her stomach.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Mak replied. ‘
Dor jeh
.’

She walked briskly out of the terminal building and followed a flow of people towards the streets of
Kowloon, still trying to swallow back the faint taste of sick. The roads were busy with fast-moving traffic, and she could see that there was no way to safely cross. Subterranean walkways seemed like the only way to get anywhere.

T
HIS WAY TO THE
P
ENINSULA
H
OTEL

T
HIS WAY TO THE
N
EW
W
ORLD
C
ENTER

Mak walked down a set of steps that took her under the roadway. She followed the larger crowd at every turn, and was soon spat out into the central courtyard of a shopping mall.

Mak found herself facing a four-metre-high beige fake-fur teddy bear. In the middle of the open area was an enormous artificial tree housing hundreds more of the creatures, these ones animatronic and doll-sized, all waving and singing nonsense. The tree was a full three floors high. At the bottom level was a teddy bear themed food court, currently unattended.

W
ELCOME TO THE
T
EDDY
B
EAR
K
INGDOM

Right.

Mak stopped dead in her tracks.

The old woman’s hand on her stomach. Her smile and incomprehensible words.

What if it’s not food poisoning, Mak?

Twenty minutes later, Makedde sat on a bench on the lower floor of the New World Centre, waiting nervously for a pharmacy to open. She had her legs crossed tightly, her heart heavy with dread. By
contrast, her surroundings were jarringly bright and cheerful. Canto pop music filled the mall, echoing remorselessly off the dazzling white walls and shiny glass shopfronts. There were very few people around, only some sales assistants here and there, busy inside the still closed shops.

Mak shut her eyes and prayed.

Please let this be a stomach bug or food poisoning. Please let this be anything else.

She could not be pregnant with Andy Flynn’s baby. She just couldn’t. That was not in the plan. That would not work at all. They were not together. They were not a couple. They did not even live on the same continent. This was impossible, unthinkable, utterly unplanned. She still hadn’t called him. Every time she thought of him her stomach twisted in knots. She hated herself for missing him, for wishing that they were somehow meant to be together, when clearly they weren’t.

Mak still felt ill, probably from worry now more than the food poisoning, upset stomach, flu, seasickness, morning sickness…whatever it was that she had.

You’re working yourself up over nothing. Just think how foolish you are going to feel in a few more minutes when you know for sure.

An agonising twenty-five minutes later, the pharmacy opened. The instant the roller door was
pulled up, Mak ducked under it and made for the front counter.

A young girl was at the till.

‘Um, do you speak any English?’ Mak asked her.

‘Thank you. What can I help you?’ the girl said.

‘I need to purchase a pregnancy test, please.’

‘Pregnancy. Test for baby?’

‘Yes. Test for baby.’ Her stomach churned and pinched.

‘One minute, yes. Thank you.’

Mak felt her heart thudding in her chest. It will be food poisoning, she scolded herself. The strange food had put her off. And the food poisoning would naturally have been aggravated by the rocking of the ferry. Nothing to get excited about. Of course it was food poisoning! She’d eaten conpoys and abalone only the night before. And she had also been thinking about the water. Perhaps it was not as safe as everyone kept insisting. She’d brushed her teeth with it. That could be enough. The food was probably fine and it was the water. She had some kind of common travel bug, that was it.

The girl returned with a small white package, a pregnancy test kit. ‘Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Mak replied.

‘
Nei hou.
Wang Models Hong Kong.’

‘Hello, this is Victor Thomas from
Moda
magazine. I would like to book one of your models.’

‘Certainly,’ the woman said in clear, but heavily accented, English. ‘I will put you through.’

‘
Nei hou
,’ came another voice.

‘Do you speak English?’ Ed Brown asked.

‘Yes, thank you. Please.’

‘This is Victor Thomas from
Moda
magazine. I am enquiring about one of your models, Makedde Vanderwall from Book agency in Sydney.’

‘Yes. Mak-eddie.’

‘I am an acquaintance of hers from Australia. I’d like to contact her.’

‘Would you like to leave a message? I could pass it on—’

‘It would be easier if I could call her directly,’ Ed pressed.

‘I’ll be able to pass on the message to her, but I can’t give out models’ phone numbers.’

‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘What is her availability in the next two weeks?’

‘Was it editorial you were looking for?’

‘We are shooting in Hong Kong for the next two weeks, and we would like to book Makedde Vanderwall, please. Is she available?’ he asked again.

‘She is available for the next week. Could you give me your—’

Ed hung up the phone. They wouldn’t hand out her details, just as he’d thought.

But now he knew that Makedde was not leaving for one week. That should give him enough time to find her. He would stake out the model agency for her today, and if she didn’t show, he would implement another plan…

‘Hi Loulou. How are you?’

‘Good, girlfriend! How’s it going?’ It was great to hear Loulou’s familiar voice,
any
familiar voice. ‘Hey, are you okay?’ Loulou asked. ‘You sound like you’re crying or something.’

Mak was laughing. Uncontrollably.

‘Um…actually I’m laughing.’ And crying.

Mak sat on a couch in the models’ apartment, alone, holding the test in her right hand and the phone in her left. She looked out at the bustling city below through eyes blurred with tears of relief.

‘Laughing?’

‘Yeah, you won’t believe this. I got sick somehow, must’ve been something weird that I ate, and stupid me starts thinking I might be pregnant. Isn’t that hilarious?’

‘You’re not, are you?’

‘No, no, no. I took a test. Twice. I’m not. Can you believe I even thought that?’

‘So you’re fine.’

‘Yes, paranoid but fine,’ Mak assured her.

‘You know your departure was, like, front-page news.’

‘It was?’ Andy had left messages for her, but she hadn’t returned them. Maybe that was what they were about.

‘Yeah, the papers said you fled to Hong Kong.’

Makedde felt her stomach churn again. ‘Oh. I didn’t know they would print that. They actually printed that I flew to Hong Kong?’

Ed reads the paper. Ed knows where I am.

‘The photo looked great,’ Loulou said, but Mak barely heard her.

Ed knows where I am.

Her toe began to itch furiously.

‘Mak?’

But he can’t get to me. He can’t leave the country. They would grab him
, she thought.

‘Mak?’ Loulou repeated, concerned.

‘Sorry, Loulou. I’m fine. Hey, I really want to thank you again for being there for me with the trial and everything.’

‘Don’t mention it. How was the EG show?’

‘It was good. Gisele was amazing up close. Skinny as a rail but amazing. Actually, I’m just about to head off to the agency now to see if I have any new bookings. You take care, okay?’

Mak walked past the receptionist in the office of Wang Models, and made her way to the booking table, feeling like a pest. Sam, her booker, was busy punching details into his computer. Someone called ‘Mink 3’ was getting a pretty good
paycheque for an editorial shoot. Mak would have liked a job like that herself. It would ease some of her uni bills nicely.

‘I’ll just be a sec,’ Sam said, smiling.

Mak walked over to a wall displaying composite cards and admired the array of fashion models pictured there.
Ying. Alexxus. Phaedra. Ines. Alsou.
Didn’t anyone have normal names any more? As if she could talk! There were some stunning Eurasian faces on show, and sweet-faced Chinese models as well, impossibly pale. A few, like Makedde, had European or North American features. All were young, but few were household names. Makedde had watched over the years as the supermodels had slowly been replaced by fresh-faced but forgettable girls who didn’t set back fashion designers’ bank balances like the big stars of the catwalk once had. The old supermodel guard was largely in retirement now, with a few notable exceptions like the ever-popular Kate Moss, and post anger-management Naomi Campbell, who still made the odd appearance. Mak kind of missed the once-common sight of a full-blooded, healthy-looking supermodel like Claudia Schiffer or Paulina Porizkova leaping athletically across the pages of a fashion mag. Ah, the golden years of supermodeldom. They had made the fashion world look so exciting to the teenage Makedde. These days Gisele was one of the few names recognised outside the business.

I must be getting old.

‘Mak-eddie.’

Sam had finished with his computer. He swung around on his swivel chair. ‘How are you? You’re looking well.’

Am I?

‘Um, thanks.’ Standard model agency talk. They practically
had
to say that.

‘Some of our clients who saw you at the EG show were pretty impressed. Do you do swimwear?’

‘Yeah.’
Still.

‘Fantastic. I’ll let them know.’

A new booking would make her trip at least a financial success, if a disaster by every other measure.

‘There was another client,
Moda
, who called about you today, but I think they must have been cut off.’

Mak raised an eyebrow.

‘Hopefully they’ll call again. I think the shoot was in the next couple of weeks. The client knows you from Australia. He asked for your number. A Victor Thomas, I think?’

Mak’s chest tightened.
I don’t know any Victor.
‘
Moda
? The Italian magazine? You didn’t give out my number, did you?’

‘You don’t know this Victor?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
Who would be calling?

‘Well, we never give out personal details.’

Mak was relieved.

She still hoped for another booking before she left, but she didn’t want to push her flight home back any further. She wanted to get back to her dad
and make sure he was okay. And she wanted to get back to Vancouver Island for her own peace of mind. She’d feel safe there. She needed more distance between herself and Ed Brown. And, maybe, between herself and Andy Flynn.