Kylie Chan: White Tiger

‘Emma, this is your final warning. If you do not wear a suit to my kindergarten, I will dock your pay.’ Miss Kwok glared at me over her expensive reading glasses. ‘Jeans are not acceptable at any of my kindergartens. More smartly dressed. Remember.’

I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to be out of her office and up to Mr Chen’s place.

‘Your hair is unacceptable as well. You should come with me to the salon. Your hair is messy, you don’t wear make-up—really, Emma, your whole appearance is just not good enough. You should work harder to make yourself more presentable.’

A flood of words hit the back of my throat. I swallowed them all.

‘I have had some complaints from the parents.’ She shuffled the papers on the desk. Her face suggested she was in her early forties—the work of an excellent plastic surgeon—but her hands showed her true age. ‘The parents say you are spending too much time talking with the children and not enough time teaching them the ABC’s.’

‘Talking is the best way to learn English,’ I said.

‘Well, make sure they learn their ABC’s. They need to be able to recite the alphabet and spell some words to pass the examinations for first grade. They’re here to cram for the best schools, you know that.’

I tried to control my expression as I thought about what I’d like to do to a school that had examinations for entry into first grade.

‘Well?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s your school, Miss Kwok. I’ll do more ABC’s.’

‘I do not like your attitude sometimes, Emma.’ She became more fierce. ‘Oh, and stop wasting the drawing materials. I only budget for one set a year and they’re using them too much.’

I glanced at my watch. ‘Is that all? I’m supposed to be at Mr Chen’s in less than an hour.’

‘How is the work going with Mr Chen?’

‘He’s taken every private spot I have. He’s my only private client now.’

This caught her attention. ‘He is the only client you have outside the kindergarten?’

I nodded.

‘But I gave your number to quite a few people I know. Don’t tell me you’re so lazy you have stopped working for them. You should work until 11 p.m., you make good money. Don’t waste your evenings doing nothing.’

‘As people left Hong Kong and private teaching slots freed up, he took the times. I think he even negotiated with some of the parents to release me so I could look after Simone. Which suits me just fine, really, because she’s the most delightful child I’ve ever worked with.’

She studied me intently. ‘Do you like working for him?’

‘Sure. He’s very nice.’

‘How would you like to earn a little more money?’

‘You already pay me very well, Miss Kwok.’

Her eyes rested heavily on mine. ‘If you tell me about some of his business dealings, the names of the people who go in and out of his house while you’re working there, you could earn even more.’

I stared at her.

‘I could make it very good for you.’

‘No.’

She lifted her head slightly. ‘You will do this for me, Emma.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I resign.’

‘You can’t resign. You will stay with me.’

‘I’ll have a resignation letter on your desk tomorrow morning.’

She grimaced with exasperation.

I met her eyes and held them. ‘I resign.’

‘Nobody in Hong Kong will pay you as well as I do.’

‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’ll find something.’

‘You have to give me two weeks’ notice,’ she said. ‘You have to continue to work for me for two weeks, Emma.’

‘I feel a sudden bout of the flu coming on,’ I said, then rose and went out without looking back.

My friend, April, was sitting at the computer outside Miss Kwok’s office, with her fiancé, Andy, hovering behind her. April was a lovely Australianborn Chinese who worked as a systems programmer in a bank, but occasionally came in to help with the computers at the kindergarten. She had a soft, kind face framed by shoulder-length hair dyed a rich russet brown.

‘Hi, April, bye, April. Gotta run, I’m late for Mr Chen,’ I said as I hurried past.

‘We going for Thai Saturday?’ April called after me. I stopped. ‘Yeah. Wan Chai.’

Andy, a slim, well-dressed Chinese guy, glanced unsmiling over the top of April’s head at me. ‘I can’t come,’ he said. ‘I have to be in China. Don’t stay out too late.’

I didn’t like the way Andy looked at me. ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ I said, trying to sound disappointed.

‘Saturday, then,’ April said, and turned back to the screen. ‘We should do another backup.’

‘As long as we don’t lose any of the data. It’s very important,’ Andy said.

I leaned against the divider in the MTR carriage and mused. Done it again. But I was thoroughly sick of being bullied by Miss Kwok; no amount of money she paid me would compensate.

I shook my head as the carriage swayed through the darkness of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel. I couldn’t believe her nerve, asking me to tell her about Mr Chen’s activities. I knew she had more business interests than just the chain of kindergartens; she was one of the wealthiest women in Hong Kong. People called her the Merry Widow, the Social Godmother. But asking me to spy on my private clients was way over the line.

I sighed. I had a tidy nest egg saved: the combination of Miss Kwok’s excellent salary with the fat cheques I’d received from private clients over the last four years. It’d keep me going for a while. I wasn’t ready to return to Australia and a mundane life in suburbia. At only twenty-eight I felt no great rush to settle into anything boring.

I tried to tidy my hair—as usual my short brown ponytail had come out everywhere. Nobody took any notice of me; I was just an uninteresting Westerner, the only one on the train. Medium height, about five six; slightly overweight. Plain clothes, plain face, plain brown shoulder-length hair. Nothing special at all. But my skills as an English teacher were highly sought after in Hong Kong. I wouldn’t have any trouble finding something new.

Or maybe Singapore. Gifted English teachers were always welcome in Singapore, and the correspondence course I was halfway through could be taken from anywhere in the world.

The train stopped at Admiralty station and I joined the rush onto the platform. I rode the escalator up to ground level and the terminal where I could take a bus to Mr Chen’s apartment on the Peak.

The traffic noise and polluted air hit me like a physical force as I walked out of the station. Chinese New Year had just finished—the Year of the Horse in 2002 had begun. The late February weather was cool, but there was a hint of humidity in the breeze that suggested the presence of the stifling summer just around the corner.

Maybe Singapore.

‘And then the Dark King kissed the Dark Queen and the baby Princess goodbye,’ four-year-old Simone said, moving the Lego figures around on the cream carpet.

‘Why is he the Dark King?’ I said.

‘Because he is, silly Emma.’ Simone leaned forward as she moved the Lego, and her tawny hair fell over her shoulders. Her mother had been European, giving her flawless porcelain skin and light brown eyes. ‘The bad people came, and scared the Dark Queen, and she ran away.’