The Woman Who Pretended to Love Men Read online

  Books by Anna Ferrara

  Snow White and Her Queen

  The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange

  The Woman Who Pretended To Love Men

  The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal

  Coming Soon

  Eritis Mea

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  Anna Ferrara

  THE WOMAN

  WHO PRETENDED

  TO LOVE MEN

  Copyright © 2018 Anna Ferrara

  To those who stay at jobs they hate because of money.

  Chapter 1

  25 Jun 1999, Friday

  Milla and I first touched on a stormy evening in the last year of the twentieth century, inside a packed tea house in Hong Kong, amidst a flurry of inescapable noise and movement that was the inevitable result of too many people trying to co-exist in too small a space.

  I was just inches away from her face, shoved forward by the stream of waiters and dinner patrons trying to squeeze past me from behind, drenched below the knees, with hair and arms covered in droplets of rain, when I asked if I could share her two-seater table.

  “If you don’t mind?” I added, when she looked up at me with suspicion, even though there were zero empty tables around her, no other empty seats and a horde of umbrella-wielding locals right outside the tea house’s window. Normally, I wouldn’t even have asked—table-sharing was just the way dining worked in Hong Kong—but this wasn’t a normal situation.

  At the table next to hers, four gangster-like men had looked up from their bowls and were staring daggers at me. The message they were trying to send me was clear. Mess with her and you’re dead. Though I stood my ground, I made a big show of being polite—took my earphones out of my ear, adjusted the glasses on my nose to make sure they noticed I was the bookish sort—and made a mental note to leave if she did say ‘no’. It was, after all, the year Columbine happened, just two years after Hong Kong’s handover to China and months before the turn of the new millennium; I was decidedly aware that anything, even the most unexpected, could happen at any point.

  “Go ahead,” she said, after sizing me up with her large blue eyes for a good half second. To my relief, when she smiled, tucked one side of her long, dirty blonde hair behind her ear, and turned back to her bowl, the four gangster-like men dropped their glares and went back to eating too.

  “Thanks.”

  I took the seat opposite her, just seconds before a waiter dropped a plastic cup of pale brown tea in front of me and asked, in English, “You want English menu?”

  “No,” I said, in Cantonese, and promptly glanced at the hand-written Chinese words on the longish slips of paper pasted all over the walls and mirrors of the tea house. “I’ll have a French Toast and a Milk Tea, thanks.”

  He glanced up from the pad of paper he was scrawling on and regarded me with surprise. “You’re a Hong Konger?” he said in Cantonese. “Thought you were a foreigner, like your friend.”

  “No, I’m from here and she’s not my friend. I don’t know her.”

  “I see. In that case, I suggest you don’t piss her off.” He shot me a knowing look, right before he tore out the order chit he had been scrawling on and stuffed it into the plastic cup next to the box of utensils at the edge of the table. In the blink of an eye, he was gone and screaming my order loudly enough for the entire tea house to hear. When I turned my eyes from him, I found Milla staring at me.

  She looked away the moment she saw me see her but I could tell from the slightly self-conscious way she looked at her noodles afterward that she had been watching me for a good while.

  “I just need dinner. That’s all,” I said to her in English as I grabbed a fork and knife from the box of utensils and rinsed them in the plastic cup of tea in front of me. I wanted to sound steady and nonchalant but my voice came out nervous nonetheless. “I’ll leave the moment I’m done,” I mumbled.

  She looked up at me, with eyes that appeared to be laughing, and shook her head slightly. “It’s fine. Don’t worry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Milla turned her eyes back on the soupy, springy ‘doll’ noodles she was having. I didn’t know what else to do with myself so I adjusted the leather satchel bag I had on my lap and looked all around.

  I looked past the tumult of human activity, at the colourful mosaic tiles all over the floor and walls, at the wooden and green-cushioned booths that gave the tea house its ‘70s vibe, at the haphazard placement of tables and chairs, at the cream cushioned chair I was seated on; I watched waiters in their bright yellow uniforms weaving through the congested space as quickly as their hips would take them, like their lives depended on it, and the diners in office attire, with oily faces and blank expressions, shovelling food into their mouths without stopping to reflect or comment on what they were tasting; I checked out the tattoos the four gangster-like men at the next table had over their bodies, at their black outfits and the way their hairstyles were either too long or too short to be considered decent... I looked everywhere and at everyone but her.

  “Wet night, huh,” Milla suddenly said.

  I turned my eyes back on her and found her staring right at me. “Sorry, what was that?” I asked and realised, too late, that I sounded breathless.

  “The weather... very rainy.”

  “Oh, oh yeah. It’s always this way in summer but it eases up when the weather cools so, hang in there.” I tried to smile warmly but my smile came out weak and way more shaky than it was warm, I think. Lucky for me, it did what I intended it to do anyhow.

  It made Milla smile. “How is it you speak English so well?” she asked as her eyes lit up. “Did you grow up somewhere else or... I don’t know, go to a really expensive school or something?”

  I laughed. “No, no. I lived here all my life and went to normal schools. But my mum’s British, which means I’m half English so... Anyway, what about you? I’m guessing you’re from... America?”

  “Excellent guess. I’m from New York—”

  “New York? You wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Danny Diaz would you?”

  “Danny Diaz?” Her grin went away but her face remained the perfect picture of calm. “No. I’ve never heard of him, sorry. Who is he?”

  “I’m not really sure myself. All I know is that he’s a tourist from New York who went missing from the ICU of King George Hospital just a few days ago.”

  “Does that happen often here?”

  “No, not at all. Strangest thing is, he was still in a coma the last time any of the hospital staff saw him.”

  “Wow. Did he wake up? Walk out by himself?”

  “I have no idea. The hospital wouldn’t tell me anything. Has he been in American news yet? Is there anyone who knows what’s really going on?”

  “No. Not that I know of.”

  “Damn. I’ll just have to go snooping around again, I guess. Maybe break into the hospital and get their report or something?”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “Maybe? How hard can it be, right?” I smiled again.

  In return, Milla laughed. “Why do you need to know anyway? Are you a private investigator or something?”

  “No, worse. Journalist. Sandra Sum from the East Asian Morning Post.” I extended a hand towards her. “It’s a local newspaper. I write in Chinese.”

  “Milla Smith. Tourist.” She took my hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Milla Smith.”

  “Likewise, Sandra Sum.”

  We shook for what felt like forever, with our eyes fixed on each other and smiles plastered on our faces. I thought her hand, which was a little smaller th
an mine, felt exceptionally smooth and delicate. The texture of her palm reminded me of a silk-lined woollen blanket I used to hold to sleep as a child; the one I used to think I would never be able to live without. I found myself wondering if she moisturised on a daily basis and how the texture of my own seldom-moisturised hand must feel like to her. I could detect a twinge of surprise in her eyes as she held on to me and I was convinced it was a sign I really had to get back to moisturising regularly again.

  A plate of french toast and a cup of steaming milk tea on a matching saucer landed between us and ended our handshake for good. The waiter who dropped it down (not the one who took my order) crossed out the other waiter’s scrawl on the order chit in the plastic cup and darted away before I could even utter a word of thanks.

  Milla didn’t even look at him. Her eyes remained on the hefty slice of deep-fried bread I now had in front of me and she told me it was the most delicious piece of bread she had ever seen.

  The bread had a mound of butter on its very top, syrup streaming down its sides and smelled as sweet as a pail of warm honey yet I shrugged. “I bet it won’t be as good as the one at Luk Kee Tea House. Have you heard of that place? It’s been around since the ‘50s, near the mountains, in New Territories.”

  “I haven’t, but it sure sounds like a whole lot of fun.”

  “It is, I have so many good memories of that place. I could take you there for dinner this weekend if you want to go. Do you?”

  I couldn’t tell if she did for Milla seemed to freeze, with eyes widening like a blooming flower. She didn’t say a thing but simply stared at me as if she had only just found out I were an alien or something.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said eventually, after swallowing the nerves that had been snowballing in my throat since the moment I began walking up to her table. “I’m just putting it—”

  “No. I mean, yes! Yes, I do want to go to dinner with you. Tomorrow.” She beamed at me and, all of a sudden, began looking as beautiful as those supermodels in fashion magazines.

  Relief washed over every inch of my skin and I found myself beaming as well. “Okay. Great. Why don’t you give me your address so I know where to go pick you up and I’ll write my cell phone number down for you so you can always call me if you change your mind.” I dug around the bag on my lap, pulled out a brand new pocket-sized spiral notebook and pen, and handed them both to her.

  Milla’s eyes widened and for a second, she looked a little frozen again, but she managed to do as I asked and handed the notebook back to me.

  “Big City Hotel?” I said when I saw what she had written. “How is it? I heard the breakfast buffet’s really good there.”

  “It’s alright. What time should I meet you tomorrow?”

  “Seven? I’ll pick you up at your hotel’s lobby?”

  “Sure,” she said. Then, she added, in a softer tone, “I can’t wait.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  I really did mean it.

  Chapter 2

  18 Jun 1999, Friday

  The week before, I didn’t even know one Sandra Sum. I had known a Sandra—some girl I did a project with in university—but I hadn’t seen her in years and wouldn’t have been able to pick her face out from the crowd even if my life depended on it.

  The week before Milla and I first touched, I had only one name and one identity: Fleur de Roller, right on the verge of turning thirty, single and stuck in a job that hadn’t changed in six whole years.

  My mother—a Hong Konger and pure Chinese through and through—never failed to remind me of the major milestones I hadn’t yet met. Once a week, always between 7 and 8am, during which I would most certainly be making myself my daily cup of instant coffee, she would call me on my Motorola StarTAC to demand updates. Are you dating yet? Any news of a promotion yet? For years I had been telling her to stop asking the same boring questions but she never once listened.

  “I’m only asking for your own good, Lola,” she would always say in Cantonese, the language she used with me. “I just want you to be as happy as Carla is.”

  Carla was my mother’s second husband’s daughter and the person she mentioned most often when chatting with me. When I first met Carla at age thirteen, when my mother and I moved into her father’s home where she lived, she had been a sweet-looking teenager with creamy, flawless skin. We were the same age and ended up going to the same school but she had more admirers than I had friends, started dating six years before I did and ended up with more boyfriends than I had first dates. Although my grades were consistently better than hers, she attained the more glamorous degree and ended up with every Hong Kong parent’s dream job—doctor. In our twenties, Carla did everything right by my mother’s standards—never wore the same dress more than thrice; visited beauticians for facials once every month; always had her nails coloured; used sunblock so religiously, her skin was always about three shades fairer than mine even though I was, as far as genetics were concerned, supposed to be more ‘white’ than she. She remained close to the clique of female friends she had grown up with, got herself a long-term boyfriend by the age of twenty-four and was paid relatively well by the hospital she worked for. In short, she was on track to becoming rich, happy and successful in old age.

  I, on the other hand, had been a pimply teenager with braces, who was, unfortunately, also more than a head taller than the average girl at school; Carla included. Because I enjoyed reading and playing games on my NES more than I enjoyed shopping or talking about boys, hair, skin, nails and fashion, I never really clicked with any of the girls at school the way Carla could do so effortlessly. I just never got their jokes the way they seemed to get each other’s jokes and always ended up feeling odd and awkward as I faked giggles. I didn’t click with the guys much either—they just never developed crushes on me the way they crushed on Carla and her friends; I eventually concluded they were either intimidated by my height and grades, or turned off by my A-cup chest. I did manage to meet a guy who liked me enough to want me as a girlfriend in university but by age twenty-nine, that guy was getting ready to propose to a woman he had been dating for twice as many years as he had me and I was not even playing the dating game anymore. I wasn’t doing that much better in my career either, as far as my mother knew. To her knowledge, I was a statistician at a small, local enterprise, earning less than Carla or any of her friends, and it exasperated her to no end.

  “You should ask your boss for a promotion,” she barked one morning in the summer of ‘99. “If he doesn’t give you a promotion, find another job! Why the hell else did you get your Master’s degree for? Your job doesn’t even let you afford breast enhancement surgery for goodness sakes!”

  “I don’t want bigger breasts, and I kinda like my current job—”

  “Jobs aren’t for liking, Lola! They’re for moneymaking. If you aren’t making a little more every year, you need to leave. Immediately! And in the meantime, get some new clothes, go out more, meet some men! You’re going to run into a lot of problems later on if you don’t have a baby soon. I know you’re shy, I know you’re introverted, but frankly, you’ve had enough alone time to last you a lifetime. It’s time to work on the adult stuff, start a family like everybody else your age!”

  “Is this because Carla got promoted?”

  “No. It’s because she’s getting married.”

  “Really?”

  “Her boyfriend proposed two nights ago. She called Daddy and I to announce the news last night.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  “You don’t even call. I’m always the one calling you, and you don’t visit.”

  “I can’t deal with this right now, I need to get to work.”

  “Lola, I’m not kidding. Go shopping then go to a party! I know you won’t so, please, I’m begging you, do! Dress yourself up better and meet as many men as you can, while you’re still young! Also, ask your boss for that promotion or else—”

&n
bsp; “Alright, bye Mummy!”

  I clammed up my StarTAC without waiting for a reply and found myself feeling a tad more annoyed than usual that morning.

  My mother did know me. As she predicted, I didn’t make any plans to go shopping or to parties after our phone call—I thought walking around scouring racks of fabric was just about the most boring activity ever and I loathed small talk with every inch of my soul. What I did do, however, was write my boss an email asking about the possibility of being considered for a promotion during the next round of appraisals in November. I concurred with my mother in that regard; six years was way too long to be staying at a job without a promotion of any sort.

  What my mother didn’t know, however, was that I wasn’t a lowly-paid statistician like she thought I was. In fact, I wasn’t even a statistician at all. The company I worked for, Everquest Incorporated, did offer data analysis services but that wasn’t the job they hired me for. The job I got had been hard-won; I had to beat over a hundred other hopefuls in nine rounds of interviews and tests—both physical and intellectual—just to get the role. It paid extremely well too, way better than Carla’s hospital or her friends’ Japanese corporations or government offices. I never told my mother the truth about it, however, because there was a clause in the employment contract I signed that explicitly stated I wasn’t allowed to let anyone but my official spouse—whom I was to declare by submitting a Spouse Declaration Form along with a copy of our marriage certificate and a recent photograph of my spouse—know how much I really earned or what I actually did at work. The title of ‘Statistician’ and the amount of money I was to say I got for doing the job wasn’t my decision either; it was in that contract, explicitly stated in bold, black letters.

  While I didn’t understand why there would be such a clause when I accepted the job, over time, the reason for such secrecy became obvious. You see, my job wasn’t the office-based nine-to-five sort. Not even close. After six months of intensive, one-on-one training with a trainer who told me to call him Benny, I worked round the clock, as and when, wherever and whenever, and mostly in the shadows.