Alana Oakley Read online

  Katriona had not been exaggerating – Slam Guru was every inch the powerful, charismatic rock star, Emma concluded, as she took his hand in a firm handshake. Emma glanced down and noticed that Slam’s skin colour – that of a strong espresso – showed up in stark contrast to her own. A Celtic tattoo stretched up the length of one arm: one of no less than fifteen, according to Katriona. His dark head of hair was cut fashionably close to his scalp with sideburns that flowed into a stylised shadow of a beard that looked hand-drawn. The beard’s point finished under his full, bottom lip like the tip of a dragon’s tail. Emma knew that beneath his sunglasses, Slam’s eyes were blue, although she wondered cynically if they really were as vivid as the posters made them out to be. She’d worked with James long enough to know that you could accentuate anyone’s eye colour with a click of a button. Almost as if he could read her mind, the rocker pushed his sunglasses up onto his head and flashed a smile that made Emma’s heart falter. Those eyes were lethal. The posters didn’t even come close. Emma shoved her stuttering alter ego aside to assume a self-assured air. She was a professional and she had a job to do.

  The view from the upper level of the café was spectacular; a detail Slam Guru was quick to comment on. This led them to chat with ease about travel and favourite cities, drifting from topic to topic while James took discrete shots. Slam Guru’s voice was deep, measured and calm. His laughter, when it came, was throaty and musical. Emma was ecstatic. The interview was going to be a breeze. She leaned forward to switch on her recorder while Slam Guru adjusted his sunglasses against the sudden glare of the sun.

  “Slam Guru, you’re at the zenith of your career. Did you ever imagine you would reach such a high level of success growing up in the slums of Chicago?”

  “No.”

  Emma paused, waiting for Slam Guru to give more detail. When none was forthcoming, she pressed on.

  “It must have been incredibly challenging with violence and drugs on your doorstep. How did you manage to steer clear of it?”

  “You do what you have to do,” he responded in a deep voice.

  Again, Emma waited for more information. Again, Slam Guru was silent. The rocker shifted in his seat and fiddled with his sunglasses. It was impossible to guess what he was thinking. Whether he realised it or not, Slam Guru’s body was rigid. The rest of his responses to Emma’s questions were equally stiff and awkward. In frustration, she switched the recorder off. Slam Guru and Emma returned to chatting easily about his forthcoming tour.

  Emma waited until the waiter finished refilling their glasses with water before switching the recorder back on. She sensed, rather than saw, Slam Guru’s body tense again. The recording was obviously making him feel self-conscious. If Emma was to make it through the interview with something printable, she had to put him at ease. In desperation, she changed tack, dredging up the mountain of Guru-trivia Katriona had dumped in her brain.

  “So you were born on a Tuesday.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard someone tell me I was.” Silence.

  “A little bird told me your favourite take-out is chilli fried chicken from Chicks ‘N Stix.”

  “Yeah it is.” More silence.

  “You obviously work out a lot. You’re up to bench-pressing, what, 150 kilos or something?”

  “I am.”

  “And you like to use Scents of the Sea bubble bath?”

  “I do.”

  “Is it true you’ve got a birthmark on your …”

  But Slam Guru did not allow her to finish. He gave Emma a look filled with distrust.

  “How do you know all this stuff? It’s the kind of information that stalker, Katalina, or whatever her name was, found out about me.”

  Emma pounced on the first piece of information Slam Guru had volunteered. “Do you have a lot of trouble with stalkers?”

  “Not really. My fans respect my privacy, but her? She’s a complete nut job. One scary woman. My security guards found her rifling through trash in my London house. She even broke in and used my spa! There were bubbles all over the place. It got so bad I had to take out a restraining order against her.”

  A chill travelled the length of Emma’s spine. Suddenly all the pieces fell into place. She remembered reading about an unidentified woman invading Slam Guru’s privacy. The woman had followed him everywhere, sent him fan mail every day, and sat outside his home just to catch a glimpse. One day, she broke into his home, and was found in his living room sharing donuts with his prized fish. The woman’s camera revealed she had taken photos of herself in each of his rooms, posing in Slam Guru’s own bath-robe. The incident coincided with an increase in Slam Guru’s security, Katriona’s trip to England, and her unexpected delay in the country’s capital …

  “A restraining order? As in, she wasn’t allowed within a hundred metres of you?” Emma enquired weakly.

  “Twenty. If she gets within twenty metres of me, she gets hauled to jail. The woman is crazy. No sense of boundaries,” Slam Guru shuddered. “I’ve got bodyguards for my bodyguards because of her.”

  Then suddenly, like a scene from a nightmare, a leg flopped over the side of the balcony. Fire-engine red toe-nail varnish glinted in Sydney’s morning sun.

  It was Katriona.

  CHAPTER 9

  Intense. Insane. Same-same lah!

  “Yoo hooooo! Slam Guuuu-ruuuu! It’s me. Katriona. Remember, we met in London?” Katriona’s head popped over the top of the balcony to join her leg. An arm followed. She looked like the disembodied work of a magician. Katriona attempted a casual smile, as if climbing up to a first-floor balcony to grab a coffee was something she did every day.

  Slam Guru’s chair crashed to the floor as he moved with uncommon speed. “You?” he yelled, pointing a finger. “How did you find me? What are you doing here?”

  “I just thought I’d pop over and say hi. You know, welcome you to Sydney. I mean, we didn’t get to talk much last time. I think we got off on the wrong foot …”

  “You broke into my home. You had a bubble bath in my spa. You wore my bath-robe!” With each accusation, Slam Guru’s normally rich, deep voice rose an octave. Any higher and he would sound like a chipmunk.

  “You remembered,” Katriona sighed, eyes shiny with emotion as she clutched her chest … and then fell.

  “Katriona!” Emma unfroze as she rushed to save her friend. But she needn’t have worried: Katriona had fallen from the first floor on to Ling Ling, who was on her way up. Their combined fall was cushioned by the shade sails of the café below.

  “You … you know this woman?” The note of betrayal and panic in Slam Guru’s voice was obvious.

  Emma turned around and gave a feeble smile. “Kind of. She’s a nice person once you get to know her. Just a little … intense.”

  “She’s not intense, she’s insane! This interview is over. Security!”

  Within seconds, Slam Guru’s bodyguards formed a human barrier. They ushered him back to his hotel.

  “Well, that has to be the shortest interview in history,” Emma said with a forlorn look. “I’m so sorry, James. I’ve really stuffed up this time.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll see what I can do to salvage something from this mess. Once he’s had time to calm down, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  The clunk, clunk, clunk of high-heeled wedges announced the arrival of a dishevelled Katriona and a rather bruised Ling Ling, roller blades slung over their shoulders.

  “Where is he? Where did he go?”

  James didn’t bother to berate Emma’s friend about missed opportunities, or point out that, because of her, Slam Guru had run from the café, all but screaming.

  “He had to rush off, Katriona. I’m sorry. I know you wanted to talk, but he’s a busy man. You know how it is.”

  Katriona straightened her outfit as she flicked back her blonde hair and leered at him.

  “It’s okay. Slam remembered me in his bath-robe. It’s obvious he can’t get an image like that out of his mind. Maybe we shou
ld shoot some shots of our own?” Katriona said, bumping James playfully with her hip.

  James picked himself up off the floor and backed away with lightning speed. “Sorry, Katriona, but I’m also very busy. Very, very busy,” he yelped, before grabbing his camera equipment and charging from the room.

  CHAPTER 10

  It’s a mystery.

  Alana, Sofia, Maddie and Khalilah spread out all over Alana’s living room, to do the first day’s homework. Alana’s house as a base was a no-brainer. Even without the drone of planes skimming the rooftops, it was still quieter than Sofia’s house and her noisy brothers. Maddie’s younger siblings would have pestered them to play; and Khalilah’s mum was working on her PhD, and had her own pile of books and papers strewn everywhere. Before long, conversation drifted to the mystery of the missing charm bracelet.

  “We need to go through our suspects and establish motive and opportunity,” said Alana, who was a big fan of ‘whodunits’. She drew up two columns: “Who would want to do it” and “Who could have done it.”

  “Some of the girls were pretty annoyed at me for having to do extra laps,” said Sofia.

  “But everybody was in the gym the whole time.” Khalilah chipped in.

  Alana, who was good at noticing things, disagreed. “No. Remember there was that girl who got sick and went back to the change rooms?” They tried to picture what the girl looked like, and who she was.

  “Laura, or Lorna, or something?”

  “I’m sure she joined a couple of juggling workshops at the Community Centre,” Alana said, looking at Maddie who shook her head. Laura-or-Lorna wasn’t someone she could recall. “Don’t you remember? She was that shy girl. Always took ages to decide what to order at the Milk Bar.”

  Finally, Maddie nodded her head. She remembered the lunchtime queues very well. And it was always the same girl, umming and ahhing about what snack to buy – apple or banana – or which hot meal, sausage roll or meat pie.

  “Although Coach Kusmuk left, too. Wanting revenge for being mistaken for a boy would be a strong motive.”

  “And being called a bird-brain.”

  “Well, she was very unsympathetic when I told her,” said Sofia uncertainly, recalling the way Coach Kusmuk’s eyes had lit up. She twisted her mood ring nervously, now a murky brown.

  “But why take only the charm bracelet? Why not take everything?”

  “Maybe she knew it was a lucky magic eight-ball. I mean, sure, you can buy these things off the internet, but my one is the Real Deal,” she replied; now subconsciously rubbing the rounded belly of a Buddha pendant.

  Maddie looked sceptically at Sofia’s bracelet of four leafed-clover, three-legged toad and rabbit’s foot. Sofia claimed each one was Lucky. Each one was the Real Deal. Not very lucky for the rabbit, she thought to herself.

  “Hmmm, it is a mystery,” said Alana, as she made notes in her notebook. “The first thing to do, I suppose, is check out this Laura or Lorna person, and Coach Kusmuk for any Suspicious Behaviour.”

  The girls digested this in silence as they tried to figure out what Suspicious Behaviour might entail.

  “Whoever took it is probably as superstitious as I am,” said Sofia. “If we can catch them consulting the magic eight-ball before making a decision, then we’ve solved the mystery.”

  “Let’s just see if either of them is superstitious first. I doubt they’d openly use something stolen.” Alana saw her friend’s crestfallen face. “Trust me, Sofia,” she told her friend. “We’ll find it. I promise.”

  Slightly cheered, the girls turned their attention back to their homework.

  By the time Emma and her friends arrived home after some retail therapy of the shop-‘til-you-drop-kind, the girls had moved on to their ICT project. There were photos of themselves on the laptop screen, alongside digitally-altered versions which they adjusted.

  “Hey, look what happens when I do this,” Alana chortled, as with a swipe of her fingers on the screen her forehead blew up, making her look like a caveman. The three girls rolled around laughing, and then tried to outdo her by making modifications of their own.

  Maddie transformed herself into an anime-looking character with over-sized eyes and a head full of curls. Sofia chose to give herself enormous pointy ears, blue skin and flappy jowels, while Khalilah’s head sprouted a mohawk, bulbous eyes and puffy lips.

  “I look so boodiful,” she said, imitating her photo with puckered mouth.

  “Well if you ask me, I think it’s a huge improvement,” Katriona said with a sniff. Alana and her friends ignored her.

  Alana’s mum walked in, parading a ‘new’ hat from the local thrift store; a Mexican sombrero so big it flopped over her eyes and most of her face. As she twirled, the tassles flew about in a blur of colour. Katriona and Ling Ling egged her on with a drumbeat. They clapped and stamped their feet, shaking the living room with cries of Arriba! and Andalay!

  “Nice outfit, Mrs Oakley, but why are you wearing it back-to-front?” Sofia said. She held up her magazine to show Emma the very dress she was wearing, on the cover.

  Emma tilted back her hat, clenched her fists and rounded on her two friends, who were now edging towards the doorway.

  “Katriona, Ling Ling, how could you? Oh, how embarrassing! On top of everything else?!” she sputtered as words failed her.

  “It’s okay, Emma. Maybe if you do the interview again, you can wear the dress the right way round, and he will not recognise you,” suggested Ling Ling.

  “I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t slap a restraining order on me, too. What were you thinking, Katriona? Breaking-and-entering? A bubble bath? His bath-robe? No wonder he felt grossed out.”

  Alana interrupted her mum with a cuddle from behind as she began a monologue:

  “Hi, Alana. How was your first day of school? What are you up to? A new school project? Oh and look, there’s Maddie and Sofia. And a new girl. Where’s my manners? Hi, I’m …”

  Emma had the grace to look ashamed. “It’s okay, I’ve got it from here, Alana. I’m so sorry, girls,” said Emma, turning to address the three youths, who were waiting with huge grins on their faces. “Let’s try this again, shall we? Hi, I’m Emma. Lovely to meet you …?”

  “Khalilah.”

  “Khalilah. Hey Maddie, Sofia. You girls are shooting up so fast I’ll have to buy higher heels to keep up! Did you all have a good summer? Can I get you anything to eat?”

  “I was wondering if they could stay for dinner? We’ve got a project, and we’d like to have it sorted by this week.” Emma’s eyes widened in panic, the trauma of burnt pots a fresh memory. “Don’t worry,” Alana quickly continued, “I’ve organised pasta. You won’t have to cook.”

  Khalilah broke into the conversation with an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Alana. I cannot stay for dinner. I’m not allowed to eat anything that isn’t halal. My religion forbids it.”

  “That’s okay. Mum is vegetarian and I don’t cook any meat at home.”

  Maddie gave Khalilah a curious look. “Are you vegetarian too? Is that what ‘halal’ means?”

  “No. I can eat meat but the animal needs to be slaughtered in a special way and with a prayer. But of course there are some things which are strictly forbidden, like pork, which we Muslims cannot eat at all.”

  “What? No bacon, no pepperoni pizza?” cried Sofia, aghast.

  “No,” said Khalilah with a smile. It was clear she was used to explaining her eating habits.

  “So how come you’re vegetarian, Mrs Oakley?” asked Sofia. She couldn’t imagine her carnivorous brothers living without meat. It was a choice Emma’s own mother had difficulty understanding.

  “Meat? What’s wrong with meat? People back home in the Philippines would kill for such luxuries!” she’d cry. But Emma could not be persuaded to take the plate from her mother. It was all she could do not to run from the roasting animal, rotating round and round over hot coals, apple nestled neatly in its mouth.

  Emma curled up on the
sofa to massage her feet, sore from the tight-fitting roller blades and subsequent shopping marathon. “Well, to cut a long story short, I was researching an article on chicken farming, and I felt so sorry for those poor, cooped-up animals with clipped wings, I decided to give it up.”

  “You forgot to mention that you and your two buddies over there staged a raid and got caught ‘liberating’ a truck full of poultry,” said Alana, using her hands to mime the quotation marks for ‘liberating’.

  Emma gave the girls a weak grin as a memory of pink ski masks flashed through her mind.

  “Or that you used Auntie Katriona’s pet cat, Jinx, to round them up.”

  “Who knew a three-legged cat could move so fast?” Emma muttered.

  “Or that I had to bail you out of jail.”

  By this stage, Alana was looming over Emma, one foot tapping while Emma’s petite frame burrowed further into the cushions.

  “Well, anyway. If my decision to become a vegetarian has saved even one life, then it’s all been worthwhile.”

  If Khalilah was unsure about her new friend and family before, she was not now. Although Alana and Emma were clearly two people as different from each other as was possible, their hearts were definitely in the right place. She bit her top lip to stop herself from grinning. Maddie and Sofia also struggled to keep a straight face: they already knew life with Alana and Mrs Oakley was never boring.

  “It looks like I’m staying for dinner, then,” Khalilah said with a smile. “Let me call home to make sure it’s okay.”

  CHAPTER 11

  A seed is sown.

  Since dinner was taken care of, Emma ducked into her office to continue her research. The interview with Slam Guru had not gone well, but she had a hunch she was keen to pursue. Within minutes, her back took on the familiar stoop of an organist seated at a Gothic organ as she punched her computer keys. She was fully engrossed in her work. Nothing short of an earthquake would move her for hours.