Chapter 1
1
JULY 1990 – HONG KONG
Moira Chiles
Jesus, it was bloody roasting. Moira wiped the sweat from her forehead with the hem of her T-shirt, hoping that allowing a slight breeze to go up her top would help stop the rivers of perspiration that were oozing from under her boobs. This bra was going to have to be boil washed to get it clean again. It was brand-new, as well – straight out of Marks and Spencer’s the weekend before. Her mum had insisted on the underwear-shopping trip, extolling dark warnings that if ‘the plane went down’ or she was ‘knocked over by a double-decker bus… Do they have double-decker buses there, Moira?’, then at least her parents weren’t going to have to suffer the indignity of identifying a twenty-three-year-old body that was adorned in greying knickers or a bra that had seen better days.
She’d only landed in Hong Kong a couple of hours ago, but she’d already realised that this was about as far from the lukewarm streets of a Glasgow summer as it was possible to get. It wasn’t just the volume of people. Buchanan Street on the first day of the January sales was wall-to-wall folk, and there was a fair amount of jostling for position, especially when you got near the House of Fraser perfume department. No, this was different. The packed streets here came with noise, and shops selling things she couldn’t identify, under signs she couldn’t read, and a hundred different smells from food vendors and drains and traffic. She’d heard about something called humidity, but she couldn’t even have imagined that it would feel like this. Her hair was now the size of her mother’s rhododendron bush, and her lungs felt like they could explode at any minute from trying to catch her breath. It was chaos. Hot, sweaty, frantic, gob-smacking chaos. And Moira didn’t think she’d ever felt more excited in her life.
As directed by the woman from the talent agency, she’d got off the bus from Kai Tak Airport outside a big hotel on Nathan Road, and now she was following the next steps in the instructions. Walk about a hundred yards down Nathan Road, going towards the Harbour, then turn left into Middle Road, and the guest house is about fifty yards along the street, on the left-hand side. ‘It’s just a doorway, so you’ll have to ring the bell, and someone will come and let you in,’ she’d said, as Moira had scribbled it all down on the back of a Rice Crispies box that she’d snatched from the middle of the breakfast table when the phone on the kitchen wall had rung only a week ago.
Her mother hadn’t been impressed by the vandalism of Snap, Crackle, and Pop’s image. Or by the fact that Moira was contemplating travelling thousands of miles, to a country they knew nothing about. Their family holidays had never taken them further than Benidorm and even then, they’d taken their own teabags, bread, and five packets of chocolate digestives in case of emergencies.
‘It all sounds so dodgy, Moira,’ she’d fretted. ‘I mean, you hear about the things that go on when they lure these young women away from home.’ Her dad hadn’t got involved in the discussion. Unless it concerned his work, the pub, or the bookies, he tended to keep his opinions to himself.
‘Mum, it’s a proper entertainment agency. I checked them out with Calvin, and he says they’re all above board.’ Calvin was the talent agent she’d signed with back in Glasgow when she was still at college and already booking singing gigs at weekends in pubs, clubs and theatres across the city. She’d done the panto at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow’s city centre five years in a row now, rising through the ranks from the chorus to the giddy stardom of an Ugly Sister in last year’s Cinderella . She’d even auditioned and had a callback for a dream job playing Magenta in the new national touring production of The Rocky Horror Show. In the end, she hadn’t won the role, but it was the closest she’d got to theatre stardom. She’d been in the depths of disappointment over that rejection when she’d been flicking through the job adverts in a stage magazine and spotted this opportunity. Six months in Hong Kong, with guaranteed work, singing six nights a week in a five star hotel. Flights and accommodation paid by the agency. Sounded like a huge, fabulous, glamorous adventure.
But now, looking at the sign above the door, she was beginning to wonder if her mum had a point. The tatty wooden proclamation of: The Kowloon Star Guest House wasn’t filling her with confidence, and neither was the chipped paint on the door frame, or the fact that the door appeared to have a large, boot-sized dent in it where it had, presumably, been kicked. Her first thought was, oh, bollocks . Her second thought was that even if this accommodation was down there with the seventh circle of hell, she was going to tell her mother it was perfectly nice, otherwise there would be a middle-aged Glaswegian woman barrelling down Nathan Road as soon as a flight could get her here.
Moira rang the bell as directed, then waited, hoping that whoever came spoke English. She’d already sussed out that most people here did. When she’d gone to the library to fax in her application letter in response to the advert, she’d done a bit of research while she was there, and learned that Hong Kong was currently a British colony, but it had already been agreed that it would be handed back to China in 1997. She’d then, on the advice of the librarian, taken out James Clavell’s Noble House and well, that had sealed her decision to come. It had all seemed so glamorous and cosmopolitan. Clearly, that exotic glamour didn’t extend to the kicked-in door that was opening in front of her now.
‘Hello,’ said a voice her mum would describe as ‘pure posh’. The girl was obviously English. About the same age as her. Tall. The kind of thick dark, flowy hair that shampoo adverts promised but had yet to deliver to Moira’s red, curly, rapidly expanding bob.
‘Hi,’ Moira replied. ‘I think I’m booked in here. I’m with the Night Stars Talent Agency.’
‘Oh, dear God, another victim. Are you vaccinated?’
‘Against what?’
‘Everything.’
Moira wasn’t sure why that was important or what her answer should be, so she shook her head.
‘In that case, I hope you have travel insurance because this place is a germ factory.’ With that, she stuck her hand out. ‘I’m Carina. A fellow hostage of Night Stars Talent. There’s still time for you to run.’
‘I can’t. My lungs gave up working about ten minutes ago.’ Moira shrugged, feeling the friction rash beginning to bubble under the damp straps of her bra.
‘Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ The other girl (what had she said her name was?) stood back to let her past, then followed her up a narrow, rickety staircase. At the top, there was a small reception desk with a wall of key slots behind it.
‘If you bang on that bell for long enough, someone will appear with your key.’
‘You don’t work here?’ Moira asked what she thought was a fairly reasonable question, but the other woman looked horrified by the suggestion.
‘No, I only answered the door to make you stop ringing the bell. I was trying to sleep before I go to work.’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry about that,’ Moira said to… She suddenly remembered the name. Carina, that was it.
‘Oh, it’s fine. Just a little hiccup in yet another day in paradise around here.’ Carina turned to go down a nearby corridor, when another girl about their age came the other way and blocked her. Moira’s eyes widened, and she thanked the universe for the third or fourth time that her mother wasn’t here right now. Unlike Carina, this girl was short, with blonde, shaggy hair, and the fringe that was falling over her eyes was definitely a fire risk, given the cigarette that was hanging out of her mouth. But it was the Clash T-shirt, the tiny denim shorts, the leather Doc Martins, and the bottle of beer in her hand that grabbed Moira’s attention.
‘Lisa, this is— sorry, what was your name again?’ posh Carina was asking her now.
‘Moira.’
‘Moira,’ Carina repeated, completing that half of the introduction before going on, ‘And Moira, this is Lisa. She’s with Night Stars Talent too. There’re loads of us here. It’s like a cult, but without communal sex or free food.’
That made Lisa laugh, as she lifted her beer bottle in greeting. ‘Hi. Singer or musician?’
Moira didn’t have much experience with accents, but she guessed Irish, then got distracted as she felt a very attractive rivulet of sweat run down her cheek. She quickly brushed it away. ‘Singer.’
‘Me too. I’m in the Fleetwood Mac cover band over at the Harbour Lights Hotel with our Princess here. She’s Miss Fancy Fingers on the piano too though, so we worship at her altar of talent.’
Moira watched as Carina responded to the teasing with a roll of her eyes and a snarky, ‘I prefer you when you’re six drinks down and close to comatose.’ For a second, Moira wondered if she was going to have to break up a domestic incident, but Lisa just grinned.
‘Yeah, me too. Give me another few hours.’
Any further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a guy who slid in behind the reception desk. ‘Sorry. Delivery at the back door.’ He eyed Moira expectantly. ‘You must be…’ he checked some kind of paperwork on the counter in front of him. ‘Moira Chiles. British. Here with Night Stars Talent.’
Moira nodded, transfixed. What were the chances that Michael Hutchence from INXS, one of her favourite bands in the whole wide world, had a part-time job in a dodgy hotel in Hong Kong? Slim. So this guy must just be his identical twin.
‘I’m Nate. Australian. Here with no other job, so I’m forced to work in this cesspit.’ His smile revealed the most gorgeous white teeth she’d ever seen, and Moira felt her temperature go back up to where it had been a few minutes ago, when she was outside in 90-degree heat.
‘I’ll just get your paperwork – give me two minutes.’
Carina gave her a quick wave. ‘I’m in room 19, just along here, if you need help, advice or antibiotics.’
‘And I’m in 17 if you need beer or cigarettes,’ Lisa added, before they both headed off down the corridor, letting Moira turn her attention back to the guy in front of her, brain whirring to take all this in. This hotel was a dump. She hadn’t even seen where she’d be singing yet, but that could be awful too. The city was way too hot. And crowded. And far from home. And if this was an example of how her new agency treated their talent, then it could be an absolute nightmare. Maybe she should take the advice and run.
‘Okay, they’ve already sent all the paperwork, so I just need your signature here and you’re good. If you definitely want to stay, that is. I’d say we’re at about fifty-fifty with people doing a runner when they see this place.’
Moira could definitely understand why. And she could also hear her mother’s voice telling her to run like the wind.
However…
It was only six months of her life. And she’d get paid to live her dreams, singing six nights a week in front of a live audience. And so far, she’d encountered a deeply sarcastic but apparently friendly, piano-playing, posh bird. A rock chick with a fondness for day drinking. And a guy who looked like Michael Hutchence and was so attractive he was making her soggy bra straps itch.
She took the pen he was holding out to her. ‘Where do I sign?’