by Iles, Jo
‘Wow! Thank you,’ Jessie said, waking up and sitting up properly as she accepted the glass. ‘This is nice, and you know I’m not one to turn down champers, but what are we celebrating exactly?’ she added, suddenly anxious that she may have forgotten some important date.
‘My mother says one never needs a specific reason to drink champagne, but since you ask, we have a lot to celebrate. Firstly, here’s to you getting a job in Hong Kong.’
‘But—’ Jessie began.
‘Now I know,’ Jack continued, talking more loudly over her interruption, ‘it’s not your dream job and not everything went to plan, but I believe in you. And the fact that they gave you this TV work and chose you to represent the bank speaks volumes. At least it does to me, anyway. Secondly, we should toast to us, for finally being happy, healthy, and in love,’ Jack finished, smiling.
‘I didn’t know you were such a mush pot.’ Jessie beamed at him as they clinked their glasses. ‘But you forgot something. Thirdly, to you, Jack. For being absolutely brilliant, and through all your hard work, having a successful bar practically overnight. I’m really proud.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied as they touched glasses once again.
As part of their celebration, Jack had somehow managed to prepare canapés to go with the champers. This was a considerable feat considering the limitations of the kitchenette. He was definitely a keeper, Jessie thought to herself as they enjoyed the food and finished off the bubbly sat on the floor around the coffee table. It was the perfect quiet night in.
‘I never really asked you about your work in China,’ Jessie mused as they lazed side by side on the sofa, full from the food and watching a travel show on Shanghai.
‘There’s not much to tell, really,’ Jack replied.
‘Well, that sounds like an evasive answer, if ever there was one,’ Jessie probed, turning to face him. ‘All you’ve ever told me is that you owned and ran a publishing company, and did rather well at it from what I can gather. There must be more to it than that.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Jack asked, finally tearing his eyes away from the screen and giving Jessie his full attention.
‘Why did you leave?’
‘I know I’ve told you that much. I wanted to get out of China. Find something new. I’d been there seven years doing the same thing and dealing with the same problems day in, day out. You must be able to empathise with that?’
‘Yes. I can. But it was your business. Why did you just walk away?’
‘I haven’t exactly walked away, Jess. Not forever anyway. My company was one of the first privately owned publishers after the rules changed to permit an individual to operate such a company. I’ve worked too long and too hard through all the bureaucracy and different government departments to just walk away.’
‘I still don’t quite get it,’ Jessie said gently.
‘Every day in publishing is a battle in China. I guess the truth is, I got jaded and wanted out. And so I made a conscious decision to downsize the company, and I’m lucky that I left a reliable team of people to cover the operational side of things. They can tick over quite nicely with very minimal input from me.’
‘What did you publish?’ Jessie asked, feeling slightly ashamed that she didn’t actually know.
‘Books, mainly. We had a foray into magazines and journals, but that proved to be even more complicated. What I would do is buy the rights of foreign language books and repackage them for the Chinese market.’
‘Sounds simple enough,’ Jessie smiled at him, swigging back the remainder of her drink.
‘You must be joking!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘It’s not like Britain, you know. There are rules. Millions of them. And they’re complex, rigid, and at times inconsistent, which is bloody frustrating. And then there are the permissions that you need for certain publications from sometimes five different government departments.’
‘Is there censorship?’ Jessie asked, finally getting a grasp as to why he wanted to leave.
‘Oh, you betcha. Half my life I spent negotiating between the authors and the Chinese editors, trying to smooth out and explain reasons for deletions. The editors almost always won.’
‘Jack, I had no idea,’ Jessie said truthfully.
‘Not many do, and I prefer not to whine on about it. I have a good insight about how things work there, but only because I’ve made mistakes and had my knuckles rapped along the way. It is what it is, but that doesn’t mean I like it. Hence my reason for leaving.’
‘I see,’ Jessie replied. ‘Then why don’t you just sell up and have done with it all?’
‘I would do. But the company owns the rights to several international bestsellers that can’t get published at the moment with the current censorship rules. I don’t want those rights changing hands. Plus, the company also has the only permission to ever be bestowed by the politburo to publish minutes on certain important political meetings. The information is sensitive—not something that can be put into the public domain at present. I am something of a trustee,’ he said, smiling wistfully.
‘It’s nice to know it’s not just me you’ve been ingratiating yourself with,’ Jessie said happily, tugging his arm around her. ‘Thank you for explaining things to me,’ she added with a yawn.
‘You’re welcome,’ Jack replied, kissing the top of her head. ‘By the way, I stopped by your place today,’ he added.
‘And?’ Jessie asked a little uneasily. She’d almost forgotten about that note, and she still hadn’t heard anything further from the police.
‘Everything seemed fine, and there was nothing further in the mailbox.’
‘That’s a relief,’ Jessie replied with a loud exhale. ‘Perhaps it was just a one-off. Maybe I should move back tomorrow then,’ she added.
‘If that’s what you want,’ Jack said neutrally, although judging by the clench of his jaw, Jessie knew he didn’t wholeheartedly agree with her suggestion.
‘I’m paying rent on it. It seems silly to have it sitting there and yet not actually live there,’ she pointed out.
‘I suppose so,’ he replied, gruffly.
***
Jessie woke up in the middle of the night having had a bad dream. She couldn’t remember all the details exactly, but it had started off well enough: she and Jack had been walking side by side along the harbour. But then a heavily pregnant Sonia Shum had turned up, and it had instantaneously morphed into a nightmare. Sonia had happily announced that she was in fact carrying twins, and that Jack was indeed the father. That’s when Jessie had woken up with a start. She had a feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach that things were not right.
To clear the image of Sonia from her mind, Jessie went to top up her water in the kitchen. As she did so, something struck her and began to niggle its way from the back of her mind to the front. The interviewer from earlier that day, Frank, suddenly loomed large in her thoughts as she began to wonder about his sudden change in interview questioning. With hindsight, it now seemed to Jessie that he willfully set out to trip her up with his final questions. Why had he done that? Plus, how would he ever know about an obscure report she’d written over a year ago as an unknown economist, unless he’d been actively investigating her? It just didn’t add up. Coupled with her strange dream, Jessie couldn’t help but wonder whether maybe Sonia had something to do with it.
She sighed loudly as she told herself it was an irrational accusation. She had no basis for thinking any such thing, never mind having any evidence, and she told herself to go back to bed and stop trying to find conspiracies where there were none.
But when Jessie woke up the next morning, the niggle was still there. It was there throughout breakfast and for the duration of the morning, as well as lunch. By mid-afternoon, Jessie was restless and unable to give her work the usual attention to detail she prided herself in. She was preoccupied and distracted. Glancing around the quiet office she wondered if anyone would notice if she disappeared for the rest of the afternoon. Rachel was out at
meetings and there was nothing or no one to stop her. She could always say she had an urgent doctor’s appointment if anyone ever questioned her on it.
Feeling like a naughty schoolgirl cutting class, Jessie grabbed her bag and left. Conscious that her internet history may or may not be monitored in the office, she took a taxi to Hong Kong Library and set herself up for the rest of the afternoon at a slightly archaic-looking computer, where she began to do what she did best: research.
First she looked up the guy who had interviewed her for CHKTV, Frank Lam. Not much to find about him, other than that he was a relatively junior member of the business news team. Next she moved on to CHKTV in a bid to work out how they were funded and who owned them. She didn’t have to look for too long before a familiar name cropped up in their board of directors: a certain Mr Shum. Jessie looked further, and confirmed her suspicions that this particular Mr Shum was in fact Sonia’s father. Of course, this didn’t mean anything, Jessie told herself. Sonia’s father didn’t know her from Adam, and as far as she was aware had no reason to embarrass her on national television.
Not really sure where to turn next, Jessie began searching news over the past few months for any items concerning the Shum father and daughter. Jessie was surprised to see that the aging tycoon’s health was failing and that he had signed over a portion of his business responsibilities to each of his children. Although she couldn’t find it written down anywhere in black and white, Jessie would have bet her life savings on the fact that Sonia was now representing her father when it came to the television station.
The question now was: why had Sonia gone to so much trouble to trip her up? Until the interview aired, Jessie wouldn’t know the full extent of Sonia’s influence in the matter for sure, but she had a hunch the piece wouldn’t be edited as Frank had assured her it would be. Jessie knew her hypothesis was far-fetched, but she couldn’t help but think she was on to something.
She then decided to look more closely into Sonia’s company. As it turned out, and previously unbeknown to Jessie, the holding company was one of the companies Jessie had been researching as part of her extra-curricular project in her mission to impress Rachel. Companies in China were often a complex affair, with sister companies and parent companies galore. To the outsider looking in, it was difficult to decipher where one company began and another one finished. This was the case with the numerous Shum family enterprises. The family headed up at least a dozen different subsidiary companies under the umbrella name of Shum Tat Holdings. These sub-companies did all manner of things, ranging from property development to public transportation to even producing and bottling soy sauce. It was a case of many fingers and many more pies. The more she looked, the more Jessie realised that Sonia had a way of sticking her nose into almost any part of not just her life, but pretty much anyone’s life. Through their tangled web, Shum Tat Holdings held stakes in supermarkets, car import companies, even airport ground services. The list went on and on.
Realising she’d lost track of the time, Jessie headed off home with more questions and lines of enquiry percolating through her mind. Next, she wanted to look into Shum Tat’s financial reports over the past few years, but to do that she’d need access to the database in the office. Somehow she’d have to make time for her pet project and hope that her activity wouldn’t be monitored. She didn’t want to have to explain herself until she had something tangible to show from her hunches. But the more she’d looked at Sonia’s company, the more she thought there was more to it than met the eye.
Chapter 38
Jessie spent the next week working long hours at her day job and then putting even more hours into her sideline project to expose Sonia Shum’s wrongdoings. Not wanting to say anything until she was sure of her suspicions, she didn’t tell Jack what she was doing, and was happy for him to think she was just busy. Still, part of her felt like she was leading some kind of double life. When she was with Jack she was a woman in love and being with him took up all of her capacity to think. But when they were apart, such as when Jack was working late at the bar, the Sonia Shum project took up all of Jessie’s thoughts. She continuously tried different scenarios to work out the other woman’s motives when it came to her and Jack.
Time passed quickly and the day of Jessie’s televised interview arrived. She’d been so busy thinking about Sonia, she’d nearly forgotten all about it until Jack had reminded her about it that morning.
‘We’ll watch it together tonight?’ Jack asked, as Jessie dashed off out the door, blowing him a kiss.
‘Sure, but at my place, if you don’t mind. I need to catch up on things there.’ Despite her intention to spend more time at her own flat, Jessie had only spent fleeting moments there to check the mail and pick up changes of clothes. ‘I’ll make sure I finish early tonight and be home in plenty of time,’ she added, giving Jack another goodbye kiss.
Jessie spent her lunchtime putting together her final conclusions on Sonia Shum’s business activities. She was pretty sure she had enough conclusive evidence to take to Rachel. It wasn’t strictly research within the realms of her job description, but she felt she had a duty to report any wrongdoing if she came across it. Rachel didn’t need to know that she’d been digging around solidly for the past week, at the expense of her normal work.
***
As Jessie trudged home that evening for the big screening, the butterflies started to wake up in her stomach, and they weren’t the excited kind of butterflies. More the kind that had been feasting on dread. She just absolutely knew her first foray into the world of television was not going to be all that positive. Hopefully Jack wouldn’t have made a big fuss.
‘Good evening, economic pundit extraordinaire,’ Jack practically sang to her as she entered her flat. He had his arms extended and champagne and flowers in either hand, making the place look even smaller than it already was. So much for him not making a fuss.
‘Thanks,’ Jessie said weakly as a tear rolled down her face.
‘Hey, what’s wrong? Is it that Rachel? What’s she said to you now?’ he demanded as he deposited his offerings and wrapped his arms around her.
‘No. It’s not her. I’m just nervous about this TV thing,’ Jessie admitted, which was true. ‘I’ve been worried about it all week,’ she added, which wasn’t quite so true. What she’d really been worrying about all week was how to stitch Sonia Shum up before she did something to them.
‘I thought you’d been a little quiet,’ Jack said. The look on his face said that her nerves explained everything. ‘I’m sure it’ll be alright. And it’s bound not to be as bad as you think it’s going to be,’ he reassured.
‘I suppose,’ Jessie snuffled as she hugged him tightly.
But Jack was wrong. It was worse than Jessie had thought it was going to be. Much, much worse.
‘Tonight on your main evening news, we report on the escalation of the crisis in the Gaza Strip, the ongoing food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, and the main players in the upcoming Indonesian general election,’ began the young and pretty newscaster seriously in to the camera.
‘But first, we hear from one new expatriate as she seeks to make a name for herself in the Hong Kong banking sector,’ she went on and then looked down at her notes. Then the VT ran and there was a scene of Jessie walking down the corridor at the bank and shaking Frank’s hand, looking all nervous and unsure. Jessie’s eyebrows raised and she looked at Jack quizzically. This was not what they said they’d wanted from her. She was supposed to be providing an overview of the economic situation across the region. Not talking about her life and experiences so far in Hong Kong.
‘So you are new to Hong Kong? Tell us about how things have been for you so far?’ Frank asked from the television.
‘It’s been good, but it’s been more difficult than I’d anticipated,’ replied a smiling Jessie from the screen.
‘How so?’ prodded TV Frank.
‘Well, don’t get me wrong, I really like Hong Kong, but it’s not the friend
liest place I’ve ever been to. This morning I’ve been jostled around on my way to work and had at least two doors slam in my face, from people not holding them open.’
‘People are very busy here,’ Frank laughed. ‘So what do you do here at the bank?’
‘I’m an economist within the research team. We analyse and interpret regional data to help provide other areas of the bank with all the factual information they need before they broker any new deals.’
‘I see. And you head up this team?’ TV Frank asked.
‘No. I’m unimportant. Just a minion, in fact. Rachel Horton is the boss of us all. She’s the queen bee,’ TV Jessie said, clearly trying to be funny. Only, as she watched this car crash play out in front of her, Jessie didn’t think it was funny. It was humiliating. And she knew she was coming across as woefully unprofessional. Jack sat next to her in silence, transfixed by the screen, seemingly unable to comprehend.
‘What’s your boss like?’ Frank asked.
‘Oh, she wears great shoes,’ the Jessie on the television replied enthusiastically. The footage cut to Frank giving a fake laugh.
Jessie cringed as she watched it from the sofa. She couldn’t have sounded any more vacuous had she tried. She wasn’t a blinking stand-up comedian, so why the hell was she trying to act like one? Next the video cut to a panorama shot of Seoul, and in the voiceover they actually included a question-and-answer based on the South Korean economy. And then the bit came that Jessie had been dreading. She hung her head in her hands, as she knew it was going to be bad.
‘I’d like to be more Hong Kong-specific now. How do you perceive the position of Hong Kong as we move towards more comprehensive reunification with mainland China?’ Frank asked.
