The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,10
pray, to thank God for sending you to us, and she insisted on coming with me.”
Ava still didn’t know what to say.
Theresa’s mother stepped forward, tears welling in her eyes, and reached for Ava’s hand. “Bless you,” she said.
“Auntie, please —” Ava said.
“Bless you for helping us.”
“Auntie —”
Theresa intervened. “I’m sorry for disturbing you on a Sunday, at church.”
Ava was grateful that at least she had restrained the mother. “I’ll call you sometime next week, okay?” she said.
Theresa nodded, looking a little confused.
What did Mummy tell her after I dropped them off? Ava wondered.
Ava felt a chill in the air, a hint of autumn, and a reminder that in about twenty hours she would be making the drive south, back to Toronto, back to a life that she had spent two months avoiding.
( 4 )
Ava lived in a condo in Yorkville, in the centre of Toronto, surrounded by boutiques, art galleries, restaurants, and stores on nearby Bloor Street that showcased a wide swath of the world’s luxury clothing, jewellery, and leather brands. It was early Monday afternoon when she pulled up in front of her building, handed her Audi A6 keys to the concierge, and took the elevator with Maria to her unit.
The drive from Orillia had been slow and uneventful. She had dropped off her mother at her house in Richmond Hill, a northern suburb, and then worked her way down the Don Valley Expressway to the city. Maria lived just off the Danforth, the eastern extension of Bloor, only a few kilometres away, but she spent the afternoon with Ava as she stocked up on instant coffee at the Starbucks almost directly across the street from her condo and bought groceries at Whole Foods on Avenue Road. They ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant and went back to Ava’s to have sex. Then Maria left to get organized for her work week.
Ava sat at the window and looked down at Avenue Road. The traffic was moving slowly, and it would be moving even more slowly in the days to come as the city repopulated after the long weekend. What the hell am I going to do with myself? Ava thought before going to bed.
She slept well, was up by seven thirty, made coffee, and retrieved the newspaper from the door. She carried paper, coffee, and her computer to the small table by the kitchen window. She glanced outside. The street below was teeming with traffic and pedestrians, everyone with someplace to go, something to do.
She turned on her computer and waded into her emails. May Ling had sent her daily diary and was urging Ava to think more seriously about joining forces. Amanda Yee said her father was impressed with the business she’d constructed with May and was giving her more and more responsibility; for the first time, he was talking about retiring. She made no mention of Michael. Ava had no reason to think this was a bad sign, but she did. Mimi had emailed to say she and Derek were buying a house in Leaside, a neighbourhood filled with professional daddies and yummy mummies. Ava could already feel her slipping away. And then her father, Marcus, had written that the crisis with Michael had convinced him he needed liquidity. He was going to sell all his properties and put the money into some safe interest-bearing bonds. It would allow him to spend more time with his family, he said. Which one? Ava wondered.
Everyone in flux, everyone in transition, she thought, her feeling of aimlessness deepening.
She decided to go for a morning run when the traffic outside settled down, and then later in the afternoon to walk over to the house where she was tutored in and practised bak mei. She wasn’t back to full strength yet, but she was getting close, and the pain the exercise brought on was becoming more manageable.
She opened the newspaper, scanned the news section, and then turned to the business section. The word Ponzi jumped out at her from the headline on the front page. The article wasn’t related to the Theresa Ng situation, but it brought her name back into Ava’s head and reminded her there was an obligation she needed to fulfill. She reached for the phone and called Hong Kong.
When Uncle didn’t answer his cellphone, she called his apartment. Lourdes, his Filipina housekeeper for more than thirty years, picked up. “Ava, he is lying down,” she said. Ava detected a touch of worry in her voice.