The Mak Collection Read online

  Becky had a penchant for severe hair-colouring faux pas—platinum, then red, then platinum again—and cleavage revealing, see-through designer outfits that endeared her no end to the paparazzi and the glossy gossip magazines. Since Makedde had arrived, she had seen Becky countless times on covers and in television ads for fast food. Somehow she had convinced the conservative department store crowd that she was a fashion item.

  Wearily, Makedde pushed open the elegant doors, lugging her heavy black model bag on her shoulder. It was her first job since Friday’s grisly discovery, and she wasn’t feeling quite up to it. A few shoppers turned and watched Makedde stride through the store. She made her way to the escalator, past make-up counters gleaming like lolly-shop shelves with polished glass and shiny gold and silver surfaces covered in rows of colourful lipsticks and eye shadows. A heady, slightly sickly floral scent permeated the entire ground floor; a mixture of hundreds of brands of expensive perfumes and cosmetics.

  After seven, scenic escalator rides, which left her wondering why she hadn’t just caught the lift, she eventually located the fashion show salon. At the head of a long, thin, T-shaped catwalk was a huge banner bearing Becky’s name and several three-foot-high images of her airbrushed, pouting face. The photograph was fashionably severe, and Makedde wasn’t sure it suited her. Around the catwalk at least two hundred empty chairs waited for the paparazzi, glitterati and general fashion folk who would soon be arriving. True to form, the gossip columnists had been feverishly speculating upon Becky’s dubious fashion credentials, but Makedde tried to keep an open mind.

  The dressing-room door could be seen to the right of the stage, and as she stepped inside, Mak was startled by an instant and intense head-to-toe appraisal. She looked around at seven, beautiful, frowning and unfamiliar faces and thought, this is going to be fun. She smiled politely and then glanced at the clothes on the countless racks jammed into the small room.

  “Excuse me?” she said to a refreshingly average looking woman bearing the name tag “Sarah”. “I’m Makedde. Do you know which is my section?”

  The young girl, who was probably a volunteer dresser, escorted her to a rack bearing a piece of paper marked “Macayly”. Even with Makedde’s composite card stapled to the rack, they had still managed to get her name wrong.

  She went immediately for the size tags in the back of each garment. The standard model size was generally an Australian ten, but some designers made their samples in eights. Makedde had no illusions about her size; she couldn’t fit an Aussie size eight if her life depended on it. She bit her lip as she came across a lacy skirt labelled with the dreaded number. Surreptitiously, she attempted to tug the skirt over her hips. The material had no give, the lace didn’t look like it would hold and she couldn’t get the darn thing further than half-mast.

  “This skirt is too small,” Makedde admitted self-consciously to the dresser. In a room full of waifs it felt like a confession of first-degree murder.

  “We’ve had trouble with some of the sizes,” the dresser said. “We’ll switch your first outfit with someone else’s.” She eyed the other models and pointed to a particularly skinny one. “She’s swimming in that slip dress. You’ll fill it out much better. Why don’t you two swap?”

  That was a relief. Normally a stylist would stare at her with disgust and say something like, “Oh dear, you are big. Are you having your period?”.

  Makedde was often intimidated by the size and beauty of other models, and ill-fitting clothes only highlighted her insecurities. Logically, she knew she had no reason to feel this way, but she was acutely aware of every perfect set of lips, every wide pair of eyes, every slim waist and tiny butt around her. Being more voluptuous than every other model in the room could make her feel like a freak if she was having a bad day. In that atmosphere, her flesh seemed sinful beside tiny bodies with skin pulled tightly over bone. It seemed indulgent to have cleavage, or rounded hips. Sure, she was a size ten, in good shape and by no means fat, especially for her height, but it was hard not to feel uneasy when a garment didn’t fit. Especially when she was getting paid for an hour’s work what most people earn in a week. She supposed that very slim girls might feel the same way when they didn’t fill out a bra. It was crazy.

  Just as she was about to try the new dress, a familiar face walked in. Loulou, a make-up artist Makedde had worked with several times, exploded through the doors like a fashionable tornado. She carried an enormous make-up case covered in stickers from all over the world, along with several bright shopping bags overflowing with hot rollers, velcros and hair bands. Her dramatically pencilled eyebrows seemed to perpetually exclaim, “Wow!”, her hair was a frizzy bleached eruption and her fingernails danced with blue glitter.

  “Makedde!” Loulou cried, spotting her. Loulou gave Makedde a hug that almost knocked the wind out of her. She was a wild one, but a genuine character; she never took anything too seriously, and she seemed to vibrate with enthusiasm even when she stood still. She was an eternal optimist, and was just what Makedde needed.

  “Loulou, how are you?”

  “Great! How ya goin’? You look divine. I heard you were in Sydney.” Her enthusiasm was catchy, and Makedde found herself instantly wanting to giggle and snort and call people “sweetie”.

  “How long has it been? Two years?” Mak asked as she stepped into the new slip dress.

  Loulou thought for a moment. “Has it been that long? Sweetie, you haven’t been here all this time, have you?”

  “God, no. I was just on a direct booking when I saw you. It was only for a week.” She zipped the dress up as far as she could reach and asked, “Does this fit?”

  “Divine, sweetie. Divine.”

  “That’s good enough for me. Have you been away?”

  “Paris. It was fabulous!”

  “When are you going back?”

  At this, her bubbly expression momentarily faltered. “Oh, I don’t know…”

  Paris was a hard market, and Makedde guessed that Loulou was one of the large percentage who hadn’t earned enough to pay off her trip.

  “Did you work anywhere else while you were over there?” Makedde asked.

  “Germany. That was marvellous.”

  Divine. Fabulous. Marvellous. “OK” just wasn’t in Loulou’s vocabulary. Mak could relate to her attitude to Germany. The catalogues were tedious, but the Deutschmark was worth a bundle. It was a great place to work on one’s bank account.

  Loulou looked around, smiling. “So what do you think of these clothes?” She pointed to a tiny red dress with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline. “That’ll look great with your cleavage.”

  Makedde laughed. “Looks like this will be a brafree zone. I can foresee having a very embarrassing accident in that one.”

  “Let it all hang out, sweetie! The snappers will love you!” Loulou paused, her expression becoming more serious. “Hey, I’m sorry about your friend. I never met her, but everyone is so shocked. Just horrible.”

  “Yeah.” Mak wondered if Loulou could help with the identity of Cat’s boyfriend. “Hey, do you know any guys who go by the name of JT?”

  Loulou cocked her head to one side. “JT? Nah. There was J.T. Walsh, the actor.”

  “That’s not who I’m thinking of.”

  “Sorry. I better get started here. I’ll talk to you later, sweetie.”

  “You got it.”

  The show coordinator, a tall, slim, ex-model type, ushered the girls onto the stage outside the dressing-room. The white, polished runway came up around three feet off the floor; just enough to make Makedde nervous about wearing the standard model G-string in some of her shorter frocks.

  “Right,” the coordinator began, “we want attitude out there today. No smiles. There are four routines, seven outfits each.” A couple of models, including Makedde, pulled out little notepads and began to scribble as the woman talked. “First routine begins with four models entering on the beat, then going single and ending with a staggered four.”
Makedde took down the string of confusing choreography instructions, doodling lines and arrows on her notepad.

  She stood there writing, and suddenly had the uneasy sensation that she was being watched. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she turned around, scanning the large room. The double doors were swinging slightly, but no one was near them. The other girls were all busy listening or writing and the room was still empty, apart from a couple of preoccupied ladies in fashionable black discussing the stage display.

  “The finale routine is a single, centre turn, circle and a peel out,” the coordinator went on.

  Peel out?

  When asked if everything was clear, the models nodded their heads in agreement and the rehearsal began. An impressive stereo system filled the hall with a raucous, alternative dance beat, and the first group of models began their routine. Within moments there was confusion, with girls crashing into each other and barely regaining their balance on spindly high heels. The next group tried to execute the routine with more caution, nervously shuffling past each other. The coordinator was pulling her hair out. After an hour of futility, the routines were shortened and simplified.

  All this for one twenty-minute show.

  When the rehearsal finally ended, they were ushered back inside the dressing-room. Loulou was frantic. They had gone overtime, and she only had forty-five minutes left before the show to make up eight models and create eight elegantly up-swept hairdos. Loulou was flying solo and didn’t have the benefit of the store’s beauty salon and help from the staff who worked there.

  Precisely forty minutes later, after a well-orchestrated operation, Makedde was checking her teeth for lipstick when Becky Ross sashayed into the dressing-room, decked out in a plunging cutaway dress. Today her hair was very long and very blonde. Mak suspected extensions. Becky did look fantastic, although perhaps a bit overmade for the cameras. No doubt she had spent hours with her personal make-up and hair artists.

  She swanned around backstage, surveyed the painted, preened and up-swept group of models, and said, without blinking an eyelid, “Can we have the hair down? I’d like to see it long.”

  The coordinator went white, and Loulou went even paler. The show was due to begin in five minutes. Hair was hurriedly unpinned and within fifteen minutes the models had been readied for the second time and Becky was posing on stage to signal the start of the show.

  Makedde was the first model out and as she strode down the runway bathed in hot lights, she was critically and intimately examined by the invisible crowd. She was nothing short of statuesque and towered over the troupe, a full six feet and three inches in her lofty shoes.

  As usual, it was chaos backstage—models, waxed to within an inch of their lives, wearing nothing but flesh coloured G-strings, were running around with panic-stricken dressers trying to get them into their next outfit on time. Mak had one thirty-second change, and three dressers worked as a tag team to hoist up her black pantyhose and get her zipped, combed and adjusted. At the end of it all, Makedde and the seven other models poured onto the stage in two elegant lines and engaged in that peculiar type of applause, quite unique to fashion shows, where the palms stay glued together and only the fingers clap. The photographers were smiling, having been given a feast of photo opportunities, but the fashion elite were offering only weak praise. Despite the time, effort and expense, Makedde had a sneaking suspicion the whole exercise had been more of a publicity stunt than a fashion success.

  Later on, as the crowd was dispersing, Becky Ross could be heard rabbiting on about her designs to a gaggle of television reporters. She was only twenty-one years old, but handled the press like a pro; serving up quick sound bites for the cameras and outrageous page three-style poses for the salivating photographers.

  Wary of the tabloid vultures who were prowling for an inside scoop on Catherine, Makedde evaded the crowd by following a waiter through a staff-only door backstage. She passed trays of minuscule ready-to-be-served hors d’oeuvres of goats cheese, wafers and prosciutto, and within five minutes had found her way through the maze of corridors down to the street outside.

  CHAPTER 21

  Patience.

  As he waited for his girl to come through the double doors, he hid as best he could his growing excitement. Like a big cat hunting, his movements were considered, slow and unremarkable until the very moment of attack. He imagined her heavily made-up face, her sleek curves and those slender feet, wearing stilettos for his private pleasure. She would make her way home alone and he could take her when the ideal moment presented itself. And there would be an ideal moment. He knew that. The photo in Catherine’s wallet was fate, as was the letter he found asking him to display Catherine’s body, his handiwork, for her to witness at the beach. Now his prize had paraded down the runway in sexy dresses and whore’s shoes, just for him, and soon he would have her. The waiting would be over.

  In time, the other fashion models came through the double doors, chatting and laughing, some nibbling like hamsters on tiny snacks. Makedde wasn’t with them. That was good. He wanted her to leave alone.

  Another twenty minutes passed before the first inkling of doubt crept into his mind. All of the guests and the other models had left, so where was his prize? He peeked through the doors. The starlet was still talking to a couple of reporters near the stage, but everyone else was gone. Where was Makedde? How could she have slipped away?

  Biting disappointment seized him, welling up into a violent rage. More waiting? No! He didn’t want to wait any longer. He demanded satisfaction. He moved away from the doors, blending into racks of imported designer clothing, and forced his rage down, storing and safe-keeping it. He kneeled on the carpet where no one could see and held his pounding head.

  Minutes later, the soap starlet emerged with two young men tagging along behind her. She flicked her platinum hair as she spoke, “It was a great success!” she cooed. “They’ll love me in L.A. too, I just know it.” She wiggled her way towards the elevators, hips moving seductively, her tanned body tottering on tall stilettos.

  He would have satisfaction.

  Preoccupied, Becky Ross and her small entourage stepped into the elevator, paying scant attention to the man who slipped in the car with them.

  CHAPTER 22

  Later that afternoon, Makedde stretched out on the couch and put her aching feet up. Involuntarily she began to brood, and couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to return to Canada. She imagined the whole family would come to see her sister’s new-born after the birth, to hug Theresa and congratulate her. “Oh, she’s done so well,” they would say, and then turn to Makedde and shake their heads. “No children, no husband, no mother, and now not even a best friend. Poor girl.” How depressing. Makedde loathed the thought of the attention it would bring, and the constant reminders.

  That’s why she’d told barely a soul about Stanley.

  Stanley was the stranger with the threatening switchblade and the penile weapon, the man who’d violated her life and her trust some eighteen months before. It wasn’t so much the shame, but the constant reminders that had led her to keeping it so tightly under wraps. Only her father knew, and the police. And of course Catherine, who’d helped her so much afterwards. She’d held her hand while Mak had been forced to recall the experience in detail, for the third time, for yet another Vancouver detective. Were the victims of muggings asked so many questions? Such intimate questions? Why had she felt on trial? In the end her case couldn’t be proved on its own. If the laws had been different, and separate charges could have been tried together, she knew the outcome would have been very different.

  Mak hadn’t wanted her family to know. It was better to have secrets than to feel their pity. She hated pity.

  But Stanley was in jail now, although not for what he’d done to her.

  Auntie Sheila would probably try and set her up with some dentist or accountant again when she got back. It seemed like everyone was trying to get her to settle down. “Why ar
e you always running off by yourself? What do you want to be a shrink for? You’re a pretty girl, why don’t you find a nice man to take care of you?” They just couldn’t understand why she ran the other way when her sister’s bridal bouquet was tossed.

  The telephone rang, mercifully snapping Makedde out of her melancholia. She hesitated before answering it, prepared for another crank call, but she was relieved to hear Detective Flynn’s voice.

  “Sorry to bother you, Makedde. Uh…” A moment of silence followed, and it occurred to Mak that she liked the way he said her name. “I have been a little concerned,” he continued, “I just don’t like you getting mixed up in this mess.”

  It was ridiculously good to hear his voice, and Mak sensed that the impersonal formality that first plagued their communication had vanished. Something about their last meeting had changed things.

  “Has Tony been bothering you at all?” he went on.

  “Not lately.”

  The line was silent again. She could hear phones going off in the background.

  “Yeah…” He paused. “Well, I should go. I just wanted to make sure you’re OK.”

  She suspected that wasn’t what he was calling about. “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  “Good. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Makedde hung up and crossed her arms, slightly puzzled by their odd, plotless conversation. When the phone rang again, she hoped it was Andy. It was.

  “I forgot to ask you,” he said. “How’s that cut?”

  “Oh, it was nothing. A mere flesh wound, as they say.”