Free The White Amah by Ann Massey Page A

there not to like? She was exquisite: tiny, delicate and fragile. The heart-shaped locked gleamed against skin rich as smooth, golden butter, the perfect canvas to show off precious metal and rare stones. He didn’t begrudge the two thousand ringgit the jeweller had asked for the locket, not in the least, although he knew he’d have got a better deal if he’d taken Ruby with him. It was annoying that the prices weren’t marked on the goods, although he knew it was because there was a dual system: one price for the locals and another for the ex-pats, whom the locals considered fair game. On other occasions Ruby had haggled with the shopkeepers and he ended up paying the local price. She’s probably saved me thousands, he thought fondly. But this time he’d wanted to surprise her.
    His romantic impulse had upset Rubiah’s plan to swindle him. Whenever Roger bought her a gift she always offered to bargain with the shopkeeper. ‘I’ll get it cheaper for you. They think ex-pats are rich and stupid,’ she would say, confirming Roger’s own belief.
    She would slip into conversation with the shopkeeper in Bahasa, thinking how fortunate it was that Roger didn’t understand her language. Then she would suggest to the merchant that he add an extra thousand ringgit to the price and split the difference fifty-fifty.
    Still, the locket was pretty and she only knew one way to reward him. Slowly she removed the flimsy red nightdress trimmed with fake white fur, which she had admired at the airport in Labuan, the duty-free island in the South China Sea where Roger had slipped away for a romantic idyll with his enchanting maid. Rogerlooked at her slim, flawless body and wished once again that he’d carried out his New Year’s resolution.
    Twenty minutes later he lay exhausted on the bed and after a few moments began to snore loudly. Rubiah pulled the sheet over him to cover his nakedness; she didn’t like to look at his pale, flabby body. She didn’t go to sleep. She was already going over the next step in her plan to supplant Heather as his wife.
    To succeed, she needed Jelian’s help and he wanted money, lots of it. Her cousin Dedan told her that only a powerful bomoh, or shaman, could protect her from the white witch’s curse and he had introduced her to Jelian. The magician told her it would cost five hundred ringgit to remove the spell Mei Li’s mother had cast when her baby had been taken. This was an enormous sum of money. Illiterate girls from the longhouses were fortunate if they earned three hundred ringgit a month, but money wasn’t a problem for Rubiah as long as she kept her boss happy.
    The bomoh gave her a paper wrapped in yellow cloth. He told her that it had verses from the Quran and she should read them three times before sleeping for forty-one days. When she admitted that she couldn’t read he told her the spell would work just as well if she placed the paper under her pillow. She was counting off the days when she got word that there was a further ritual Jelian needed to perform if she was to be completely released from the spell, but it would cost another five hundred ringgit. The message came with a warning: if she didn’t pay for the purification ritual, the curse would come back doubled.
    Roger had laughed when she asked for money to pay the witch doctor and dismissed her fears as uneducated superstition. He told her she was a silly, gullible little ‘jungle bunny’and he wouldn’t let her throw his money away on a cheat and a charlatan.
    Faced with arrogant, smug, ill-informed Western prejudice, Rubiah knew she had no alternative but to help herself to the cash left carelessly around the house by her rich employers. She didn’t feel guilty taking their money. They had so much, and after all, it was their fault she’d been cursed in the first place.
    When Rubiah entered the darkened house Jelian’s wife took her through to the living room for the ritual cleansing ceremony. The three-piece