Mexican Kimono

Samantha knows what she wants from life – and she’s got it!

1 A loving family. OK, her Mum’s plan to marry her off to the world’s most metrosexual man might not be ideal… but it’s only because she cares!

2 A great job. Or at least: a job that leaves plenty of time to update Twitter and shop for designer bargains online.

3 A credit card, with a very generous limit. So generous that she’s just spent over $10,000 on an antique kimono…

But suddenly Samantha’s charmed life starts to fall apart! From a hair-related fire to losing her job, Sam’s facing bad karma – and it all started when she bought that kimono…

Sure, it’s ridiculous. How could a piece of silk ever bring bad luck? But it can! Because, whether Samantha likes it or not, someone wants to teach her a lesson: it’s what’s inside that counts.

But will Samantha slow down long enough to listen?

Also by Billie Jones

Snake Typhoon!

Mexican Kimono

Billie Jones

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Billie Jones 2014

Billie Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © September 2014 ISBN: 9781474007726

Version date: 2018-07-02

BILLIE JONES

is a writer from Australia, who enjoys imagining herself wrestling killer crocodiles and swimming with great white sharks. She thinks she may have to attempt base jumping so she can write about it and bungee-jumping is on the list too. You can find her either in front of her computer writing about her fictional adventures or at the beach searching for the next perfect wave.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Extract

Endpages

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

The Kimono

I never dreamed I’d spend $10,300 on a whim. It was a lot, even for me: shopper extraordinaire. On reflection, if I had ignored Mum’s pleas, I would still be $10,000 better off. Or MasterCard would be.

Let me take you back to how it all began.

Usually I caught the train home after work, but late in the day, while doing a stapler stocktake for my penny-pinching boss, I received an urgent phone call from my mother. I sighed when I saw her name on the screen. She had become ‘alternative’ in the last few years and it had begun to wear me down. Tarot cards, numerology, runes, crystals, incense, cheesecloth, the whole cliché. I silenced it and let Mum visit voicemail again. I was sure those two were developing an intense relationship. Mum rang and poured her heart out at least thrice daily and voicemail just listened. I reapplied my lipstick in the reflection of my shiny silver holepunch, as I listened back to the message.

‘Darling, it’s Mum. I need to see you urgently! The tea leaves have scattered a caution for you and they’re always right. Heed my warning. I won’t rest until I see you. You must come over after work, Samantha. I insist. I’ll make you some of that vegetarian bolognese you love and I have a bottle of that alcohol-free red wine that will go perfectly, so don’t bring anything. Oh heed my warning, darling, heed…’

I shook my head as I listened to the recording. Voicemail had cut her off. Maybe they weren’t as friendly as I thought. My mother’s message sounded like a desperate cry for help.

Vegetarian bolognese and alcohol-free wine? Heed my warning? Who says that? That woman needed an injection of reality. She was my mother though, so I neatened up my desk, ready to leave the office at five on the dot.

I worked as an assistant to an advertising executive. He was a volatile beast of a man who smelt of garlic. I answered the phone, made coffee and remembered his appointments. On my worst days, I went shopping for him. He didn’t like shopping for clothes so he sent me instead. You’d think spending hours traversing aisles of clothes and getting paid for it would be fun.

No. I’ll never forget the time he made me buy him swimming briefs. Let me just say, brief is not the right word. You’re lucky you don’t have a job like mine.

I stayed because it wasn’t exactly taxing work. I breezed through my duties and still had plenty of time for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and eBay. Did have to jazz up the Facebook updates though. You know, bend the truth slightly. Instead of saying:

‘I ground down imported coffee beans that I accidentally inhaled like cocaine, giving me a rush of an entirely different sort, for a whole bunch of unappreciative, pompous executives.’ I say something like:

‘The smell of freshly ground coffee awakens my senses and reminds me of the time I visited Colombia and got mixed up with that drug cartel.’

I’ve never been overseas, I’m more of an instant coffee person, and I once snorted some of Columbia’s finest after a small misunderstanding, but keep that to yourself.

One minute to five, my iPhone beeps with a recorded message. ‘Evacuate. Time to get out of jail. I repeat. Evacuate. Time to get out of jail.’ My personalised cue that work is officially over. Before anyone can stop me, I’m out of those automatic double doors in a flash.

Instead of heading for the train, which will take me to my apartment, I walk a few blocks towards leafy suburbia where my mother lives. I just so happen to pass an auction place, that just so happens to be having an auction. The machine-gun voice of the auctioneer hypnotises me and, before I know it, I’m signed up and bidding with one of those cute little paddles.

Unluckily for the deceased, the auction was filled with a lifetime of their belongings. Lucky for me though, the dead can’t argue price. This person had the most eclectic taste. A horse-drawn carriage, minus the horse, decked out with intricately woven wind chimes. A round bed! I’d never seen one of those before. Where you would buy sheets for one of those? A trapeze! I was stuck in fantasyland imagining when and where this person lived. A gypsy who carted their wares from town to town reading palms and juggling. I pictured a gorgeous ebony-haired Indian boy, riding a horse bareback, tanned, taut muscled chest, gleaming with perspiration …

I tried to shake the image of the exotic boy from my mind.

Unfortunately, I was already a little bit in love with him. Kind of depressing since he was a figment of my imagination. With all the daydreaming, I worried that I had a lot of my mother in me. I scanned the room; it was packed like a panic room in an apocalypse.

A hush fell over the crowd as the next lot was introduced. I turned as if in slow motion and saw the reason for the eerie silence. I’d never seen anything so beautiful: a silk antique kimono. It had its own special glow. It was deep ruby red with flashes of emerald, gold, ivory, onyx and sapphire. The colours shone like precious gems and I could almost smell cherry blossoms just by looking at it. I pictured myself at a tea ceremony, getting my geisha on, drinking out of those dainty little ceramic cups. There was a soul inside that kimono.

My left arm seemed to have a life of its own and, without my consent, kept raising that little white paddle with alarming regularity. I kept my eyes on the kimono as the auctioneer roared 9100, 9200, 9300, like he was calling a horse race. I was in a daze imagining what the kimono would feel like wrapped around my body. Coming out of my reverie, I heard, ‘Sold! $10,300 to the girl in the pink suit.’

Oh my God, oh my God. I was the girl in the pink suit. Did he just say $10,300?

***

I arrived at my mother’s house with the kimono delicately wrapped and housed in an unassuming white box, and prepared myself for the inevitable. Lectures on drinking too much A) coffee B) red wine C) San Pellegrino (too much sodium apparently). Then her invariable diatribes on: not eating enough pH-rich foods, the ones designated for my blood type (B Positive, which is also the approach I take to my life, if you must know). Closely followed by a ‘talking to’ about eating too much red meat, because I’m involved in killing an innocent animal, not to mention the carbon emissions it takes to get said animal sufficiently plumped, but also because it’s not good for my digestion.

How could she know all of this? My eyes, of course. She took an iridology course a few years back and can almost see the winning lotto numbers when she holds your head in a vice-like grip and stares at you like she knows the secrets of the universe.

I push open the red door (good feng shui) and walk in. She never locks the door; she says she will ‘see’ intruders entering before they do.

‘Mum, I’m here.’

‘Oh, darling!’ She rushes up to me and grabs my head in that vice-like grip I mentioned. ‘Too much coffee, too much …’

‘Yeah, yeah, too much fun stuff.’

‘Don’t get snooty with me, young lady, you know what they say…’

‘Your body is a temple, I’m just looking out for you.’

‘We can’t all live on coconut serum and birch twigs, Mum.’

‘That serum was very expensive. I still can’t believe you used it as a tanning agent.’ She put on her hurt face and walked over to the rack of faux wine.

‘Wine, darling?’ she asked as she began uncorking the bottle.

‘Grape juice, you mean? Sure, why not?’ I studied her as she bustled around the kitchen. She really did look good. She was nearing sixty but her smooth, unlined face was still made vibrant by her big blue eyes. She ran and did yoga every morning, and I must admit I was a tiny bit jealous her body was in better shape than mine. It’s the genes. I ended up with Dad’s. I was short, raven-haired and, without practically starving myself and living on a red wine diet, prone to chubbiness.

She handed me a glass and sat opposite, clasping her hands.

‘Now, darling, I don’t want to alarm you but, as I said – the tea leaves have issued a dire warning for you. Something has come into your life that is bad luck. It’s a bad spirit. Stuck in the middle of this world, unable to transition to the next place. You must get rid of it.’

‘Get rid of what?’

‘The tea leaves showed a dress of some sort.’

Like a kimono kind of dress? Only the spirits of MasterCard need issue a warning. They’re the ones who’ll suffer the longest.

‘Get rid of it, hey? Why, what’s going to happen if I don’t?’

‘Oh, honey.’ She wiped at her suddenly wet-looking eyes. ‘Bad stuff. Real bad stuff. I consulted the Tarot and the Hermit came up, which means take extreme caution. So, to be safe I also consulted the Runes and Thurisaz came up, which means danger, possibly wildfire and a giant ogre …’

‘Mum, you can’t be serious!’ I couldn’t help laughing. ‘A giant ogre? What, like Shrek?’ She took things so seriously it was hard to keep a straight face.

‘This is no laughing matter! I also did your numbers and the outcome was not good. The only way to fix it is to change your name. The numbers don’t lie!’

‘Change my name? Mum, have you been smoking a bit too much incense lately?’

‘I know you think I’m cuckoo, so I took one of your handbags to a medium I know. She holds the item and can see into the future, your future, and she saw,’ she starts to sob, ‘you get hit by a car!’

‘Oh no!’ I cried, enraged. ‘Which handbag?’

‘Never mind which bag, the problem is you’re surrounded by bad karma. It’s written all over your aura.’

‘This has been fun. We should do it more often,’ I said, as I picked up the kimono and headed for the front door.

‘What about dinner?’

‘As tantalising as vegetarian bolognese sounds, I already have some cow defrosting on my sink. And we wouldn’t want to waste those carbon emissions by throwing Daisy in the bin.’

My mum looked at me with her tear-stained face. ‘You’re a bad girl sometimes. Please heed my warning, heed…’

I grabbed her in a bear hug and squashed the heeding out of her. ‘Love you.’

***

I was looking out of my apartment window, swirling a nice big glass of Shiraz and doing a little Japanese-inspired dance. Swathed in the antique kimono, I tried channelling my inner geisha. I definitely felt thinner with it on.

I was having a great time dancing to some random Japanese music I’d downloaded from iTunes, when I made a ‘poor choice’, as my mother would say. Honestly, I don’t smoke any more, it’s for chumps, but I do have a couple hidden around the house for those odd moments when you crave something other than chocolate or wine.

I reached under the lounge cushion and removed a small silver cigarette case I had taped under there. (I did try to hide them from myself: the three D’s. Drink, delay, do something else).

Being a non-smoker, I couldn’t find a lighter anywhere so I resorted to lighting the cigarette off the stove. No sooner had I taken the first puff, I smelled a horrible burning plastic stench. It took me a few seconds to realise my hair was on fire. I dropped the cigarette into the sink and swatted at my head with a tea towel while screaming and jumping like, well, exactly like a person whose hair is on fire. I didn’t actually feel any pain, only separation anxiety; those black lustrous locks and I had been through some tough times together. Now, in an instant, they were gone. Not even a goodbye.

I raced into the bathroom to assess the damage. Oh. My. God. If I looked to the left, nothing had changed. When I turned my head to the right, there was a cropped-haired bogan staring back at me. This was a disaster. I had the kind of oval face that did not suit short hair.

***

‘I’m here, show me this emergency then!’

Out of sheer necessity, I’d called my ex-BFF Kylie. She was a hair psychologist. Usually I didn’t trust her with my hair (hence the ex-BFF status), but I figured the damage was done, and where else could I find a hairdresser this late at night?

She put her bag down and walked into the small kitchenette where I was guzzling wine to cheer myself up. I must admit at that stage I gazed lovingly at her Dita Von Teese curls and colourfast red lips. It wasn’t often Kylie looked more immaculate than me.

‘Argh! Holy moley! What the hell happened?’ she said, as her eyes widened.

‘A small fire happened. Can you fix it?’

‘Oh, so now I’m qualified enough to cut your hair, hey? Fix your F-ups?’

‘F-ups?’

‘Swearing doesn’t become me. I’ve changed since we last saw each other. I’ve grown. Developed as a …’

‘Argh, you sound like my mum!’ I said, breaking off what I knew would turn into a monologue.

‘Your mum is actually an extremely switched-on lady. You should listen to her once in a while. She noticed my chakras were out of whack …’

I interrupted again. ‘You traitor!’

She hoisted her hairdressing bag over her fuchsia-clad shoulder and replied huffily, ‘Do you want me to fix your hair or not?’

Imagine making friends with my mother. Kylie must have been all sorts of desperate. I bit my tongue because, really, what choice did I have? I didn’t like it, though. Not one little bit.

‘OK, fine. Do you think there’s any hope?’ I pointed to the bogan side of myself.

‘It’s not going to be easy. Maybe you should go blonde, you know, create a whole new you.’

I eyed her dubiously. ‘Let’s just fix the style first.’

Kylie set to work, her mouth set in a small smile as she spoke soothingly to my hair. I closed my eyes and wrapped the kimono tightly around my waist. Obviously a beautiful piece of antique silk was not the culprit for the small hair fire. My mother really needed to cut back on those mushrooms she had especially hand-picked and delivered from Balingup. I think they were not so much wild as they were magic, and we all know what that means. She was a walking hallucination. Poor woman.

***

My alarm shrieked like a tsunami detector, startling me awake. I stretched lazily, mentally planning my wardrobe until I remembered the unfortunate hair-on-fire incident. I jumped out of bed and stood in front of the mirror. Kylie had cut my hair into a Posh Spice bob and highlighted and lowlighted the hell out of it. It was now a mosaic of blonde and brown. I was quite pleased with the result and I was sure it made my cheekbones more prominent. My face seemed thinner even. I decided to go with my red tailored skort and a fitted white shirt. I knew Posh would approve. Modern, yet stylish.

I arrived at work promptly at 9.20a.m. and was admiring my hair in the reflection of my PC when I smelled garlic. A shadow fell over me, drowning my image in the screen.

‘That is not appropriate work attire. Shorts? What were you thinking?’

I looked over my shoulder to see Mr Boss Man staring at me in condemnation.

‘What? These aren’t shorts. It’s a skort.’

‘A skort?’

‘Yes, shorts at the back, skirt in the front, easier to move in, no embarrassing Sharon Stone moment flash the gash moments, which to me seems highly appropriate for work.’

He shook his head in apoplectic rage (he has some serious issues). ‘If you refer to your employment manual, you are to wear either knee-length skirts or full-length trousers, not skorts. There are no skorts in the manual.’

‘I appreciate your concern, I really do, but as a curvy woman, knee length doesn’t do me any favours. It’s just a personal preference.’

His hands began to quake. His forehead started to bubble with sweat and I feared he was in the early stages of a heart attack.

‘That’s it. You’re fired!’

My heart started to beat like it does in a Zumba class; maybe I was going to have the heart attack. ‘What? Fired? Because of a skort?’

‘You’ve already had two warnings, and this morning the board alerted me to your tweets for the last month.’

Oh no. In the immortal words of my dad, who was a chronic gambler: I’m fucked, and not in a good way.

‘Ah, Twitter? I don’t know what you’re—’

‘Oh, you don’t know?’ He looked down to a thick pile of pages he was holding and read aloud: ‘A plus to having a bald-headed #beast for a boss is doing my lipstick in the reflection of his shiny noggin.’

Oh shit, oh shit. ‘Ah, I meant that as a compliment. It really is very handy and I…’

He looked down at a surprisingly long list of updates. ‘#TGIF. Two hours and counting. May as well shop online until work is over!’

‘Ah, um, you see…’

His evil bloodshot eyes bored into me as his blood pressure clearly sky-rocketed. I think he was trying to scare me or something. Pack your belongings, and consider this your third and final warning. Don’t upset the other staff as you leave. And please note: staplers and the like are company property.’

‘I only took that stapler because I was planning on working from home that weekend!’

‘Yeah, you needed to file all your eBay receipts, I bet!’

With that, he stormed off, leaving me in his garlic wake. I couldn’t believe it. I had only been fired four or five times. It seemed incredible that it was happening now, when I was more mature and executive-like. I always imagined strutting into the office one day, after I’d been discovered as the next Lady Gaga, handing Mr Chrome Dome my resignation letter coupled with a cute but vicious ditty I’d written about him, which would show off my vocal talent and my quick wit. It was such a shame I didn’t actually have any vocal talent. I was one of those rare people who are completely tone deaf.

I gave myself an imaginary pat on the back and a silent pep talk. It would not do to cry in front of these people. Next thing you know, rumours would be flying around town about me, or sneaky footage uploaded to Facebook with a comment like, ‘Sam, the stapler stealer, gets fired again!’ So I pulled myself together and pretended to have a coughing fit, while I surreptitiously dried my eyes with a tissue. Thank God for waterproof mascara.

I told myself these things happen for a reason. Maybe something better was just around the corner. A few niggling doubts cropped up, like who would foot the bill of my online shopping trips, and how the hell was I going to pay my rent, until I remembered my platinum credit card. All I needed to was to plan an escape strategy out of my tenth floor apartment when the MasterCard henchmen came a-knockin’.

I packed my lucky bamboo (thanks, Mum! Lucky my arse!) digital photo frame, cuticle oil, nail files, buffers, fluffy bunny slippers and a few paperclips for good measure, and strode past the other office minions with my head held high. I knew they were probably jealous that I was out of the sinkhole and they were stuck, going down, down, down. Insert evil laugh …

‘So long, suckers!’ I yelled to the crowd. I was sure Jonathan from Accounting had a tear or two welled up for me. I’d always sort of eyed him cautiously. He was cute in a bookish kind of way, but I imagined us going out for a date and him talking about tax and GST. I wink and say, ‘Howz about we talk spreadsheets, hey?’ and he totally doesn’t get it. You know, one of those highly educated stupid people. They’re everywhere. I was stuck talking to a molecular scientist at a party recently. Honestly, I think I was actually stupider after talking to him. Like my IQ had dropped a few notches. With one last lusty look at Jonathan, I was out of that musty hell-hole for good.

Chapter 2

Breakfast at Toffany’s

Since it was only just after ten, I decided to treat myself to breakfast at Toffany’s. It was a small cafe owned by a seriously delusional drag queen named, you guessed it, Toffany. I was always a little terrified when Toff served me. A six-foot-five Amazonian with sparkly silver stilettos and a booming masculine voice was a little too much first thing in the morning, but it’s where all the cool people went so, of course, being cool, it’s where I went too.