‘Rihanna, dahhhlink!’ the voice shouts again.
Of course, they’re calling me. I spot a couple in their late fifties or early sixties making a beeline for me.
There’s movement and a blur of too-bright colours, and then I’m enveloped in the woman’s arms and a cloud of too-strong Issey Miyake, although if you ask me, any amount of Issey Miyake is too strong.
‘It’s you,’ the woman says in my ear. I’m not really the ‘you’ she thinks I am, but the fact that she recognises me despite myself is a massive relief.
The woman kisses me on one cheek, then the other cheek and then finally goes in for a third kiss back on my first cheek. All of which feels like too many kisses from a complete stranger.
‘We do three kisses here, dahlink. Because the Dutch are three times as gezellig,’ she gushes, her accent strong.
‘Welcome to Amsterdam,’ a man says from just behind the woman, and I hope he stays where he is. I’m not much of a stranger-hugger, particularly after fifteen hours of panic sweating. I try to place the couple’s accents, which are sing-song and don’t sound anything like Afrikaans, so they can’t be Dutch. The man’s not fat exactly, but he’s filled out, rounded at the edges. His face is taut and barely lined, but overly tanned, almost orange. His eyebrows are perfectly plucked into straight lines too high above his eyes to look natural (and is that mascara?). When he smiles, his bleached teeth are almost fluorescent.
‘I’m David,’ he says, extending his hand for a business-like shake, for which I’m grateful. ‘We spoke on the phone.’
I nod, as if I know what he’s talking about.
‘Me, I’m Dania,’ the woman says. She’s wiry and muscular, with the body of a retired career dancer. Dark roots peek out at the scalp of her short peroxided blonde hair. Her lips are swollen with collagen and she has clumps of eyeliner gunk in the corners of her eyes. ‘Your flight was good, ja?’
‘Okay, thanks,’ I say.
‘This is your first time in Amsterdam, dahlink?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent, isn’t it, David?’ Dania says, elbowing him in the ribs. ‘We’re very excited. In twenty years of doing the show we’ve never had a Rihanna before, have we dahlink?’
‘Or a South African,’ he adds.
‘It was our son, David Junior’s idea. He wants us to find more modern acts. So I’m not familiar with all your songs yet, but we’re no strangers to showbiz,’ she says, doing jazz hands.
David nods enthusiastically, again. He’s like one of those plastic nodding dogs people put on the back seats of their cars.
‘Let me guess …’ Dania takes me by the chin, her fingernails digging into my skin as she inspects my face. ‘Cheek implants? Ja?’
‘What? No! Of course not!’ I say and pull my head out of her grasp. ‘These are my own cheeks.’
‘Brow lift?’ David asks.
I shake my head.
‘A boob job, then?’ Dania asks, as both of them stare blatantly at my chest.
‘No, nothing,’ I say, annoyed.
Dania pauses to re-evaluate me through critical eyes. ‘Sometimes performers send us their pictures, and when we see them in real life, they look nothing like it. It takes quite a lot of work for some.’
‘And tape,’ David cuts in.
‘But you’re mostly okay,’ Dania says, looking me up and down like she would a prize cow. I’m almost waiting for her to run a hand over my rump. ‘You are a little heavier than in your pictures though, ja?’
Heat floods my cheeks. Are they effing serious? I’ve only just met these people. The weight comment is a low blow. One of my biggest worries about this whole scam is that Natalie is quite a bit smaller than me.
‘But the fat will come off with a little work,’ Dania says.
I open my mouth, about to blurt out that I’m tired and sweaty and not a piece of meat, that I’m not actually who they think I am and I don’t need this scrutiny. And that I don’t think this is going to work, but David cuts me off before I blow everything.
‘She looks tired, shall we get her to the house?’ he says.
‘Of course, ja.’ Dania throws up her hands in a jangle of bracelets. ‘How unthinking of me, keeping you standing here like a potato sack!’ She slips an arm through mine and it takes pure effort of will not to pull away. ‘We will become close, like sisters. I can tell. Like pod peas,’ she says.
I’m tempted to say she’s probably too old to be my sister, more like an aunt. But she interrupts my thoughts.
‘… Okay so we go home, ja? You have the performance at eight, so we must be moving so you can settle.’
Wait a minute … ‘I’m performing tonight?’ I gulp.
‘Ja. Tonight. You received the schedule that was sent by David Junior on the email, yes?’
‘He sent it already three days ago,’ David says as he fishes for his keys in his pocket, and then turns towards an exit.
Thanks a lot, Natalie!
Dania clacks off behind him.
I reach for the case and follow. Not because I want to, but because I really don’t have any other choice.
My breath steams a pulsing misty shape on the back-seat window. I wipe it away with the back of my hand, only to create another one almost immediately. There hasn’t been enough time between agreeing to come here and do this, and then getting on the plane, to build up any kind of real idea of what Amsterdam would be like. Somewhere in the back of my mind I pictured old canal-type postcard images and flashes of the infamous red-light district. But since leaving the airport car park, we’ve been driving through an urban landscape that could be anywhere, with glass-clad high-rises reflecting low, grey skies.
Accordion music blares from the car stereo, and my stomach lurches at David’s stop–start driving. Dania doesn’t appear to notice, even though she keeps jerking forward, her collarbone straining against the seat belt. She’s alternating between singing what could be Swedish lyrics and volleying questions at me about South Africa. I think she’s muddled us up partly with Uganda and partly with Zimbabwe, but I’m too exhausted to correct her.
‘Do you see often lions at home?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I respond.
‘I’ve always wanted to go to Africa. You belong to a tribe, yes? We have nothing like that at home in Sweden. They say it’s beautiful in South Africa. But the crime …’ She ticks her tongue against the back of her teeth.
After twenty-five minutes on the highway, the landscape changes and we weave through busy, narrowing streets. I finally catch a glimpse of my first canal. It looks dark and oily, but also somehow rich, old and majestic at the same time.
David finally fishtails the car onto a cobbled street, shadowed by tall but surprisingly narrow stone and brick buildings that slant up into the sky.
‘I’ve never seen so many bicycles,’ I say. They stream around us, ferrying women, children and dogs, even families of four, in wagon-like trailers and bicycle back-seats. David almost takes out a dozen of them, making me yelp out loud a few times, but neither he nor Dania notices.
‘You find parking, kära,’ Dania says, opening her door before he’s stopped the car fully. ‘I’ll take Rihanna up, show her around and meet you back at the club, ja?’
I clamber