AN UNCOMFORTABLE MOMENT.

Bianca Castleford-Brown was sitting in a cafeteria in a shopping mall, her Jimmy Choo handbag resting on the table beside her and two shopping bags at her Manolo sandalled feet. She wore a pair of cream slacks and a pale green blouse, and her fingernails had been freshly manicured a shade of dusky pink and her blonde hair was brushed back from her ears, revealing her sapphire blue earrings. A cappuccino in front of her, which she sipped, while in conversation with her friend, Rosetta.

To the right of Bianca, clad in black boots, navy blue slacks with some bleach stains, a powder blue blouse and with her greying black hair tied back in a ponytail, beavering away, shining the stainless-steel cover on a rubbish bin, was Malissa, a Filipina woman who had escaped domestic violence and who was employed as a cleaner.

Bianca was telling Rosetta how she had just gone and bought some new gym gear for the belly dancing class that she would be attending the next night.

“What does Rupert think about you attending that?” asked Rosetta.

“I haven’t told him, yet. He wouldn’t let me do it as he thinks that I will want to be the entertainment at Buck’s Nights. As if I would want something so vulgar.”

“He has no idea, then?”

“None whatsoever. But you’re not going to tell him, are you?”

“No. Not unless you do.”

“I had best be going,” said Bianca, as she glanced at her watch. “I have a few things to do before I have to get the kids from school.” She then bumped the empty paper bag that had contained the Pecan Danish that she had eaten onto the ground as she bent down to pick up the department store bags that contained her designer label gym gear at her feet and made no attempt to pick up the empty bag.

“Don’t forget,” began Rosetta.

Bianca shot Malissa a contemptuous look as she walked over, her long handled dustpan and broom in her gloved hands, as she came over to sweep up the scrunched-up bag. She was, after all, the cleaner.

The following evening, at 5:45pm, Rupert arrived home and Bianca told him that she had left him some lasagna in the fridge and that she would be home from her aerobics class at around 8 o’ clock, before she gave him a peck on the cheek and climbed into her small Mercedes Benz. She arrived at the hall on the other side of town shortly before 6:20 and walked into the hall and noticed a woman in her 60s with grey hair pulled back into a cottage loaf bun, dressed in an old sweatsuit.

“You here for the class?” she asked Bianca.

“Why, yes? Are you the teacher?”

“No. She should be along soon.”

At 6:30pm, a diminutive woman with her hair pulled back and her head covered by a light gold colored band securing a transparent light green veil walked out from an internal door in the hall. She had dark olive skin and was wearing a multicolored bra top and puffy legged pants. In her round navel, she had what appeared to be a ruby. “Good evening,” she said, in what seemed to be an American accent. “I’m Malissa.”

“Could she be?” wondered Bianca.

“Welcome to the class. Before we get into it, I’ll just ask everyone to introduce themselves.”

Bianca felt a sudden urge to go to the bathroom, and she looked around the hall for the sign. “What if she recognizes me?”

Standing in the centre of the room was the same woman she had seen in the navy-blue slacks spattered with bleach stains, whose job she thought it was to clean up after others, as a belly dance teacher!