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'Midnight-Pearl' (by Eve Adorer)
Introduction
'Midnight-Pearl' is the true story of Emma Jones told by Emma herself.
Emma, a mixed race Jamaican-Welsh girl, had found subconscious racism a keystone of her secondary education. The only expectation from Afro-Caribbean girls at her original senior school was athleticism. In this Emma had not disappointed, being the inter-school long-distance running champion for several years in succession.
But Emma also had brains and beauty, and was determined she would use them both to advance herself. Excelling in mathematics and the sciences, she had signed on to study chemistry and applied mathematics post school at the University of ***** in England. Excelling in facial and physical charms, Emma could easily have become a model.
At eighteen, Emma would be faced with "choices", two apparent and another less obvious. The two apparent choices were college life followed by the constraining world of work in office or laboratory; or a career as a glamour model. The former was worthy but dull; the latter lucrative, but considered by Emma to be demeaning.
Nonetheless, it was toward the second choice that Emma was leaning, when a third "choice" suddenly became Emma's destiny, and to turn out in fact to be no choice at all for her.
For a long time, at first innocently unrealised by her, it was this third future for which Emma was being carefully rounded up: a future of severe restraint and fearsome discipline; but a future of wonderful fulfilment.
Emma begins her story, with her first arrival at college, aged eighteen, and her first meeting with Alena, "Prof", the older woman who would change Emma's life in wholly unexpected ways.
'Midnight-Pearl' (by Eve Adorer)