Her gaze was drawn to the shed, and because it was the nearest she could get to Chang An Lo right now, she opened the glass door and walked down toward it. The air was cold and crisp in her lungs and her head began to clear. She became aware of a crunching noise. A rat was gnawing at one of the wooden planks at the bottom of the shed. Her pulse picked up. What was it after?

‘Scoot,’ she shouted and the creature fled.

The padlock was still locked but the bolt attached to it hung uselessly on the door, the screws prised out. She gave a faint moan. Her hand reached out and touched the door. The wood was warm in the sun. Adrenaline hit her system. She pushed. The door swung open. She screamed.

Blood. So much of it. Red. Sticky. Everywhere. Walls. Ceiling. Floor. On the wire of the hutch and on the sacks. As if someone had painted with blood. The raw stench of it mixed with the stink of faeces but Lydia didn’t notice the smell.

‘Sun Yat-sen,’ she screamed.

The rabbit was lying in the middle of a pool of blood on the floor, his white fur caked with bright crimson. Even his big yellow teeth were red. Lydia knelt beside him, careless of her school uniform, and tears poured down her cheeks.

‘Sun Yat-sen,’ she whispered and lifted him into her arms.

He was still warm. Still alive. But barely. One leg twitched and a strange strangled screech whistled from his small pulsing body. His ears had been hacked off and rammed into his mouth, and his throat was cut. She pulled out the long, soft ears. Held him close. Rocked him and crooned to him. Until the final spasm stiffened his spine. His bloodshot eyes started to glaze.

Her head lowered over him, sobs raked her body. The blow, when it came, wiped out her misery. Darkness took over.

51

Chang An Lo opened his eyes. Something was wrong. He could feel it. Tight in his bowels like wire.

He lay very still, listening.

But the squawking children’s voices as they played in the courtyard masked all other noises, and a soldier’s boot on the stair would pass unnoticed. Silently he rolled out of bed. From under the pillow he took the curl of copper hair and from beneath the mattress he drew the knife.

He stood behind the door. The smell of blood in his nostrils.

Li Mei showed no surprise. Her almond-shaped eyes looked at the blade in his hand but her face remained calm.

‘What is it?’ she asked as she placed the tray she was carrying on a delicate chiffonier of honey-coloured wood.

‘A cold wind in my mind.’

‘All is safe. Tiyo Willbee is an honourable man. You can trust him.’

Chang said nothing. He watched her pour hot water from a teapot with a bamboo handle into a bowl of dried herbs. He noticed she always did it in front of him, and he knew she was showing him that she added nothing extra. He need not fear poisons. He respected her for that. She cared for him well, coolly and calmly, with an observant eye, but he longed for the passion of Lydia’s nursing, her determination to snatch him from the jaws of the gods and to breathe fire into his blood once more. He missed that.

‘Any news?’ he asked softly.

‘The grey bellies are in the harbour, I’m told, hundreds of caps bearing the Kuomintang sun. They are searching ships.’

‘For Foreign Mud?’

‘Who knows why?’ She handed him the bowl and he bowed his thanks. Her hair was scented with cinnamon. ‘People say – but what do people know? – that Communists are being smuggled south by ship to Canton and to Mao Tse-tung’s camps. The sound of guns is in the air today.’

‘Thank you, Li Mei.’

She bowed. ‘I am honoured, Chang An Lo.’ With a rustle of Shantung silk she left the room.

The smell of blood. It was strong in his nostrils.

‘She hasn’t come.’

‘No, Chang, I’m afraid she’s not at school today.’

‘Is that not strange?’

‘No, not really at this time of year. This is always the worst term for sickness and influenza at my school. Well, any school actually.’

‘Yesterday she was well.’

‘Don’t fret, I’m sure she’s fine. To be honest I suspect that blighter Alfred has shut her up at home to keep her away from you. You can’t blame him really, old chap. She’s still young.’

‘I don’t blame him. He is her father now.’

‘Exactly.’

‘She needs guarding.’

‘Quite so.’

‘But not by him.’

Lydia’s leg hurt. Her head throbbed.

But when she forced her eyelids up, the blackness beyond them was as dense as inside her mind. She tried them open and tried them shut. Nothing changed. She moved an arm and felt her elbow crunch against something hard. She touched her hip and thigh. She was naked. Shivering.

That’s what decided it.

It was a nightmare. She was in one of those terrifying caught-in-a-trap nightmares. No clothes. Everyone staring. A splinter of hell. Stuck in her mind.

She closed her eyes and spiralled back down into nothingness, knowing she would soon wake in her own bed.

Strange about the blackness though.

52

‘My father killed himself because of opium.’

Theo was shocked. To hear those words come out of his own mouth. It was not something he’d told anyone before, not even Li Mei. It was as though he’d vomited up a stone that had been stuck hard in his gullet for a long time.

The young Chinese was propped up in bed. He didn’t look good. His gaunt face was grey, lifeless as ash, and bruised shadows circled his eye sockets. His limbs lay loose like a puppet’s at his side, but his black irises were full of some dark emotion. Theo wasn’t sure whether it was hatred or fear. He had a feeling it was hatred. But all Communists hated the foreigners in their land. Who could blame them? Yet it irritated Theo that they conveniently ignored the benefits Westerners brought with them. The industries. Electricity. Trains. Banking expertise. China needed the West more than the West needed China. But it came at a cost.

When the Chinese spoke, there was an edge to his voice. ‘I know this happens here in China. Death and opium, they share the same path. But I did not think it was so in England.’

Theo shrugged. ‘People are the same wherever they live.’

‘Many fanqui think otherwise.’

‘Yes, that’s so, and my father was one. He believed with all his soul in the supremacy of the British, and of his own family in particular.’

‘Grief hides in your words. An ancestral shrine for him in your house would honour his spirit.’

‘There’s my elder brother too.’ The words kept flowing now that the stone was dislodged.

A shrine? Why not? Every Chinese home had one to keep the ancestral spirits well fed and happy. Why shouldn’t he? Except of course he might not have a home much longer, and he had a nasty feeling prisons didn’t go in for that kind of thing.

‘He was handsome, my brother Ronald. Had everything. A Cambridge blue and the pride of my father’s heart.’

‘Your father was fortunate.’

‘Not really. Papa gave over the family investment business to him, but it all went belly-up. My brother started on opium to help him sleep at night and… Well, it’s the old story. He bankrupted the company and defrauded clients to cover it. So…’

Theo silenced his tongue. He could not understand why these memories had surfaced now. He thought they were dead and buried. Why now? Why to this Chinese Communist? Was it because, just like his father before him, both he and Chang An Lo faced the ruin of all their hopes and plans for the future?

‘So?’ Chang prompted quietly.

Theo reached for a cigarette but he didn’t light it, just twisted it between his long fingers. ‘So… my father took his shotgun. Killed my brother. In his office, sitting at his desk. Then blew out his own brains. It was… frightful. Awful scandal, of course, and Mother took an overdose of something nasty. After the funerals, I came out here. That’s it. Ten years and I’m still here.’