Lydia tried talking, but the only solace Valentina sought at such times was in the bottle. Lydia was a fine judge of the moment when she could half lift her mother off the sofa and roll her into bed. Too soon and she became aggressive. Too late and she was unable to stay upright. Her slender body never seemed to grow heavier despite the food that now appeared regularly on the table. Neither Valentina nor Lydia ate much of it. Only Sun Yat-sen grew fatter and more contented.

‘Would you like a proper hutch for your rabbit?’ Alfred asked one Saturday when he’d come to take Valentina to the races. She had always loved horses.

‘Yes.’ Lydia had meant to say no.

‘Well, my dear, I’ll be delighted to buy one. Let’s go and choose it now while your mother,’ he smiled indulgently at Valentina, ‘does whatever it is your mother does.’

Out in the marketplace Lydia chose the biggest and brashest rabbit hutch she could find. One with separate compartments and special zinc drinking and feeding bowls and funny little curling decorations on top like a pagoda. She knew Alfred was bribing her. He knew. And she knew.

‘Lydia, I’m confident we can make this work. Us, I mean. You and I as part of the same family. I’d like us to try.’

Lydia bit her tongue. Today she had let him buy her and she felt dirty, her skin all gritty. Is that how Mama felt each day? Bought and dirty. Is that why she’s drinking so much when he’s not around, to flush away the grit? Lydia looked at his shiny spectacles and his polished cheeks and wondered if he had even a grain of an idea how much he was hurting them both. No, she decided, Alfred Parker’s eyes were blind behind their ugly thick lenses and his mind was a grey colourless box of self-righteousness. How could he possibly think she would ever want to be part of the same family?

‘Thank you for the hutch,’ she said coolly and walked up the stairs.

The brown fish slipped through the cold clear current of the river, rippling its wide body smoothly over the gravel. This time, Lydia told herself. This time. She held her breath. Tense and still.

Her spear sliced down through the water. And missed. The fish fled. She cursed it and waded back onto the narrow strip of sand at Lizard Creek, where she squatted down under the dazzling blue sky of autumn and waited for the flurry of panic in the river to subside. Just being here in this place brought her closer to Chang. She remembered the feel of his damaged foot in her hand, the weight of it on her palm, and the tension in his skin as she’d threaded the needle back and forth through its ragged edges. The intimate warmth of his blood on her fingers. Marking her. As she was marking him.

When finally the stitching was over he’d sighed and she’d wondered if it was with relief or… and she knew this was stupid… because he missed the touch of her hands. She brushed her fingers over the empty sand now, seeking out any faint traces of his blood. In her head she could hear as clear as the sound of the river itself the strange little laugh he gave when she asked him to find a way into the Ulysses Club and retrieve the rubies. When she recalled it, she felt sick. How could she have thought of putting him in such danger?

‘You would turn me into a thief,’ he’d said sternly.

‘We can split the money between us.’

‘Can we split the prison sentence between us too?’

‘Don’t get caught and there’ll be no prison,’ she’d scoffed.

But even then her cheeks had started to burn. She’d turned them to the breeze off the silvery surface of the river and wanted to tell him not to take the risk after all. Forget the necklace. But her tongue wouldn’t find the words. When she looked back at him his mouth was curved in a smile that somehow soothed the fretting of her soul. It was a strange feeling, one that was new to her. To be with someone and not have to hide things. He saw what was inside her and understood.

Unlike Alfred Parker. He wanted her to be somebody she would never be and would never want to be, the perfect rose-pink English miss. His dull little soul was eager to snatch her mother away from her and give her a rabbit hutch in exchange. What kind of bargain was that?

Oh Chang An Lo, I need you here. I need your clear eyes and your calm tongue.

She rose to her feet, trying to move smoothly, and stared hard at the water. She had to catch a fish to present to Mrs Zarya, so she took from her pocket a penknife she’d pinched from a boy at school and proceeded to whittle the tip of her spear to an even sharper point, the way she’d seen Chang do. The stripped willow branch didn’t need it, but it made her feel better. To be cutting something.

‘My great heavens, moi vorobushek, where did that hideous thing come from?’ Mrs Zarya flapped her hands in a flurry of astonishment and eyed Lydia with sudden suspicion. ‘You not offering it instead of rent, are you? This month is now time.’

Lydia shook her head. ‘No. It’s a gift. I caught it for you.’

Mrs Zarya smiled broadly. ‘Clever little sparrow. Come.’

Lydia was relieved that instead of waddling back into the living room with its oversized furniture and the accusing eye of General Zarya, her landlady led her farther down the corridor to a narrow kitchen. She had never been in it before. It was small and brown. Two chairs, a table, a stove, a sink, and a cabinet. Everything brown. But it smelled clean and soapy. In one corner stood a well-polished samovar with its little teapot keeping warm on top.

‘Now,’ Mrs Zarya said, ‘let us look on this sea monster you bring me.’

Lydia placed her gift on the table. It was a large wide-winged flatfish, as brown as the wood it lay on but spattered with tiny yellow flecks on its broad back.

‘You catch this?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Zarya nodded appreciatively and prodded it with one finger. ‘That is good. So now I cook it. You eat with me too?’

Lydia grinned. ‘Spasibo. You are kind, dobraya. Ya plohaya povariha. I am not a good cook.’

‘Ah, so you speak Russian at last. Otlichno! That is good.’

‘No, I’m learning it from a book but it’s hard that way.’

‘Tell that lazy nothing mother of yours to put off the bottle and teach her daughter russkiy yazik.’

‘She won’t.’

‘Ah.’ Mrs Zarya opened her arms wide and swept Lydia to her overflowing bosom in a warm suffocating hug before Lydia saw it coming. The huge black bosom smelled of mothballs and talcum powder, and she could feel a whalebone digging into her cheek.

‘Help,’ she mumbled.

The Russian woman released her with a look of concern.

‘I need help,’ Lydia said. ‘To learn Russian, I mean.’

Mrs Zarya thumped a heavy hand against her own bosom. It vibrated disturbingly. ‘I, Olga Petrovna Zarya,’ she said in triumph, ‘teach you your mother tongue. Yes?’

‘Da.’ Yes.

‘But first I grill fish.’

Lydia haunted the places Chang might be. After school each day she clambered first down to Lizard Creek, always expecting that this time at last she would push her way through the tangle of bushes and see his dark head bent over the beginnings of a fire or his knife swiftly flashing through the flesh of a fish or the bark of a willow twig. Everything he did, he did smoothly. Cleanly. Not messy like herself. She pictured it as she lay in bed at night, saw him raise his eyes from whatever task he was doing and look at her in that intense way of his. With a smile and a gleam that told her he was pleased she had found him.

Because she wasn’t sure how he felt about her. Maybe he was staying away because he’d had enough of her and her crazy fanqui arguments. She tried to think back. Had she insulted him? Going to the funeral. Was that the problem?