‘Lydia.’ Mr Theo walked over to her desk. His black headmaster’s gown billowed around him and to Lydia’s mind he looked like a long-legged crow come to peck her eyes out. ‘You will do detention today. After school. Understand?’

She wanted to hit him. As Liev Popkov would have done. But she lowered her head. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Oh, Lyd, you silly. When will you learn to grovel to him?’ Polly was clucking over her like a mother hen. ‘All you had to say was “I’m sorry, Mr Theo, I promise I won’t let it happen again,” and he would have let you off.’

‘Really?’

‘You are so naïve, Lyd. Of course he would.’

‘But why?’

‘Because that’s what men like. It makes them feel powerful.’

Understanding dawned. Yes. People want to feel powerful. She had seen its effects in the alien world of the docklands when she was linked to Liev Popkov and had learned the way it made you feel good. Powerful men. They made sure they got what they wanted, just as Polly’s father knew how to get things he wanted. Or people he desired. It made Lydia’s skin crawl. A question occurred to her, but she wasn’t sure quite how to put it to Polly.

‘Polly, you’re much better at handling people than I am. I can’t even get my mother to do things I want sometimes.’ She paused and rubbed the side of a fingernail. ‘By the way, does she ever come to visit your house?’

‘Gosh, no. What an odd question. Why on earth would she?’

‘I thought maybe she might come to talk to your mother, you know, like mothers do when their daughters are friends.’ She shrugged. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’

‘You are a strange one sometimes, you know.’

‘You’d tell me if she did. Come to your house, I mean.’

‘Of course.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

‘Good.’

‘How’s Mr Parker, by the way?’

‘He’s still around.’

‘Oh, you’re so lucky. When they’re married he’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted like a house and pretty clothes and holidays and everything.’ She laughed and poked her friend lightly in the ribs. ‘Including a nice new school uniform. It’s what you need.’

‘It’s not what I need,’ Lydia snapped. ‘It’s what people with power make you think you need.’

‘Oh, Lyd, you’re hopeless.’

Liev Popkov was still standing at the end of her road, waiting for her. He must have been there a long time because snow had built up into epaulettes on his shoulders and his fur hat had turned white like a stoat in winter.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Prastitye menya. I’m late because I had to stay longer at school.’

He grunted. Moved off with his loose shambling gait, so that Lydia had to scamper to keep up, and headed again for the harbour. It was a dismal but frantic world down there where everything from rhinoceros horns to ten-year-old slaves were bought and sold, but nevertheless Lydia liked the chance to gaze at the sleek liners and the rusting tramp steamers that brought the outside world into the heart of Junchow. It made England seem so close she could almost reach out and grab it in her hand. She watched hard-eyed men and fur-coated women stride down the gangplanks as if they owned the world, while at their feet coolies begged to carry their bags. The snow had stopped falling.

‘This one,’ Liev growled.

He led her down yet another dank and filthy alleyway where native hawkers tried to sell even the rags off their backs. One stall was offering bathroom taps, a whole tea chest of them smuggled out of one of the import warehouses that surrounded the harbour, while farther down was a row of porcelain-faced dolls sitting up like little dead children. Lydia had never possessed a doll in her life and was constantly baffled by whatever it was that drove girls to want one. Even to love the wretched things. Like Polly did. It was so…

A moon-faced man broke up her thoughts. He was speaking in rapid Chinese and pointing back down the alleyway. She started to shake her head to indicate she didn’t understand but realised he was talking to Liev, not to her. The man kept jabbering louder and louder, throwing his arms around. Liev just swung his great head back and forth. Nyet. Nyet. Nyet.

The man drew a knife.

Lydia tried to back away, but two men had placed themselves directly behind her. She felt her breath stop, and start up again too fast. With one hand Liev Popkov seized her wrist; with the other he drew from under his coat a knife that was almost a sword, long and curved and double-edged. Its hilt was heavy black metal and sat firmly in the Russian’s fist. He leaped forward with a low growl, dragging Lydia with him. Her feet skidded from under her on a patch of iced-up vegetable pulp, but without even glancing in her direction he yanked her into the air and slashed at the Chinese moon-face at the same time.

It was over before it began. The men vanished. A splash of blood started to freeze on the cobbles. Liev slipped the knife back into his belt and, without releasing her wrist, plodded on down through the crowded hutong as if nothing had happened.

‘What,’ Lydia demanded in English, ‘was that about? Did you really have to use that knife?’

He halted, stared at her with his one good eye, shrugged, and moved on.

She tried again. In Russian this time.

‘O chyon vi rugalyis?’

‘He wanted to buy you.’

‘Buy me?’

‘Da.’

She said no more. Knew she was shaking. Damn the bloody bear. She hated him to know she was frightened. She tried to snatch her wrist away, but it was like trying to pull a rivet out of one of the metal ships with your bare fingers. It just didn’t happen.

‘I didn’t know you speak Mandarin,’ she said.

‘He offered good money,’ he said and uttered a deep growling sound that it took her a moment to recognise as a laugh.

‘Damn you,’ she said in English.

The growl went on and on.

‘In here,’ she said to shut him up.

It was a kabak. A bar.

She knew it was a mistake the moment she was inside. Twenty pairs of eyes turned. Stared at them as if a snake had crawled through the door. The air hung solid and lifeless under the low ceiling and was full of odours Lydia did not recognise. A stove in one corner coughed out heat and fumes.

She stared back at the men. Her eyes roamed their faces and their clothes, all grey as ash, and the crazed enamel tables where they sat hunched over some colourless rotgut liquid. The grimy bamboo counter had a chained monkey at one end and the man behind it had no ears. He wore a soiled rag around the top of his head and held another in his hand. He was wiping a glass with it. Without taking his eyes off Liev Popkov for one second, he reached under the counter and brought up a rifle. He thumbed back the hammer with the ease of long practice and pointed the business end straight at Lydia’s chest. She felt her ribs contract. The rifle looked ancient, probably a relic from the Boxer Rebellion. But that didn’t mean it didn’t shoot straight.

Nobody spoke.

Liev nodded. Moving slowly he pulled her behind him and backed out of the bar.

‘He wasn’t there,’ she said outside. She was relieved to see her breath coiling in icy vapour from her mouth, in and out, her ribs still working.

Liev nodded again. ‘There are many bars.’

They went into ten bars that evening. Scattered over different areas of the harbour. No more rifles were pushed in their faces, but no smiles either. Eyes regarded them with the same loathing and mouths muttered curses and spat hatred on the floor.

Word was spreading. About the giant bear who broke men’s faces and the flame-haired girl. When they entered a bar and stood inside the door for no more than two minutes, heads raised because they’d heard of this strange pair who haunted the dockland. Lydia could see it on their faces, as clearly as she could see the desire to slit their fanqui throats. Each time she peered through the gloom of some narrow stinking room and heard the silence slide over the tables as drinkers turned to stare, she did not expect to find the one face she sought, the one with the intense and thoughtful eyes that had always observed her so closely and the nose that flared when he was amused though his mouth was slow to smile. She didn’t expect to see it. But still she hoped.