'I would like to have three good dresses; one in white for funerals, and one full of bright colours for festivals, and one very dignified dress for happy ceremonies and for going to my church, which I can only do once a year.'

Mae saw that she was lonely.

'You missed it last year,' said Mr Mack.

Mariam looked sad. 'It was a bad year for farming.'

'What sort of dignified dress? What kind of colours?'

'Simple, very simple, but looking nice, you know? Very modest, please, and easy to keep clean – it must look good after I wash it. But I was thinking, perhaps in blue and white together, if the colours held fast.'

Mariam had a pinched face, and she pressed her hand over her heart.

Blue and white? That was a new colour. Mae saw An write it down.

They said goodbye, and loose Mr Mack had his arm around his wife as though she were a parcel.

Outside, An said. 'They seemed happy enough.'

They visited the Pin tribe. Like the Macks and An's mother, they lived south of the main village, along the river.

The Pins had turned the marsh below Lower Street into a graveyard for cars. Baked tyre-tracks swept round to rows of vehicles of faded green or rusty red. Old taxis and rumpled pickup trucks were missing doors or tyres. Dusty cats and tiny black turkeys called hindis picked their way among them. Under corrugated tin sheds, saws and drills and welding torches were hung with festive abandon.

The core of the family had been two brothers and their wives. When they had stopped farming to become mechanics, Enver Atakoloo, the village blacksmith and a full-blooded Karz, became enraged. Mr Atakoloo shot the elder of the brothers. Pin Xi survived and, it was whispered, lived as husband to both his own and his brother's wife; not to mention, it was whispered in even lower voices, his brother's wife's unmarried sister, who also lived there. The ten children and other homeless relatives meant that no fewer than nineteen people lived among the wrecks of the cars or in the barns that had once sheltered livestock.

The whole house smelled of feet and bedding. The tiny diwan was screened from the rest of the house by drying laundry. Mrs Pin Xi wore trousers and an apron covered in blue and yellow checks. The five daughters peered out from behind the laundry, in awe of the transformation of An.

The five Pin sons considered themselves men to be interviewed. They sat up straight on the diwan cushions and were forthright. Air would be great: the Doh boys were wrong; they could do much more than watch football, there were great games you could play in Air.

Mrs Pin beamed with pride every time one of her huge brood spoke. Fashion? Oh? She needed a new apron. No, lots of aprons, a different one for every day, so she could wash the others. And good dresses? Hmm, it might be nice. Yes, a good dress, nothing fancy.

Nothing fancy, nothing fancy again.

And the daughters. Come out, girls, come out. And out poured the girl's hearts, in the direction of An. So An had to do both the wise encouraging nods and the writing.

They wanted to be modern. They did not want to look traditional. They wanted to see what the rest of the world wore. Though (glance at Father) it would be good to show the world that traditional values could still be modern.

They all of them told stories, in turn, of the day of the Test. Mae asked if they were frightened. No, they said, they were not scared at all; no, they were ready. Mr and Mrs Pin shrugged. 'We are old.' they said. 'What do we know?'

Leavetaking took half an hour of shaking hands and bowing. The widow and the spinster sister, who had not spoken at all. now made very formal goodbyes, professing pleasure.

Afterwards, An and Mae stood talking on boards, balancing across the mud of Marsh Street.

'So,' sighed Mae. 'They want work clothes that look good but will wear well. They want lots of cheaper clothes, so they can take them on and off and wash them a lot. The younger women want to be modern but they don't know what "modern" will be. So they will rely on us to show them. And… adornment is passing. They like our men's jackets.'

An was smiling. 'Mrs Chung is very wise. I did not see that, but I feel you are right.'

Mae settled under the One Tree on the bench, and called her self, and sank down into Air.

Answers popped again and again.

Numbers sang to the Kru. They showed him their hidden secrets, joyfully. Those secrets shocked Mae. She had planned to buy aprons, oven gloves, blouses, and day shoes cheap in Yeshibozkent. This would cost 125 riels and give her less than 16 profit. The numbers did a dance and showed her: To pay off the interest and only 25 riels' principal each year, she could do nothing that did not make 100 per cent profit. Her situation was impossible.

At least with best dresses there was no risk. You only bought cloth when you had a sale, and it was a luxury, you could charge more. The numbers did a further dance. Mae knew how many girls would graduate next year. There was likely to be only one wedding. Eight dresses, for a profit of about 30.

Doing nothing was not an option. Best dresses it would have to be. If Mae was still going to be in the best-dress business, she would need a seamstress. Cheap.

She stood up from the One Tree and walked to Hatijah Ozdemir's house.

Hatijah sat slumped on the floor.

She looked up piteously at Mae, dark circles under her eyes. Her oldest daughter sat, just as unmoving, but vastly plumper, disconsolately mumbling bread. Forgotten laundry hung crisp and shriveled over the woodbin and the floor was piled with unwashed pots. Another child was wailing in the backyard that Mae had vowed she would never enter. It smelled, specially, of pus.

How, Mae wondered, was such a creature able to sew so skilfully? Maybe she put her heart into that and nothing else.

'How are you, Hatijah?' said Mae, as if she were ill.

'Oh,' said Hatijah, and shook her head.

'Are you unwell?'

'It is all this worry,' said Hatijah. 'Five mouths to feed, and we have no money. And Edrem's joints ache, so he finds it difficult to work, poor man. Sometimes he cannot work for days.'

I've never seen Edrem work at all, thought Mae. 'Would you like some money?'

Hatijah looked back, with a dull and heavy face. Probably not, if it means she has to move, thought Mae. She decided Hatijah's problem was laziness. Hatijah seemed like a woman underwater, too tired even to swim to the surface of her own face. She did not reply.

'Remember, I said back in May, before… before the Test' – Mae always faltered finding words for the event – 'I said that I might have some sewing work to offer you.'

Someone else said, 'Only if I get to come, too.' It was Sezen.

By the stars. Everything about Sezen had changed.

Sezen wore grubby black trousers and an old black leather jacket. She glowered. There was no hint of politesse, no smiles, no graces.

Mae herself had grown more blunt. 'What will you bring?' she asked.

'Myself,' said Sezen.

'You can't do anything,' replied Mae. 'Your mother can sew. You would just be a burden.'

'Then my mother won't help you.' Sezen's face was fatter and covered in spots. Her hair had been impulsively chopped back from her face. Her hands were jammed in her pockets. Her posture had changed. Her head leaned to one side; her hips were thrust sideways. Every line of her body was a challenge.

Hatijah just stared.

'Okay,' said Mae with a shrug, 'if this is a house where the daughter rules the mother. Your little brother is half starved and none of you have any clothes. Find money where you can.' Mae started to leave.

'I can tell you what clothes to make.' Sezen stared back at her.

Mae looked at her jacket, her jeans. 'What clothes to rescue from garbage.'