Mae's eyes felt heavy. She had a choice. She could let them have the argument Ju-mei wanted, or she could choose to hold on to what Siao had shown her: something new.

Mae found she was doing this for Siao.

' "Insurance" is too big a word for people who make their own candles,' she said. 'They have to see it. They have to see themselves. So. Your company will have something called day tah. It is Info the company uses to calculate answers to insurance questions. Maybe the company has videos, maybe about real people the company has helped.'

It was like a fire kindled in herself. Mae suddenly sat up.

'So what we do is, pull all this stuff together into a show. And we have Number One Expert. That's you. Maybe we put the show on in Mrs Wing's courtyard. We make it social. Maybe in spring. Food, flowers, everything is abundant. Ah! And you come, and you explain. You show some films, but also, you invite people to talk to the TV and it gets answers especially for them.'

She'd done something wrong. Ju-mei's face was closing down. 'I've been selling insurance to this village for many years, Mae. I don't need you to tell me how to do it.'

I have made a mistake. Here I am, the big older sister, telling him what to do.

'I… I have let my enthusiasm carry me away,' she said. 'Plainly, this scheme would rely entirely upon you.'

'You have never bought any insurance yourself,' he said.

What, I should spend all that money with you, because you are my brother? Mae had to quell the rising-up of anger. After all, Mae, his wife bought your dresses. Families buy from each other. Solidarity.

'That was my husband's decision,' said Mae.

'Joe? Joe never made any decisions.'

Ju-mei is being more honest in this encounter than you are, Mae.

'I never thought we needed it,' said Mae.

Until now. They needed it now, and for a reason. 'I don't expect you to believe me, Ju-mei, but I have only just realized what I want out of this.'

'Money,' he said flatly, dourly, without hope.

'I want you to get our village insured. Against flooding.' She thought for a moment. 'And I want my family back.' She felt a little sting of tears around the base of her eyes.

Mae thought it was to no avail. It ended like a business meeting, with Ju-mei promising to consider her proposal. Before she turned and left, she looked about the house. There were small thin rugs on the floor, and a picture cut from a magazine in a frame. The shelves were empty except for an encyclopedia Ju-mei had bought second hand for his children's education. The room was clean and tidy – so much work and so cold. Her mother did not show her face.

Mae got home and decided to buy some Flood insurance. She made tea, climbed up the steps to Madam Owl's attic. There was an e-mail for her.

Sister,

I have talked with the family and we have decided to accept your proposition. We think it would be better if we had the show here, in our own home. Mama is talking about decorations and food. Would you or Mrs Wing be able to loan us the television?

There is something I did not understand. I did not understand before how much of what you do is done for the village. I thought you did it to make money. You dressed down and looked bad and I thought you had given yourself a different kind of air and grace, that you had set yourself up as something. It simply did not occur to me how much of what you were doing you were doing without thought of yourself.

And so I find that I am more than happy to join with you in your project.

Together we will get Kizuldah insured.

Your brother,

Ju-mei

'Siao! Siao!' Mae called, overjoyed. 'Siao! Come see!'

Mae and Sloop the engineer from Yeshibozkent put the demonstration together.

Siao and Ju-mei wrestled her television into the Wang family house. There were indeed flowers, but winter flowers, made of paper, and tables full of food. Someone from every household in the village came. The grates were piled high with coals, and there was rice wine.

Ju-mei stood in front of them all, and showed people how much money they could make, and how they could pay, so little each week. The faces of other farmers explained: They were buying protection. These were not videos; Yeshibozkent Home Guardian set up live links. Lined, weathered faces like their own answered the villagers' questions. 'Oh, yes, we lost all our sheep to foot and mouth, but the company paid back our losses.'

The director of Home Guardian also came on a live link. He told Ju-mei that his show was a model of how to bring the insurance crusade to the people.

Siao was there and bought insurance on behalf of the family Chung. He made a handsome gesture of paying for the insurance of Mae's weaving machine.

Throughout, Mae sat quietly in the corner, wearing her best white dress.

After the shaking of hands, and good-nights, and seeing her brother's overjoyed smile, Mae climbed up the ladder to her loft and went to bed alone. Her arms held nothing, except the memory of the party. She cradled it all night alongside the swelling shape of her unborn child.

But she found herself thinking of Siao's smooth arms.

CHAPTER 20

Teacher Shen came to call.

Mae opened her door and saw him against the glowing white-grey sky, and her heart thumped. 'Teacher,' she said, greeting him in the formal fashion, with a bow of respect.

Shen looked awful. Disordered wisps of hair were on his chin. They were grey, like an old woman's whiskers. His eyes were encircled with concentric pouches of flesh.

He stared at her.

'It is cold for you; please come in, Teacher,' she said.

He looked poor, he smelled poor. His coat was old, black, held shut. Something had been spilt on it. He had beautiful Eloi mittens, knitted by his wife.

Mae kept talking. 'Oh, such weather to come visit, let me make you tea.'

'It's not cold,' he said. 'It is unseasonably warm.'

'Please – please sit at the table.'

Mae cleared away Siao's breakfast things. 'I know what you mean about warmth. All that snow on the hills, in this warm weather. I fear there will be a Flood.'

Shen's lip curled.

Mae kept smiling, rattling out cups. 'There was one, you know, in 1959, and all the village of Aynalar was washed away. We need to be prepared in case it happens again.'

Stop it, she told herself, you say that to everyone now. You chatter. He is not here for that.

Mae bustled the kettle onto the brazier and rattled out cups for them both. She smelled his breath. Old sour wine. Chinese men could not drink well; the condition was called kizul, 'red' for the flushed cheeks, and the anger. It should also be called 'white,' for afterwards they were pale and shivery, like easily broken ice.

He sighed and dug his fingers into his thick black hair.

You were always so handsome, she thought. Friendship flowed down old familiar channels.

'I didn't sleep last night,' he said.

'I don't wonder at it. You have been removed from a most honoured position, most unjustly.'

'Tub,' he said, looking at her as if she were the TV. His look said: You did it.

'I did nothing, you know,' Mae said, sitting away from him. She found she was calculating how far he could swing if he went to hit her.

Teacher Shen, I would ride in your cart upholstered with hops for the beer factory. That was always my favourite way to go to the city. You, me, and Suloi up early, all the four a.m. birds singing all around us. The dawn would come up on your friendly faces and we would eat buns and you would tell all your old village stories.