Two high points made the rest almost bearable.

‘Here, Lydia,’ Alfred said as he held out a large flat box wrapped in fancy paper and satin ribbon. ‘Merry Christmas, my dear.’

It was a coat, a soft greyish-blue. Beautifully tailored, heavy and warm, and instantly Lydia knew her mother had chosen it.

‘I hope you like it,’ he said.

‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’

It had a wide wrapover collar and there was a pair of navy gloves in the pocket. She put them all on and felt wonderful. Alfred was beaming at her, expecting more, and it made her want to explain to him, Just because you gave me a coat, it doesn’t make you my father. Instead she stepped forward, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his cleanly shaven cheek that smelled of sandalwood. But it was the wrong thing to do. She could see in his eyes that he believed things between them had changed.

Did he really think he could buy her that easily?

The other highlight of the day was the electric wireless. Not the cat’s whisker kind, but a real wireless. It was made of polished oak and had a brown material mesh in the shape of a bird over the speaker at the front. Lydia adored it. She spent most of the afternoon beside it, fiddling with its knobs, flicking between stations, filling the room with the strident voice of Al Jolson or the honey-smooth tones of Noel Coward singing ‘A Room with a View.’ She let Alfred’s attempts at conversation flow unheeded most of the time, but after an item of news about Prime Minister Baldwin, he started on about the wisdom of signing a tariff agreement and officially recognising Chiang Kai-shek’s government, proud that Britain was one of the first countries to do so.

‘But it’s Josef Stalin, not us Brits,’ he said, ‘who has had the foresight to pour military advisers and money into Chiang’s Kuomintang Nationalists. And now Chiang Kai-shek has decided to get rid of the Russkies, more fool him.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Lydia muttered, one ear still tuned to Adele Astaire and ‘Fascinating Rhythm.’ ‘Stalin is a Communist. Why would he be helping the Kuomintang who are killing off the Communists here in China?’

Alfred polished his spectacles. ‘You must see, my dear, that he is backing the force he believes will be the victor in this power struggle between Mao Tse-tung’s forces and Chiang Kai-shek’s government. It may seem a contradictory choice for Stalin to make, but in this case I must say I think he’s right.’

‘He’s expelled Leon Trotsky from Russia. How can that be right?’

‘Russia, like China, needs a united government and Trotsky was causing factions and divisions, so… ’

‘Shut up,’ Valentina snapped suddenly. ‘The pair of you, shut up about Russia. What do either of you know?’ She stood up, poured herself another full glass of port. ‘It’s Christmas. Let’s be happy.’

She glared at them and sipped her drink.

They left early, but didn’t speak on the way home. Both had thoughts it was best not to share.


It was on New Year’s Day that everything changed.

The moment Lydia stepped into the clearing at Lizard Creek, she knew. The money was gone. The sky was a clear-swept blue and the air so cold it seemed to take bites out of her lungs, but wrapped up warm and snug in her new coat and gloves she didn’t care. The trees bordering the narrow strip of sand were bare and spiky, their branches white as skeletons, and the water a dazzling surge of energy beneath. Lydia had come intending to add yet another mark to the flat rock, a thin scratched line, to show that she had been here again, however pointless it may seem.

But the cairn was gone.

The mound of pebbles she’d built at the base of the rock. Destroyed. Scattered. Gone. The spot of earth where it had stood looked grey and rumpled. She felt a thud in her chest and tasted a burst of adrenaline on her tongue. She dropped to her knees, tore off her gloves, and scrabbled with her hands in the sandy soil. Though the earth elsewhere was frozen hard, here it was soft and crumbly. Recently disturbed. The glass jar was still there. Ice cold in her fingers. But no money inside. The thirty dollars gone. Relief crashed through her. He was alive. Chang was alive.

Alive.

Here.

He had come.

In a clumsy rush she unscrewed the metal lid of the jar, pushed her hand inside, and withdrew its new contents. A single white feather, soft and perfect as a snowflake. She laid it on the palm of her hand and stared at it. What did it mean?

White. Chinese white. For mourning. Did that mean he was dead? Dying? Her mouth turned dry as dirt.

Or…

White. A dove’s feather. For peace. For hope. A sign of the future.

Which?

Which one?

She remained for a long time kneeling beside the small hole in the earth. The feather lay wrapped between her carefully cupped hands like a baby bird, while the wind knifed in off the river and straight into her face. But she barely noticed and eventually placed the feather in her handkerchief, folded it into a neat package, and tucked it into her blouse. Then she drew the penknife from her pocket, cut a lock of her hair from her head and dropped it into the jar. She screwed the lid up tight and reburied it. Built another cairn.

To her eyes it looked like a grave marker.


A noise in the undergrowth behind her made her swing around as two magpies clattered into the air with a raucous cry of alarm and a flash of blue-black wing. Hairs rose on her neck. A smile and a cry of delight leaped to her lips and she took a step forward to greet him.

It wasn’t Chang.

Disappointment tore through her.

A long-fingered hand with yellow nails thrust aside a low holly branch to enter the clearing, and for no more than a split second Lydia glimpsed a tall thin figure clothed in rags.

It wasn’t Chang.

Then the figure was gone. Lydia moved fast. She raced after him, charging through the bushes, indifferent to thorns and scratches. The track was little more than an animal run, narrow and winding beneath the birch trees, but patches of dense shrub offered places to hide.

She couldn’t see him. She stopped running. Stood still, listening, but could hear nothing but her own heart pounding in her ears. Her breath rasped in the cold air. She waited. A kestrel high overhead hovered and waited with her. Her eyes scoured the stretch of woodland for movement, and then she saw a single branch flutter and grow still. It was over to her left in a thick clump of elder and ivy where a smattering of frozen berries clung to the stalks and a finch hopped from branch to branch.

Did the bird cause the flutter?

She edged forward. Her fingers closed over the penknife in her pocket, eased it out, and flicked open the blade. She moved nearer, watching every tangle of brushwood and hollow of shade, and just when she was thinking she had lost him, a man leaped out from almost under her feet and started to run. But his movement was erratic. He stumbled and swerved. Easily she out-paced him, raced up behind him with her heart thumping, and touched his shoulder, but just that slight extra weight tipped him forward and he sprawled facedown on the hard earth. Instantly she crouched beside him, knife in hand. Whether she could use it was something she didn’t care to think about right now.

But the slumped figure offered no resistance. He tipped himself over on his back and raised his hands above his head in surrender, so Lydia was able to take a good look at him. He was painfully thin. Cheekbones like razor blades. With skin that was yellow and eyes that seemed to roll and float loose in his head. She had no idea of his age. Twenty? Thirty? Yet the cracked and peeling skin on his hands looked much older and there were raw lesions on his face.

She seized hold of the cloth of his filthy tunic, ragged and fraying and stinking of stale urine, and wound it tight around her fist in case this fleshless stork should suddenly take it into its head to fly.

‘Tell me,’ she said speaking slowly and clearly, in the hope he could understand English. ‘Where is Chang An Lo?’

He nodded, eyes fixed on her face. ‘Chang An Lo.’ He raised a bony finger and pointed it at her. ‘Leeja?’

‘Yes.’ Her heart lifted. Only Chang could have told him her name. ‘I’m Lydia.’ With a heave she yanked him to his feet, but despite his height his skin-and-bone frame was so light they both almost toppled over. ‘Chang An Lo?’ she asked once more and cursed her lack of Mandarin.

‘Tan Wah,’ he pointed to himself with his yellow fingernail.

‘You are Tan Wah? Please, Tan Wah, take me to Chang An Lo.’ She gestured toward the town.

He bobbed his scruffy black head in understanding and set off at an uneven pace through the undergrowth. Lydia kept one hand on his tunic. Her skin prickled with impatience.


They were heading down to the harbour. So it seemed she had been searching in the right place. In the world of no-names. No laws. Where weapons ruled and money talked. Yes, Mr Liu had been right. Chang was here. Close. She could feel him waiting for her. Breathing in her mind. She tugged at Tan Wah’s tunic to hurry him because without Liev at her side she was uneasy down in this world. The risk was high.

She had grown accustomed to the smell of the streets now. The quayside was teeming with people, pushing and jostling each other, dodging around rickshaw wheels, shouting and spitting, heaped wheelbarrows and shoulderpoles barging a path, all a swaying seething mass. Lydia wasn’t looking at their faces this time. That’s why she didn’t see it coming. An old man, bent double under a mound of firewood on his back and with lank sparse hair falling around his face, merged into the grey swirl of humanity around her. She didn’t even glance at him. Not until he stopped right in their path. Then she noticed the black eyes looking up at her bright with greed. His head was twisted sideways to peer around the massive bundle on his back.