Sophie entered the Three Monkeys hotel on George Street at ten minutes to nine. She scanned the room. A few suits mingled over the last of their after-work drinks. A group of men in rugby jumpers watched the final stages of a game on the telly. Sophie ordered a soda and sat at a table by the window. Took out her notepad and pen. Outside, George Street buzzed with young people dressed up for a night out. They walked in groups of five or six, heavily made-up girls hanging onto the arms of their boyfriends, young men with trendy mullet cuts and skinny jeans. They smoked cigarettes, sipped bubble tea and laughed.

Then Sophie saw Tae Hun. He mooched along the footpath, an American baseball cap on his head, headphones jammed to his ears. A boy.

And then he was across from her, placing a schooner on the bench. Sophie smiled, raised her glass. ‘Cheers.’

Tae Hun clinked his glass against hers. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Australians make better beer than Koreans.’

‘Is that right?’ Sophie laughed. ‘I can’t believe you’d admit it.’

Tae Hun shrugged. ‘We make soju,’ he said. ‘And better food. And our women dress best.’ He motioned to a group of girls standing outside the pub window. They wore short skirts and sloppy, off-the-shoulder knitted jumpers, loads of jewellery, ankle boots, dangly earrings, pretty printed scarves. ‘Korean girls dress more like women.’

Sophie looked down at her jeans and purple sneakers. ‘How about Chinese girls?’ she asked. ‘Is that why you liked Wendy? Because she dressed well?’

Tae Hun took a sip of his beer and placed the glass carefully on the coaster. ‘Wendy liked to have fun. That’s what I liked about her,’ he said. ‘And I liked her smell.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She had this perfume, very sexy, like spices. Now when I think about her, all I can remember is her smell.’

‘Scent can do that to you.’

Tae Hun gazed out the window. ‘We had fun together but we dated for two weeks only. She dumped me and I don’t know why. And what’s the matter about it? I don’t even know who she was.’

He took a long drink from his glass, draining it.

‘You said you wanted to tell me something,’ she said. ‘Was it about Wendy?’

‘I want to forget her.’

‘Okay,’ said Sophie. ‘So, what did you want to say?’

Tae Hun looked around. The bar had filled and electronic music pumped through the speakers from the space upstairs. ‘I need more to drink,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you one?’

Sophie tapped her glass. ‘I’m okay.’

‘You’re an Aussie who doesn’t drink?’

The image of Su Yuan, so perceptive, flashed through Sophie’s mind. ‘It doesn’t agree with me,’ she said. She took a breath. Fuck it. ‘It’s an Asian thing.’

The boy looked puzzled. ‘But you’re not Asian.’

‘Buy me a beer and I’ll blush rose for you.’

Tae Hun pushed off his stool. ‘It’s fine,’ he said, uninterested. ‘I think it’s good when girls don’t drink.’

Sophie watched him – a skinny kid trying to act like a man.

After his third beer, Tae Hun began to open up. He played with a coaster as he spoke.

‘After Wendy broke with me, I didn’t know what to do. I really liked her, you know?’ He looked into his drink. His voice became a mumble. ‘I went to a dancing club.’ His face turned a shade of red.

‘It’s okay, Tae Hun,’ said Sophie. ‘Whatever you tell me, I won’t repeat it.’

‘This club, it’s a place where girls dance without their clothes.’

‘You’re not the first man on the planet to do that, Tae Hun,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s not that big a deal.’

An impatient scowl crossed the young man’s face. He pushed the hair out of his eyes to give Sophie a deliberate stare. ‘Yeah, I know it’s okay,’ he said, with a sudden sarcastic drawl. ‘We do this in Seoul, too. I have no problem with it.’

Sophie felt her own blush creep. She’d patronised him and he’d called her on it. ‘What’s the problem then?’

‘At the club I saw a friend from school.’

‘In the audience?’

‘No. A woman. Dancing on the table.’

Sophie sat back. ‘Is this a classmate from our school, the place where I teach?’

Tae Hun shook his head. ‘No, my new school. I go to Central English. It’s cheaper. She’s not a classmate but just someone I know from the school. This woman, her name is Han Hong. She didn’t see me, but I took a photo of her. I went back to the club the next night and I saw her. And again and again. It was like I was keeping an eye on her. Making sure she was okay.’

Sophie sipped her drink and regarded him. ‘You’re a nice guy, Tae Hun.’

He waved away the compliment. ‘Not nice,’ he said. ‘I liked Han Hong. I could not understand why she would do this job. Could she need the money that bad? I decided I would speak to her. I’d find her a job in my restaurant. She would never have to work at the club again.’

‘Told you. What a nice guy.’

Tae Hun leaned closer. ‘But then our term changed and she didn’t come back to school. I saw her at the club a couple more times but then she stopped turning up there, too. At first I thought she’d moved into another class at a different time, but I looked and looked and I didn’t find her.’

‘Did you ask?’

He pulled off his baseball cap and placed it on the table, scraped a hand through scruffy dyed hair. ‘Something’s wrong but I don’t know the details,’ he said. ‘She’s been working at this place and it’s illegal… I didn’t want to draw attention, get her into trouble.’

‘Maybe she’s taking a break.’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I went back to the club and she didn’t arrive there, either. She’s disappeared.’

‘When was the term change?’

‘Two and a half weeks ago,’ he said. ‘There is something strange going on and I’m worried.’ He peered out the window onto George Street. ‘Maybe she has done to herself like Wendy. Maybe she’s killed herself.’

Maybe she’s become a junkie. Sophie kicked her feet against the narrow rail running under the table. ‘Why are you telling me this, Tae Hun? A regular person would just contact the police.’

‘No.’ His voice was defiant. ‘These kinds of places aren’t legal. I cannot tell the police I went there.’

‘If you really cared about Han Hong, you would tell someone.’

‘Yes,’ said Tae Hun. ‘So I am telling you.’ He pulled out a phone and scanned the menu. He pushed the screen across the table to Sophie.

‘This is the picture I took,’ he said. ‘This is Han Hong.’

Sophie glanced at the picture and took a breath. A chill settled between her shoulder blades. Not because the girl in the photo was naked or because the girl’s make-up was smeared and smudged. But because the girl in the photo looked so young: a teenager, seventeen at best.

Tae Hun had lowered his eyes to the table. ‘I don’t know what you think I should do,’ he mumbled. ‘But I really don’t want you to go to the police.’

What to say? If Tae Hun was telling the truth and the club was illegal, then a normal person would take both Tae Hun and his photograph down to the nearest station to make a report. But what of Han Hong then? Would she be charged, imprisoned, fined and deported? And would it stop anything? Would it really make a difference to a trade so long established that the average punter turned a blind eye to the suspect goings-on? It was far better to find the girl and talk to her, try to convince her to turn her back on the seedy world, coax her back to the classroom, offer some friendship and support.

She wrote her number on the back of a coaster. ‘Message me the picture and give me time to think about it,’ she said. ‘I won’t involve the police, you can trust me on that.’

Tae Hun smiled something like appreciation and drained his glass. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply. Then he picked up his baseball cap from the table. ‘I should go.’

女孩

Gliding down the hills of Liverpool Street, Sophie couldn’t shake the image of Han Hong. It was something about the eyes. She’d read something in them, an emotion she recognised but couldn’t quite recall. Not fear, or loneliness. Those eyes communicated something subtler, but equally powerful. Sophie bent her head against the wind and pedalled hard on the incline towards Glenmore Road. The cold air scoured her cheeks and the hill beneath her wheels made her thigh muscles scream. Then Sophie realised it. In Han Hong’s eyes she’d recognised a state she’d seen and experienced – in her students, when language difficulties overwhelmed them; in her dear friend Li Hua, on that dreadful day when everything had changed forever; in herself now, as she rose to the challenge of Liverpool Street. Resignation. The girl in the picture gazed out with dead, fatalistic eyes, resigned to her role, as dancer, entertainer, stripper, naked woman. Maybe she’d resigned herself to her fate.

But surely she hadn’t travelled all the way to Australia for that?

By the time Sophie wheeled her bike into the hallway, it was a few minutes past midnight. She moved swiftly to the kitchen to brew a pot of oolong. There, leaning against the bench, she sipped the warm brown brew and let the tea leaves soothe her. She placed the terracotta teapot on a tray with a cup and padded up the steep carpeted stairs to her sanctuary.

The room glowed warm from the bamboo-shaded lamp on the dresser. Sophie cast her eyes around, relishing the immediate nourishing effect on her. She loved this space, not for the high ceiling or the intricately carved ceiling rose or the wide window that looked out onto the slanted roofs of Paddington. She loved it for the objects it contained, each of which held meanings and memories of different places, people and experiences. She loved the soft lines of the sculpted stone woman she’d watched being shaped on a beach in Vietnam; the red teacups passed down from a beloved grandmother; the glass jewellery dish that glowed orange in the lamplight; the intricately woven pink, purple and indigo wall hangings that she’d bought in a mountain village in Yunnan; the framed photo of her mother; and the shrine to David.

Sophie went to the wooden cube in the corner. She dusted its motley surface and emptied the ash collected at the bottom of the incense holder into the wastebasket. Then she lit the candle positioned in the middle of this makeshift altar and watched its flame flicker beside the framed picture of a little boy in full bloom. Before the candlelight and David’s beaming smile, Sophie knelt and closed her eyes, her head bowed in silent prayer. This was her ritual. She imagined taking it with her throughout her life, wherever she wandered, until the time arrived when David returned home.

When she finished, she considered her bed. The turned-back quilt revealed cream flannelette sheets beneath. It invited her. Her body ached with fatigue but she couldn’t sleep now. Not with a mind cluttered with images of Wendy’s pink brain seeping onto the concrete and Han Hong, naked and dirty, in some backstreet lap-dance bar.

Sophie opened her MacBook and uploaded the image of Han Hong. The girl’s face filled the screen. Enormous eyes, clear skin, full lips. Han Hong’s youth seemed magnified. What was it that she had seen and how had she come to be involved in the seedy underworld of a foreign city? Surely Sydney had signified a new beginning of sorts: a place for Han Hong to find her independence, come to a new understanding of cultural differences and relationships and to think and dream in a language different from her own. How had this girl’s overseas adventure turned so sour?

Sophie’s thoughts turned to Wendy. The track marks on her skin.

Wendy had been hiding a secret pain. Maybe she’d been involved in a similar scene. Sophie shivered. If students were resorting to lap dancing to pay their passage to Australia, no wonder they wound up depressed.

‘Hey, stranger.’

Sophie turned to see Jin Tao leaning against the doorframe, still dressed in his chef’s whites. He held a small porcelain teacup in one hand. ‘Another brew left in that pot?’

It was a habit they shared, popping in to each other’s rooms, stealing cups of tea and conversation. Jin Tao always drank from the floral-patterned porcelain he held out now. Tea bonded them.

Sophie poured the last of the oolong into Jin Tao’s cup. He folded himself onto the woven mat beside the bed.

‘You want to tell me what’s up?’

Forget reading the tea leaves afterwards, Jin Tao could read her mood by her choice of brew: oolong was for the weight of the world. The dark amber hue and the burnt bitterness of the leaves worked as a catharsis, helping Sophie clear her mind and refocus her senses.

She stared at him, admiring not for the first time his perfect wide eyes, deep pools rimmed with black. Jin Tao had a way of staring into her; his gaze never felt like an interrogation – more like a caress.

Sophie flipped the computer screen closed. She would sleep on what Tae Hun had told her, pick through the details of the conversation and allow her thoughts to ferment until clarity arrived.

‘Nope,’ she said, and slid down next to Jin Tao on the mat.

He motioned to the candle flickering in the corner. ‘You thinking about the kid?’

Sophie reached out to the candle, dipped a pinkie finger into the hot wax. She felt it burn and tighten, a smooth and perfect green cap.

‘You know I don’t tell just anyone about what happened to David,’ she said.

‘And I’ve promised to keep your secret safe.’

Sophie held her capped finger out. ‘A pinkie promise,’ she said.

Jin Tao touched her pinkie with his own. ‘Even deeper than that.’

Sophie leaned against Jin Tao’s shoulder. She twirled the wax cap between two fingers. It crumbled. Gone.

‘How was work?’ she asked.

‘Full-on.’ The usual response. ‘Stuart decided to nick off at a quarter past nine, leaving me a man down. Reckoned he had a hot date and he’d told me about it.’

‘I’m sure you had everything under control.’

‘You kidding me? We were only halfway through the sitting. Total nightmare.’

‘At least Stuart’s getting lucky.’

Jin Tao nudged her gently. ‘You in need of some loving, lovely?’

‘Are you offering?’ She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.

He drained the last of the tea from his cup. ‘I certainly am,’ he said. He disentangled his warm body from hers. ‘A lovingly prepared breakfast for you first thing in the morning. You can have it in bed.’

Sophie grinned through her relief. ‘Make my eggs runny,’ she instructed.

‘Yes, chef.’ He planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Sweet dreams.’

‘Goodnight.’ She watched him go. The skin on her cheek burned from the touch of his lips, and continued to tingle long after he pulled shut the door.