Han Hong squinted at the phone screen. She’d spent so long in the dark, the slash of light hurt her eyes. He’d undone the blindfold so she could key the number in to the pad. She could have told it to him, but he hadn’t asked. He rarely spoke to her. She held the phone to her ear and imagined the scene at the end of the line. She’d called the grocery store down the lane from her parents’ new apartment, the one they’d moved to after the government demolished their village. Her mother would be waiting at that grocery store, perched patiently on a red plastic stool beside a glass-topped counter containing cigarettes. Han Hong pictured the packets, all red and gold and white; beautiful designs, nothing like the cigarette packets in Australia – no images of death and destruction. No warnings of death and sickness. Only pretty things: birds, stars, flowers, mountains.

Han Hong wanted to smoke. She wanted to step out from her mother’s apartment and onto the concrete balcony where two bamboo chairs sat beneath a low-hanging clothes line. She would sit on a padded cushion and pour hot water from the thermos into her teacup. She would watch the chrysanthemum flower unfold into bloom, add some rocks of sugar, lean back and light a cigarette. She would watch the red sun set on her town, its light softening the hard lines of the apartment blocks that were the view from the balcony.

How Han Hong missed the view. But more than that, she missed her mother. She’d be waiting beside the counter at the grocery store, waiting for the phone to ring; wanting to know that Han Hong was all right. And again Han Hong would lie.

She would lie because she had to. She would lie because they knew where her mother lived.

The call rang out. Han Hong stared at the phone in her hand. She looked up to the man in the mask. Even if she were able to overpower this man, stick her fingers into his eyes and gouge out his eyeballs, she would not be able to escape. He’d locked the door from the inside upon entering – she’d heard the padlock snap shut. And even if she could somehow find the key and manage to escape, who knew what terror awaited her on the other side? It was better to play their game. She was good at it and they would keep her alive because of that. She would find a moment for escape and take it. But that moment was not now.

She dialled the number again, gripped the phone to her ear.

‘Wei?’

Han Hong thought she might cry. She bit her bottom lip and tasted blood.

She imagined night falling, the light soft. She smelled burning coal and potato skins from Mr Xie’s tin drum on the corner. Mrs Tan, who ran the bric-a-brac shop next door, would be bringing in her plastic buckets, tin pots and mops. Her mother would be wearing her best blouse, the pink one that brought out the rose in her cheeks.

Han Hong imagined herself beside her mother, chopping cabbage, breathing the sour smell of pickle, savouring the warm comfort of tea in her belly; the comfort of home.

She forced a smile onto her face and closed her eyes. ‘Hello, Mama,’ she said. And once again she began to lie.