The girl in the purple G-string returned with their drinks. She cupped each glass in a curled, slim-fingered hand and Sophie noticed that her long fingernails were painted orange. As the girl placed the drinks on the table, Sophie reached over and stroked her wrist. The girl flinched and eyeballed Sophie, her jaw set in resignation.

‘You want? Then you pay,’ she spat. Her bright lips slashed open like a brilliant red wound. Sophie pulled a fifty-dollar note out of her pocket and placed it on the table. The woman flicked a glance at it and pierced Sophie with her defiant stare.

‘I’m looking for someone named Han Hong,’ Sophie said, the words tumbling out in a rush.

The girl grimaced. ‘You want to talk,’ she said, ‘you slap my face.’

Sophie sat back in the chair. ‘What?’

‘I can’t talk to you unless you do it.’

They watched each other, eyes locked. Sophie saw sadness and fear, an unfitting confidence and a challenge in this woman’s eyes. She wondered what was visible in hers.

The woman raised a pointed chin and tilted her cheek towards the ceiling.

But Sophie couldn’t mark that taut white skin. Had the woman been a monster, the revulsion would have been the same.

‘I can’t hurt you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m looking for Han Hong.’

The woman rocked back on her heels, raised a slim wrist and pressed a painted fingernail to her lips. She smiled. ‘Sorry. I can’t help you. We don’t go by our real names.’

‘But she could be here?’

The woman shrugged. ‘Lots of girls work here,’ she said. ‘We do it for the money and we don’t need rescuing.’

‘So you’re working here of your own free will?’

The woman nodded. ‘Otherwise I couldn’t have what I want,’ she said. She stood up and walked back into the middle of the room.

Sophie watched her go. When she turned back to Tae Hun, he was gone.

The glass warmed in her hand as she waited for him. She checked her watch. Quarter past two. While the green glow of the exit sign above the door still worked to settle Sophie’s nerves, Tae Hun’s absence worried her. What was this, some kind of trap?

The weight of a hand on her shoulder. ‘Where did you go?’ she asked.

Zhou took a seat in the chair previously occupied by Tae Hun. His dirty whites replaced by a pair of skinny jeans and a black leather jacket, he looked every bit the movie star. He stretched one long leg over the other and lit a cigarette from the silver zippo in his hand. He inhaled deeply and exhaled smoke from two wide nostrils.

Sophie sank deeper into her chair. The disgust and despair of the night receded from her senses as she realised this moment could mark the beginning of her end. She wondered what would happen if she were to pull herself up and make for the door. But her legs felt gelatinous; she didn’t know if they would carry her weight.

‘I told you to stay away.’ The words shot out of his mouth and into Sophie’s heart.

Her world slowed. It felt as if this were happening to someone else and in slow, underwater motion. She melted backwards, folding herself into the upholstery. Her hands found their way south, around her thighs and under the protective layers of her buttocks. She became aware of sticky leather softening into the crevices of her palms and mixing with the sweat there, shortening her life lines. The blood that pulsed through her veins to her brain felt heavy and slow and thick.

‘It’s the drug in your drink that’s making you feel like this,’ Zhou said, relaxed and cool. He smiled with something like reassurance. ‘Some girls love it. Numbs the pain a bit. Don’t worry, it will wear off.’

A surge of panic fought to make itself known on the surface of Sophie’s consciousness but the drug in her system succeeded in holding it down. She was aware of a struggle somewhere deep within her, a need to express her fear, to scream, to pull herself out of this chair and crash out the door into the night. But more powerful was this thickening feeling, the warmth, a slight queasiness, a heavy weight in her muscles, a strong urge to close her eyes and sleep.

‘I know you’re tired, Sophie, but you need to listen.’ Zhou was talking to her. His lips were moving and forming words that floated through the space between them, not quite settling in Sophie’s ears.

‘Hey.’ A stinging slap to her cheek. She saw Zhou’s black eyes hovering dangerously close to her own. She became aware of his breath tickling the small hairs on her upper lip. ‘You pay attention,’ he said, pointing a thin finger. He shook the tension from his hand and lit another cigarette. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you need to stop now. This is not your business.’

Sophie fought to make sense of the words coming to her in warped and echoing tones. She fought the heavy pull of her eyelids and the nausea surfing her stomach in increasingly buoyant waves. She would try to answer. She needed to tell him what she wanted.

‘I’m looking for a girl,’ she mumbled.

‘Aren’t we all,’ said Zhou.

‘Her name’s Han Hong.’

Through the haze, Sophie saw Zhou’s eyes roll and his mouth break into a grin. He leaned forwards and waved his finger in front of Sophie’s face.

‘You think I’m going to talk to you about any of these girls,’ he mocked. ‘I told you. This is none of your business.’

Sophie wondered how he would react if she vomited. Here. Now. Onto that finger and into his face.

‘I don’t care about your business,’ she managed. ‘I just want to find Han Hong.’

‘Why?’ he said with a smirk. ‘You want to fuck her or something?’

The words repeated themselves in Sophie’s head, the blunt devastation of their meaning softened only by the chemicals in her blood.

Zhou regarded Sophie with a smile sprayed flat to his face.

‘I knew a Han Hong,’ he said finally. ‘And she went back to China.’ He stubbed his cigarette out on the table leg. ‘Too bad for you.’ He propelled himself out of his chair and scooped Sophie under the armpits. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘I’m waiting for a friend,’ she slurred as Zhou dragged her to the door.

‘I think you mean your friend is waiting for you,’ he said.

With the opening of the door came an icy blast of night air. It stung Sophie’s face with its sharpness.

And then she was against the outside wall of the bunker, her face meeting the wall with a bash. Zhou spun her around. His hand was at her neck and the metallic ice of the night air was replaced with the cool of a knife, its smooth blade resting flat against her cheek. Zhou’s breath was on her lips. The scraping of metal across the surface of her skin. Stale cigarette smoke. A distant moan. A faint pounding in her head. Garlic. These were what Sophie would remember this moment by.

‘You are pretty.’ Zhou’s voice was a whisper. ‘I gut pretty things for a living. And do you know what I do with them?’

The blade pressed into Sophie’s cheek and she felt a burning sensation as her nerves prepared for her flesh to part. Zhou squeezed her neck with his left hand and scraped his knife along her skin with the other. His eyes bore into Sophie’s, a slight curl to his lip.

‘I turn pretty things into delicacies,’ he said. And then the pressure on Sophie’s skin released and Zhou shoved the knife into the back pocket of his jeans. He released his grip enough for her to gasp at the air in a great moan and pull it hungrily down into her lungs.

‘It would be wonderful to see you bleed,’ Zhou said. ‘If you ever come back here, I guarantee that will happen. I will open you up and turn you out. I’ll make you look like a beautiful kidney flower.’

Zhou pinched the skin on Sophie’s neck as his hand made its retreat. Her legs slid out. Her parka scratched a rough tune into the night as it skidded down the brick wall with her body. Collapsed among the dewy weeds, Sophie watched Zhou’s leather shoe rise out of the grass and swing backwards in a slow arc. It slammed, with a thud and a burning rush, into her chest.

鬼

Sophie didn’t know how much time had passed before she felt she could breathe properly. She’d heard Zhou move away from her some minutes after the brutal kick that had knocked the air out of her lungs and sent all her pain receptors shrieking in her chest. She’d heard the rush of club music escape from the shed as the door opened and she’d jumped with the slam of the door as it sealed again, cutting the outside world off from the horrors within.

Sophie pressed her palm to the ground and spread her fingers into the earth. Suction-cup fingers, an old yoga teacher had liked to call them. She used what strength she had left to push herself up from her foetal position so that she could sit and rest for a moment, her back to the wall. Around her, the empty yard stretched long and dark. The sensor light had extinguished itself, fooled by Sophie’s crumpled and unmoving body in the grass. Sophie guessed that upon her movement the yard would once again become illuminated. She wondered whether she would be pursued, whether the side gate would open; whether Tae Hun was still alive.

And it was this last thought that made Sophie creak to her feet and break into a run. She hurtled wildly through the film of yellow sensor light, around the corner of the house and down the concrete path to the gate. The black grille swung open like a flap. Sophie clambered through it and sped down to the footpath of the street beyond.

She emerged onto the street heaving. Her gasps broke the night like sobs. She bent to her knees and clasped them to catch her breath, then lifted a hand to her mouth and bit hard on her knuckles, diffusing the pain, quieting her rushing mind. Calmer, she lifted her head and looked straight at a darkened mound of a figure huddled deep in the overgrown grass of the nature strip. Tae Hun.

Sophie moved gently to him and pushed his shoulder with her palm. Tae Hun groaned and rolled onto his back, exposing his face to the night.

‘Tae Hun? What did they do to you?’

His left cheek had swollen to the size of a grapefruit and his left eye had disappeared into his head. Blood trickled from both sides of his mouth. His shirt had rustled itself above his waist and even in the dusty light from the moon, Sophie could see his torso was bruised black and red.

‘They bashed me for bringing you in,’ he said in a voice that came out like a rasp. ‘I think they wanted me dead.’

Sophie fell to her knees and reached her arm out to him. He rolled onto her knees and threw his arms around her legs with a heave.

‘I thought you were gone,’ he whispered. ‘I thought I lost you here.’

Lost you.

Sophie pushed her fingers through his matted hair. She knew what it felt like to be responsible for someone, to lose them, to wonder what pain they had been forced to endure because of your neglect.

‘Come on, little brother,’ she whispered. ‘Walk with me and we’ll make it back down to Burwood Road.’ She threw her right arm around his waist and pulled his left arm up over her shoulder.

‘Sophie?’ Tae Hun said when they neared the glow of the main road.

‘Yeah?’

‘What do we do now?’

Sophie looked across at his weeping face. Dried blood had caked itself to his chin, eyes and cheeks, and the swollen left side of his face was a tie-dye pattern of pink. For the first time since Wendy’s suicide, the desire to pursue unanswered questions subsided.

I’m not my father’s daughter any more. I don’t want to disappear. Fuck this.

‘We take you home and clean you up,’ she said. ‘Then tomorrow we go to the police.’

女孩

Sophie’s expectations were low. She only knew that Tae Hun had lain beside her in her bed and moaned while he slept. This morning when they woke, his pillowcase was stained brown from his blood.

‘Leave it, Sophie,’ he’d said as she dressed the wound above his eye. ‘These people, they don’t answer to the police.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ And she’d been surprised by the accusation in her voice.

Tae Hun had regarded her, scorn shining through his bruises.

He was right, she knew that. When had the police ever helped her? In Australia they’d failed to find her mother and in China they’d failed to find Da Wei. She doubted anyone in uniform would ever find out what had happened to Han Hong.

But this was too big for her to go alone. She’d tried, and Tae Hun could barely see as a result. She couldn’t risk placing him in danger again.

‘That man threatened my life and yours,’ she’d said, doing her best to sound convincing. ‘I am not going to sit on it.’

And so they were here. The cop at the counter was all protocol and no emotion. With a freckled finger he pushed a sheet of paper from his side of the counter to theirs. ‘Fill in the form,’ he said. ‘And we’ll lodge your report.’

‘Don’t you want to hear what we have to say?’

He looked up from the counter. ‘I can’t help you until you fill in the form.’

‘Have you seen his head?’

The constable nodded slowly. With a helpless shrug of the shoulders, he pointed to a row of chairs positioned along one wall. ‘He might feel more comfortable with a seat.’

Sophie helped Tae Hun to a chair. The cop stared as though he knew her.

‘I think we’ve met before,’ he said, when she returned to the counter.

Sophie pulled the form towards herself and picked up a pen.

‘The jumper,’ said the cop. ‘Outside the language school. You were there.’

Sophie looked at him, remembered the young cop with the face full of disdain. He’d disliked her then and given her a guilt trip for hanging around. And now here he was, pedantic about paperwork and ignoring the real story in front of him.

‘It’s always the same,’ she said, shoving her hands in her pockets, a finger touching cardboard.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Forms, protocol, administration. Does anything ever get done?’

‘It’s all about numbers here. If you and your boyfriend are having domestic issues, it might take the investigators a while to get onto looking into them.’

Sophie fingered the cardboard in her pocket. She pulled it out, turned it over: the business card from the PI, Damian Sommers.

Always do everything for yourself, Seamus had said. But never be afraid to ask for advice.

Sophie made a decision. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

She took satisfaction in the cop’s quizzical look as she backed away from the bench.

Tae Hun stood up as she approached. ‘What do we do now?’

Sophie pulled her phone from her bag. ‘You go home,’ she said, keying in Damian’s number. ‘I’m going to talk to a PI.’

鬼

They met at a grungy Surry Hills coffee shop. Damian wore jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of brightly coloured high-tops.

‘No suit today?’ asked Sophie when he sat down.

‘I call this my down time,’ he said, flashing a smile.

‘Your day off?’

He nodded. ‘Most of my sneaking around is done Friday night till Sunday, cheating lovers and all that,’ he said. ‘I only wear the suit to blend in with the five o’clock crowd anyway. Makes it look like I’m working a real job.’

‘You don’t consider private investigation a real job?’

‘It pays okay but there’s a lot of running around, sorting through other people’s rubbish, crawling through confined spaces, checking pipes for foreign objects. Stuff better suited to overalls.’

She couldn’t resist a jab. ‘So the suit helps you pick up chicks?’

Damian smiled. ‘Something like that.’

The coffees arrived, a cappuccino and a long black. Damian sipped his coffee straight through the foamy top.

‘The coffee here is the best,’ he said, wiping milk from his lip with a napkin. ‘Almost as good as Melbourne.’

‘My hometown.’

‘Yeah, I can kind of tell.’

Sophie laughed. ‘Oh yeah?’

He nodded. ‘Must be the bruises. You’re a rough lot down south.’

He’d got that one right. Rough as guts. Time to change the subject.

‘Do you want to hear my story?’

Damian took out a notepad and a pen. ‘I do,’ he said, all serious.

She studied him. He had the lean, jowl-less look of a man not yet thirty. He should be throwing back beers at the pub or taking his board out for a surf. What was he doing here in this grungy cafe taking an interest in the problems of a woman he’d only just met? Would he be hitting her up for big money?

‘And what are you going to do with the information?’ she asked.

Damian considered her. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said slowly.

‘Because I’m not going to pay you.’

A faint smile played on his lips. ‘Then why did you contact me?’

‘I had a feeling.’

‘About what?’

‘That you’d give a shit.’

He sat back in his chair, hands folded across the back of his head. ‘You’re right on that one,’ he said. ‘I give a shit about what happened to you and I want to find the person who damaged your gorgeous face.’

女孩

Sophie returned home to find a note on the fridge.

Are we still on for the trip? Call me.

The trip. She and Jin Tao had made plans to skip town and head west to the Blue Mountains. They’d organised a blue-stone cottage and planned to build a log fire, make Chinese corn cakes and wild mushroom ragu, drink tea, read trashy magazines and sleep. They’d made the booking weeks ago and planned to leave today. Sophie hadn’t thought of it since.

She went into the bathroom and considered her face in the mirror. The bruise on her cheek bloomed a blotchy purple and the whites of her eyes were streaked with red. The skin on her lips had cracked and started to peel. She could definitely do with a break.

She needed to collect some supplies. In the kitchen she sorted through the resuable shopping bags, selecting the one containing the least number of useless receipts. Then she picked up the phone.

Jin Tao answered on the first ring. ‘Okay, spill the goss. You could have just told me you were seeing someone.’

‘Huh?’

‘Someone stayed over last night.’

Sophie fingered the bruise. Jin Tao had it all wrong but how she wished he were right. She wished last night hadn’t happened, that she hadn’t chased down Tae Hun and gone out to the house in Ashfield. She wished she’d simply gone out to a club, had too many drinks, pashed a strange man and brought him home.

‘That was just a friend,’ she said.

‘I don’t get to share your bed, Sophie,’ said Jin Tao.

There was no point delaying it.

‘You remember that guy, Tae Hun?’

She caught a sharp intake of breath on the end of the line.

‘What are you doing, Soph?’ Jin Tao had lowered his voice but she detected the steel in his tone.

‘I was with him last night,’ she said, hoping to sound light.

‘And what did you guys get up to?’

‘I’ll tell you on our way to the mountains.’

‘I’m only going to say this once,’ said Jin Tao after a pause. ‘Your dad was a PI and look what happened to your family. You chose not to become a detective, Soph. I wish you’d try to remember that.’

It’s in my blood.

‘No need when I’ve got you to remind me,’ she said. ‘I’ll catch you soon.’ A wave of disappointment washed her insides. She’d forgive Jin Tao for bringing up her father but she imagined she would have a battle convincing him that she’d done anything right last night. It was true, she was lucky to have escaped with little more than some bruising and a scare. Damian had agreed. And then he’d quoted a whole bunch of terrifying statistics about the number of illegal brothels operating in Sydney and the things that happened to the women who worked in them.

‘But something about what you’ve told me is different,’ Damian had said.

‘What?’

‘The violence,’ he’d said. ‘Illegal brothels are usually exactly that. The men who visit them get off on knowing the women are desperate and exploited. They also like the fact that there are no rules and no chance the proprietors will call the police if they do something off. But brothels specifically set up for violence, that’s something different.’

Sophie slung the shopping bag over her shoulder. The weekend away would give her a good opportunity to clear her head. Next week she would contact Damian and see what he had turned up.

鬼

By the time she arrived at the restaurant, Sophie no longer felt cold. The wind, brutal when she’d started out, now refreshed her; the skin beneath her many layers felt clammy with sweat. She looked at her watch. Seven minutes early. She’d completed the walk from home to Blue Lotus in near record time.

Jin Tao’s Audi was parked against the paling fence opposite the door. Sophie dumped her backpack beside the wheel and leaned against the car to drink from a bottle of water. She’d seen Jin Tao through the dining room window on her way around. He’d appeared deep in conversation with a delivery guy. She noticed he’d dressed in his favourite old flannelette shirt, a piece of clothing he reserved for bumming around on the couch and doing nothing much at all. That was what they both needed, a weekend to unwind and do nothing but share each other’s company. Who knew what clarity such space might bring?

She drained the remnants of the water and lobbed the bottle over to the open recycling bin. It hit the corner and bounced off onto the cobblestones, the clatter making the alley cat jump. Sophie collected the bottle. She dropped it into the bin as the kitchen door opened and Jin Tao popped his shiny head out into the lane.

‘You going to hang out in the freezing cold all day, or are you going to come in?’

‘Hello to you too.’

Jin Tao pushed the door open wider. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What happened to your face?’

Sophie touched the bruise, turned her head.

He softened. ‘Come in, why don’t you,’ he said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

Sophie raised a hand. ‘We’ll be here all day. The idea is to get you away from your work.’ She took another glance at her watch. ‘I’m early and you’ve got another two minutes to be on time.’

Jin Tao grinned. ‘I can do better than that. I’ll be out in one.’ He disappeared into the kitchen, the door banging loudly. The vibration caused the lid of the recycling bin to clang shut, revealing a cardboard fruit box, rammed with newspapers and paperwork, wedged against the wall. The yellow highlight against the text of a bill caught Sophie’s eye.

She stepped closer. A payment order for meat. The payment was made by Jin Tao on behalf of Blue Lotus. The supplier’s name, printed clearly in black felt-tip beneath it, was Jonnie Zhou. Sophie picked the bill out of the bin with pincer fingers. She spread its double page wide, stared at the black and white text and Jin Tao’s signature, his familiar scrawl.

Zhou: the surname was one of the most common in China. There’d be hundreds of Zhous in Sydney alone. Recent memories flashed before her like the frames of a film. Jin Tao’s absences from the restaurant. The scratches on his face. The sighting of Zhou in the Cross near Blue Lotus. Li Hua would say these were more than coincidences.

Everything’s connected. How had Zhou known where she lived?

The door banged shut again. Jin Tao stood with his back to her, a duffel bag over his shoulder, fiddling with the deadbolt. Beside him on the ground sat a lidded box and a long-handled shovel.

Always pay attention to the details.

Sophie stuffed the invoice back into the box with the news­papers. She moved quietly to the car, her mind aflame.

The name had to be a coincidence, she needed it to be a coincidence.

Her thoughts jumped to Seamus and his large, imperfect heart. As a girl she’d viewed him as a hero; her mother’s great rescuer from a life that had been frightening and dangerous and soiled by crime. She’d thought her father to be one of the good guys. And he was. He’d saved her mother from certain execution: people didn’t witness murders inside the Walled City and live to tell about them.

But even good guys get it wrong. Or go wrong.

And crims need PIs too.

Seamus had been bent, in with the wrong people. Sophie had learned this long after Helen disappeared, when Seamus, his eyes red from crying and his face ruddy from wine, told her everything. It was his fault Helen had disappeared. Seamus had saved Helen once, and brought her to Australia, where he’d loved and protected her. But his shady dealings had finally caught up with him. Helen had become payback.

Already exhausted from her own fear and grief, Sophie had wanted to vomit. In the den that night, it had felt like her whole world tilted; she knew that her axis would never be the same. Her father was a crook and she had lost her beautiful mother because of it.

She had run out of the den and out of her family home. She’d never seen Seamus again.

‘Cat got your tongue?’

Jin Tao’s voice jerked Sophie alert. He stood behind the car, loading gear into the boot.

‘What’s that for?’ Sophie asked, pointing to the shovel.

Jin Tao grinned and slid it into the car on an angle. ‘A little project I’ve got for us in the mountains,’ he said. ‘It’s a surprise. You’ll find out when we get there.’

女孩

It was colder in Katoomba. The air had the kind of bite to it that Sydney rarely managed. The sky stretched high and wide, like the beginnings of an embrace.

Not that Sophie could see the sky now, enclosed as she was in a tunnel of ghostly blue gums. She found herself puffing as she hurried to keep up with Jin Tao on their hike through the bush.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he’d said when he pulled up at the side of the road.

‘Now?’ They hadn’t rolled into town yet. ‘You don’t want to check-in first, dump our stuff?’

Jin Tao had pushed open his door. ‘I need a leak for starters,’ he’d said. ‘Wait here and I’ll be right back.’

Sophie had leaned into the leather, pulling her coat closer to block out the cold. She’d looked out at the eucalypts – grey leaves, white trunks glowing like bones.

The passenger door had jerked open and Jin Tao had offered his hand. ‘C’mon,’ he’d said. ‘I’ve a surprise for you. Something you need to do.’

She’d unfastened her belt, jumped onto the gravel. Jin Tao had collected the shovel and the box from the boot. ‘I can’t carry them both,’ he’d said, offering the box to her. ‘Promise not to peek inside or you’ll ruin my plans.’

Sophie had reached for the shovel instead.

He’d shrugged. ‘This is lighter, but whatever.’ He’d turned, raising the box to his shoulder, and begun stomping through long grass towards the trees. ‘There’s a track here. I used to walk it with my yeye as a kid.’

She’d followed him through the grass, eyes peeled for snakes.

Now, with sheets of trees on either side, the unease she’d felt in the laneway behind the restaurant gnawed. She could only think of a sinister reason someone would take a shovel into deserted bushland; she felt strangely comforted by the fact she was the one holding it.

‘Here.’ Jin Tao stopped just ahead of her and placed the box on the ground. ‘I know you’re into ritual and I thought we could make one of our own,’ he said. He toed his boot at the earth. ‘I reckon this is a good spot to dig.’

Sophie looked about. Walls of gums glowed white around the small clearing. She gripped the shovel tight.

‘What is this, some kind of treasure hunt?’ she said, trying to make the question sound like a joke.

Jin Tao studied her for a long time. ‘I think it’s time to say goodbye to the past,’ he said. He knelt and began peeling the tape from the box.

Sophie looked from him to the ground, moist from rain, a patchwork of black earth, green grass and decaying leaves. Who had she told about her weekend away? And what the fuck was in that box? Her mind conjured predictions.

She tightened her grip on the shovel.

Out of the box, Jin Tao took a sapling. A plant in a black pot.

‘What’s that for?’ Sophie heard her voice ask the question, but her mind had raced a hundred beats ahead. He didn’t have a weapon. He hadn’t planned to harm her.

‘It’s a blue gum, like the rest of these,’ Jin Tao said, motion­ing to the bush around them. ‘Some people call them ghosts, because of the white trunks. It’s for you. To plant here for David.’

Sophie stared at the tree. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He’s your ghost, Sophie. He’s haunting you and colouring your view of everything around you. That shrine in your room, your obsession with these missing students, it’s all related. It’s consuming you and putting you in danger. It’s unhealthy and unsafe.’

‘And how’s a tree going to help with that?’ Sophie hoped the dryness in her voice distracted Jin Tao from the moisture forming in her eyes.

‘You plant this gum and you watch it grow. You come here when you want to talk to David. You go home and you stop with the shrine and the incense and the obsessing. You move on with your life. You forgive yourself.’

The tears were running now, hot and wet against her cheeks. Sophie swiped at her face with the back of her sleeve, embarrassment and relief and thankfulness clambering over each other.

Jin Tao stood and moved towards her, his arms open. Sophie allowed herself to step into them.