Preview – Doctor How and the Deadly Anemones
Lin-Lin silently thanked the Communist Party for its one-child policy. One was quite enough, and it was her husband's tough luck that they'd had a daughter, not a son. "Ah-lam, it is not the end of the world. I will buy you the DVD next week. The street sellers will have it."
"But I wanted to see it now," wailed her daughter. "All the other girls at school will have seen today's episode." Ah-lam kicked the DVD recorder, scratching her fake designer shoes, and stubbing her toes. She began to cry. "I hate this DVD! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I want a new one."
"There's nothing wrong with it. Maybe the electricity went off." Lin-Lin glanced at her watch. Somehow the DVD's clock was an hour out, and had recorded a different show. In her youth this kind of wealth and these consumer goods had been unimaginable, and what had that and the one-child policy given them? A generation of spoilt brats demanding round-the-clock attention and entertainment. Lin-Lin was nothing if not meticulous. She'd set the device to record that morning, and would swear on her own ancestors' graves that the time had been right.
"I tell you what, I'll call round a few people. Maybe someone else recorded it? Here, play with the little bouncing flower. See if you can figure out how it works." She took the little white flower down from the windowsill, grasping it by its two-inch diameter green plastic pot.
Lin-Lin knew exactly how it worked. She was an export marketing manager and it had been her idea to look for another use for the little motors that powered the waving paws of maneki-neko, the plastic good luck cats her factory sold. The market was saturated, so she'd told the designers to brainstorm a new product and this was it. They expected it to be a huge hit in Western Europe. She'd had a scheduled sales call with her distributor in London, which was why she'd picked up her daughter late from nursery. They'd liked the sample, so a consignment was to be air-freighted so that they could test the market. If they sold well, millions would be produced and shipped over by the container-load.
She placed the flower down in front of Ah-lam. It bobbed up and down on its stalk, and the two green plastic leaves either side flapped up and down in an equal and opposite motion. The weight of the flower, stalk and base in the centre of the pot was finely counterbalanced by the weight of the two leaves on either side. Two photovoltaic cells formed the brown 'soil' on the top of the pot, and powered the simple and tiny electric motor. Ah-lam stared at it, mesmerised.
Lin-Lin called a neighbour a few floors below who also had a five-year-old daughter, and confirmed they had recorded and watched Hello Kitty. Her phone said 18:49. "I'll be down in one minute," she said, and turned to Ah-lam. "I need you to behave for Mummy for two minutes, little girl. I'm going to get Hello Kitty for you. You're tired and hungry. I'll put something in the microwave. It'll be ready when I get back." She took some soup out of the fridge, put it in the microwave, set the timer to two minutes and turned it on. "Two minutes! Behave!" she called as she shut the door behind her.
Lin-Lin checked her phone when she got back to the apartment. 18:53, so four minutes, give or take.
But she could hear the microwave humming. She looked in the kitchen. There was still over a minute to go on the timer. The seconds were ticking by painfully slowly. She went over, switched it off and opened the door. A plume of steam billowed out. Pieces of red and green vegetable plastered the inside walls. What the hell was up with her appliances today?
She listened. Silence. Nothing from the living room.
"Ah-lam?" she called, her heart missing a beat. "Ah-lam?"
She ran through to the living room. Her daughter was still staring at the flower, bobbing up and down on its stalk, its two leaves flapping. Tears were rolling silently down the child's cheeks.
"Ah-lam?" She knelt down and grabbed her daughter's shoulders. "Ah-lam? What's the matter? I have your DVD. We can watch Hello Kitty together now. I told you it wasn't the end of the world. Cheer up, darling."
"It is the end of the world, Mummy. It is."
"Hush now. Hush." She picked up her daughter, who was getting too old and heavy for this kind of comforting. "Why do you say such a stupid thing, sweetie?"
Ah-lam pointed a trembling hand at the flower. Her mother rolled her eyes. This would be her mother-in-law's superstition. Maneki-neko were Japanese in origin. Her husband's mother was from a peasant family. The flower was white with a small yellow centre; that was the problem. White meant death in Chinese tradition. The Westerners weren't so stupid: white was a neutral colour that would please consumers in their millions. They'd agreed it with the distributor –– any other colour would have made fewer sales, and this was a volume business.
She put her daughter down and picked up the flower and put it back on the windowsill. "See? It's not going to hurt you."
A sob from Ah-lam said she thought otherwise.
Book two, Doctor How and the Deadly Anemones is available now!