Alexandra smiled and nodded at the palliative care nurse, Sally—who was busy writing on charts—as she tiptoed into Oma and Opa’s grand sitting room. She caught a whiff of something woody; it was vaguely familiar but she couldn’t quite place the smell.

Opa was propped up in a hospital bed. When she’d arrived home last night Alexandra hadn’t recognised this withered man with the sallow face. The rhythmic whistle of the oxygen machine and the tiny beep of the heart monitor screen filled every corner of the room, nearly drowning out the tick of the mahogany grandfather clock.

Alexandra stared at walls of screens all day, watching for the faintest nudge in the graph—a variation—that told her to swoop on gold in Shanghai at breakfast and trade it in London by lunch. She spent eighteen-hour days under fluorescent lights searching for volatility. Hunting numbers. Alexandra didn’t need to study the beeping screen to know her beloved Opa’s number was up. She’d been home for twelve hours but she was yet to see him conscious.

She shuddered. Perhaps she was too late?

Alexandra sank into the cushions of the old peacock-blue armchair by the fireplace and traced the curve of the arms, circling the rough patches. Hessian stuffing poked through threadbare velvet and the springs had gone in the base. She shivered and sneezed—so typical of her to pick up a bug in transit. She rubbed her cheek on a cushion. So many hours spent in this very chair snuggled onto Oma or Opa’s lap for Aesop’s fables and Grimm’s fairytales and—as a teenager—curled up with a textbook, practising endless algebra and algorithms with a lead pencil.

The house—Puyuan—was a red-brick Edwardian nestled behind a picket fence weighed down with pale pink climbing roses. Wisteria scrambled up the verandah posts and dangled from the iron lace trim, its blue flowers spent. Oma’s sitting room, with the bay window overlooking her precious garden, had lost none of its grandeur with age, though paint peeled from the deep grey-blue walls and wide skirting boards, and the large cream plaster ceiling rose could do with patching. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the far wall were spilling over with books on herbs, Chinese medicine, history and photography. Crammed between books at every angle were political memoirs, British thrillers—le Carré, Forsyth—and five decades of French Vogue.

Alexandra gulped back tears as she replayed her hurried departure from London. She’d left her Sloane Street apartment for Heathrow and was on a flight to Melbourne within hours of Oma calling to say the tumours had come back and spread into Opa’s organs, bones and bloodstream. Her grandmother’s voice had lost its customary calm. Instead Alexandra could hear the deep, low tones of sadness and resignation.

When she’d finally emerged from customs in Melbourne twenty-four hours later, Oma and her friend Nina were standing with their shoulders pressed together in the arrivals hall, one dark and wiry, the other broad and soft. Alexandra allowed herself to be swallowed by their hugs, closing her eyes and breathing in traces of gardenia from her Oma’s neat bun and the smell of fried garlic and smoked paprika that always accompanied Nina’s kisses.

‘Danke for coming so quickly. I know with the move…’ Oma’s voice had a new quiver.

‘Oh!’ Alexandra leaned down to press her cheek against her grandmother’s as she stumbled over her suitcase. ‘Opa—is he still…?’

Her grandmother lifted a tissue and dabbed her eyes as she nodded. ‘He’s waiting.’

Nina laid a gentle hand on Alexandra’s shoulder. ‘Your Opa’s still conscious. Just. He’s been asking for you. Come. I’ll take your bags.’ Nina wrenched the trolley from Alexandra’s grip with surprising force for a nonagenarian, insisting on pushing her bags.

Alexandra threaded her arm through her grandmother’s and asked quietly, ‘And you, Oma? How’re you? It must be hard.’

‘I’m fine, Liebling. All the better for seeing you,’ said Oma.

Alexandra shifted in the old chair as her Samsung vibrated in her back pocket and she pulled it out. Another text from Hugo: Call me back. I’m sorry A.

She deleted the message, resisting the urge to put a permanent block on her ex’s number. She wasn’t prepared to forgive him, but there was a tiny part of her that didn’t want to say goodbye. She was an expert in analysing risk, predicting outcomes, but she had failed to see how exposed her own heart was.

Never again.

She slid the phone back into her pocket without so much as a glance at spot prices on Bloomberg. The market could wait.

She stood and threaded her fingers through Opa’s and squeezed gently, as if she could send some of her own energy surging through their joined hands. Oma would say she was channelling her qi. Alexandra grinned; perhaps the apple didn’t fall so far from the tree after all.

‘Li…Sophia?’ Opa rasped as Alexandra crouched bedside him. He reached up and tried to touch her jade pendant. She shivered and cleared her throat.

She glanced over at the photo of her parents on the marble mantelpiece above the fireplace. Once she’d been a smiling, clapping toddler with glossy hair, dressed in crimson overalls and a stripy turtleneck as she sat on her mother’s knee. Her father Joseph, tall, broad and fair, stood to the side with a hand resting on Sophia’s shoulder. Her mother was wearing a blue denim sundress with a strap falling from a tanned shoulder, the jade pendant nestled at the top of her cleavage, and she was laughing with Joseph, gazing into his blue eyes. Alexandra’s stomach clenched as she stared at the photo, trying to remember this fierce love. It was her sole memory of her parents.

Opa barely mentioned Sophia to Alexandra by name. Oma merely shook her head and smiled when she spoke of ‘her gift’. Their clever child adopted from China. Cherished. Like Alexandra.

Opa strained forwards, peering to get a closer look at her face.

‘Li?’ he repeated.

‘Opa, it’s Alexandra,’ she said, stroking his cool hand with her thumb, noticing how spindly it had become. His muscles had wasted away, and with them his strength and his memory. Alexandra had never heard either of her grandparents mention a Li.

‘Oh.’ His head dropped to the pillow with a weak smile. Then, confusion. ‘Your job in Shanghai?’ he asked faintly.

She paused. Was he lucid? ‘Shanghai can wait,’ replied Alexandra as she adjusted the drip line so she could perch on the edge of the bed. She could hardly tell him she’d delayed her transfer to Shanghai to spend as much time with him before—

She blinked away tears.

‘Shanghai waits for no-one, my dear child.’ He patted her hand and pushed out a deep belly chuckle, followed by a coughing fit. Between coughs he said, ‘You should—’ More coughing. ‘Li. You won’t find her…You look so like her, you know.’

Like who? Alexandra wondered. Did he mean her mother? Her heart sank. Her grandmother had warned her Opa was not making any sense. He’d forgotten her parents were long dead, killed in a car accident just weeks after the photo on the mantelpiece was taken. Alexandra was pulled from the wreckage by a paramedic, the back of her head sliced open like a peach. She traced the smooth scar at the nape of her neck, hidden by long hair. Some days it burned and puckered when she touched it, but most days she felt nothing. It was a grafted void.

As her eyes clouded with tears, she looked up at the blurry crystal chandelier and watched the rainbow of light swim across the ceiling and wall. This grey-blue room was home. Her grandparents were her anchor. And now she was losing her Opa. She squeezed his hand again and rubbed his other arm, trying to warm his skin and ease his pain.

Opa spluttered and wheezed. ‘The spitting image. Your grandmother…’

‘Shhh,’ said Alexandra as she looked to the nurse for help.

‘Your grandmother—Romy.’ Cough. ‘She was the strongest of us all. The three of us—’

More coughs. Opa’s shoulders shook so hard Alexandra thought he might burst a lung.

The nurse jumped up and came over to rub Opa’s back as he continued hacking. Alexandra stepped back to give Sally room. ‘Can we give him something?’ she asked helplessly. ‘Water, medicine?’

The nurse ignored her, focusing on her patient. ‘There, there, Mr Cohen—Wilhelm. Nice deep breaths…’

‘I’ll fetch Oma,’ said Alexandra, glancing out the window to where her grandmother was gardening.

‘No need, love. It will pass in a sec. Besides, she’ll only get her smoke going, or stick some more needles in his ankles. None of it helps much. Not at this stage.’

Alexandra’s head thudded as she realised what the smell lingering in the room was: moxa. Alexandra pictured Oma waving dried sticks of Chinese mugwort over Opa’s head, under his nose, then lighting the ends for an instant before blowing the smoke softly and pressing it straight onto pressure points on his ankles, wrists and neck. She giggled just a little—no wonder Sally was bewildered.

Sally raised an eyebrow at her and bustled over to the other side of the bed to tap the drip. ‘Hydration and morphine. Your grandfather’s on the good gear—aren’t you, Wilhelm?’ The nurse articulated her words slowly and clearly as if Opa were in nursery school.

‘Opa…will he?’ Alexandra hesitated. ‘This coughing—do the drugs actually stop the pain?’

‘They certainly do. We’re doing everything we can to make sure he’s comfortable.’

‘Is there any possibility…I mean, this cancer…’ She looked at Opa, who had lapsed into unconsciousness once more.

Sally shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, love. But he knows you’re here. Apple of his eye, you are. Talks about you non-stop.’

The nurse rolled Opa gently onto his side without waking him. She looked back over at Alexandra: ‘So you just arrived from London? You must be jetlagged. I hear it’s shocking this way, coming home.’ The nurse was friendly and businesslike—rubbing Wilhelm’s back as she spoke to Alexandra.

Alexandra nodded. Her legs ached and her body felt like she’d been run over by a truck. Last night she’d stepped off the kangaroo-hop flight clammy with a cold and a barking cough despite using the nasal saline spray with a hint of eucalyptus she’d picked up from the pharmacy in departures. The smell made her homesick. But it turned out a whole ocean up her nose couldn’t stem this cold. No sooner had the taxi pulled into the driveway than Oma rushed Alexandra straight into a deep warm bath sprinkled with cinnamon. The steamy bathroom smelled like Christmas. Alexandra smiled to herself as she absent-mindedly rubbed her jade pendant. Opa might be dying, but Oma still fussed over Alexandra. Some things never changed.

‘Your grandmother tells me you’re some kind of financial bigwig over there in London.’ Sally eyed Alexandra’s navy Stella McCartney yoga pants and gold-trimmed hoodie. ‘Sounds very flash.’ She grinned.

Alexandra shrugged. ‘Not really. I trade commodities. Precious metals. Copper, gold, zinc, nickel, aluminium…but mostly I just trade paper,’ she joked.

‘I see,’ said Sally, looking momentarily confused before breaking into a shy smile. ‘I guess you’ll never have to worry about topping up your superannuation.’

Alexandra was too embarrassed to respond—her job seemed pointless today. As she watched Sally soothe her Opa, rearranging the white sheets around his legs and up under his arms so he wasn’t irritated by the scratchy hems, it seemed to her that Sally was the gold in this room.

‘There you go, Wilhelm. Just have a little rest for a minute or two and then you can have a catch-up with your granddaughter. Gorgeous creature she is.’ The nurse winked and picked up a thriller sitting on a chair in the far corner.

Alexandra sat back down in her comfy chair and pulled a woollen throw over her legs, wishing she could roll back the years. She didn’t want Opa to go. Not yet. Not ever. But she hated seeing him like this.

She picked up the soup Oma had made her before ducking out into the garden. It was still warm. She held the cup in her hands for a heartbeat before taking a sip and savouring the familiar rush down her throat, heating her stomach. It was the taste of her childhood colds: dried black bean paste with crushed garlic, ginger and chives.

Alexandra shifted her gaze back to the window and watched as Oma wandered around her vegetable garden chomping on a green bean. Along the back fence was a thick bay hedge. In the middle of a blanket of thyme stood a row of trees. A gnarly Meyer lemon, limes and a tiny ginkgo. These were underplanted with waves of lilies, budding peony stems and purple clouds of flowering garlic and chives floating among blue monkshood.

Alexandra had missed the chaotic colour and whimsical combinations of Puyuan’s garden. When was the last time she’d had her fingers in soil? She stretched out her manicured hands. They were so smooth—as if they belonged to someone else. As a child, Alexandra had loved to work alongside Oma and Opa in the garden and the kitchen, climbing the old oak tree, shelling peas, staking tomatoes and cramming her mouth with the tiny ones before they popped and sprayed down the front of her t-shirt.

She took another sip of soup and felt the ginger warm her throat.

Oma’s silver hair bobbed among the long rows of tomatoes. The staked rows were about the same height as her grandmother. Oma plucked the leftover red and green tiger tomatoes from the vines, not stopping until she’d filled the wicker basket slung over her forearm. Then she picked handfuls of the purple and deep green basil huddled under the tomatoes. Alexandra’s stomach rumbled as she realised Oma was out picking lunch.

Alexandra closed her eyes and listened to the rhythm of the oxygen machine, beeping monitor and grandfather clock. Then she prayed.