That’s when she noticed the tattoo: a faded blue Chinese symbol beneath the sleeve of May’s white hospital gown. The symbol looked like two people holding hands, it reminded Nancy of the concertina dollies the girls liked to make when they were little. What did it mean? May didn’t seem like the kind of woman to have a tattoo – too straight-laced – but what did she know? May could be a former convict or a worker in a hostess bar. Nancy flopped back in the chair. A migraine tightened behind her right eye like the onset of toothache.
Someone gave a cough.
She turned round sharply in case it was Sybil. But it was only the nurse, standing at a respectable distance. Behind her stood Iain and a stranger.
“There’s no rush, but Inspector Meadows would like to speak with you,” said the nurse.
The inspector gave an official, conciliatory smile – the only kind possible in intensive care. His hair was dark and curly.
“I don’t want to leave her yet. It’s too soon, there are things I need to …”
“It’s about the accident,” said Iain.
“Just a few questions at this stage,” said Inspector Meadows. “I’ve also got some effects and belongings from …” He glanced in May’s direction.
Iain put his hand on her shoulder. “Come on, darling, let’s go with the inspector. We can see May again tomorrow.”
He turned and spoke to the nurse in a low voice. Nancy heard the words “dreadful shock,” and knew they were whispering about her, the way adults whisper about grieving children.
She rubbed her eyes, the pain there intensified. The room seemed to be closing in on her, the life support machine rolling towards her.
Iain held out an encouraging hand. She didn’t want to leave May. She wanted answers, real and true and sure, not more questions. Not the inspector with his conciliatory smile.
For the next hour, she found herself in a small side room with little in the way of furnishings. The seats were puce-coloured, the carpet beige, the lighting poor.
“And that was the last time you saw her?” said Inspector Meadows. “In the gardens?”
“Yes, I’ve already told you. After that, she was in the ambulance. The receptionist told me there’d been an accident and I left straight away.”
“What time would you say that was?”
“After lunch, sometime late afternoon.”
“Three … four o’ clock?”
“I’m not sure. Half past three.”
“And how long were you together in the gardens?”
“About ten minutes, I suppose.”
He jerked his head, as if trying to shake off a wasp. It was an unfortunate tic for an inspector. Nancy fixed her eyes on the witness statement form.
“Am I free to go soon? Only my daughters are home alone, they’ll be waiting for me. If I leave now I can be back in time to say goodnight. It’s my birthday too, Inspector.”
“Just a few more questions, Mrs Milne. You said earlier that May seemed ‘a little strange’ at the party. Can you tell me what you meant by that?”
“Maybe not strange; maybe nervous – oh, I don’t know! Please, I really would like to see my daughters now.”
“Is there another word you can think of that would better describe her behaviour?”
Nancy sighed. “She hardly spoke all afternoon other than to explain the food to our guests. Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Was she shy? Aloof?”
“No, not aloof, just helping out – unobtrusive. She was being Chinese!”
The Inspector raised an eyebrow.
Nancy wanted to get home and hold Jen and Ricki tightly for a very long time until it didn’t matter whether May was in a coma or that she might be their blood mother.
“Look, she wanted to leave early because she’d arranged to phone her fiancé. She was probably just missing him.”
“Fiancé?”
“In China. His name’s Yifan – I don’t know his surname.”
“Do you have his contact details?”
“No.”
The Inspector jotted on a separate sheet of paper. “And so he doesn’t know about her accident?”
Nancy shook her head. “May kept herself to herself. I only know that Yifan’s a doctor.”
“Do you know where he works? Which city?”
“Yes … No.” Nancy rubbed her eyes and propped her elbows on the desk. She felt like she was carrying a concrete slab inside her skull. “I don’t know. I just don’t know …”
“So you don’t know May’s home town?”
“She never mentioned it. Can I please leave now?”
Inspector Meadows scribbled his signature on the witness form. “I need you to read over your statement and make sure the details are correct, that we haven’t omitted any information, then sign at the cross.”
Her hands were sweating and left damp marks on the paper that soaked through to the carbon copies. “I hope that’s everything, Inspector.”
He opened his briefcase. “I’m sorry Mrs Milne, but there is one more thing that’s required.” He put the plastic bag on the desk. “As you’re the only available next of kin, I need you to tell me what’s in the bag.”
Nancy gave him a quizzical look. “Well, they’re shoes.”
“You recognise them?”
The heels were a greyish pink, made from worn, grubby satin that must once have looked elegant, but not anymore. There were water marks along the toe and down the sides, the satin was bobbled. A fake diamond clasp was missing from the buckle of the right shoe. She’d only ever seen them worn by one person.
“Yes, I recognise them.”
“What about the purse?”
“That’s hers too.”
“You can confirm that the effects and belongings contained in this bag belong to May Guo?”
“Yes.”
She had a strong urge to rip it open and empty May’s belongings onto the desk in the vain hope that part of her would come back to life. She needed to talk to May, shout at her, shake her.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to keep them,” the inspector said. “At least until May regains consciousness or the enquiry’s over.” His words floated somewhere in the background, pin pricks of sound that burst and vanished.
“What’s this?” said Nancy at the discovery of a small manila envelope inside May’s purse.
“It appears she kept some clumps of hair. I hoped you might be able to shed some light on that Mrs Milne.”
“What kind of hair?”
The inspector looked puzzled.
Dumb question. Hair’s hair, it wasn’t as though it mattered what kind of hair it was; the important point was that May carried hair in her purse.
“Baby hair, at a guess,” he said. “You don’t know if she had any children, do you, Mrs Milne?”
“No.” The lie came out before she could stop it. “She never had children.”
“Hm. Well, this is my card. Call me if you remember anything. Otherwise, I’ll be in touch in the next few days.”
“What about May?”
“I’m afraid circumstances mean we just have to wait.”
“How long?”
Inspector Meadows ushered her towards the door. “We’ll get a witness appeal together as soon as we can; I’ll be in touch. The nurses here are taking the best possible care of your friend, Mrs Milne.”
Nancy hovered in the doorway, shivering. She wondered if she might be coming down with flu. She’d sat too long amidst the fatally sick, breathed in their chill; but she wouldn’t let herself cry, not until she was safely back home, locked inside the bathroom. It wouldn’t do for the twins to see her so upset, especially not on their birthday.
“Mrs Milne –”
She glanced back at Inspector Meadows, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking awkward as a school boy.
“I’m sorry this hasn’t been a happy birthday.”
She turned, eager to get away.
Iain stood in front of her. “St
eady on, darling,” he said. “I’ve brought the Lexus round the back to save you trekking through the hospital … Darling, are you alright?” He felt her forehead. “You’re burning up.”
He guided her out to the car park. A heavy December fog had drawn in and with it a fine drizzle that prickled Nancy’s clammy skin. The sound of an extractor fan whirred from the back wall of the hospital.
She had done it in cold blood; told the police a lie. She knew exactly where May had lived in China, or at least where she’d studied, where she’d been photographed in front of a ferris wheel. Tallest in the World! Welcome to Nanchang. A young student, unmistakably May, caught in a moment years ago.
Nancy’s second lie? The same one May guarded for sixteen years: the lie of her childlessness.
High school certificate
The snow in Nanchang had melted, leaving the station platform filmed with sludge. Zhi and I crowded into the square, and onto a packed bus smelling of clothes worn day and night. Zhi pushed towards the back of the bus, where the air hung thick with cigarette smoke. I took a window seat and gazed out at the thronging square.
“We made it …” I whispered.
Zhi yawned and pulled down her sunglasses.
The rusting trolley bus belched and began its struggle through a tangram of roads onto a main highway. Unused to the motion of buses, I felt nauseous. Other migrants held plastic bags to their mouths and were discreetly throwing up. I wiped my sleeve against the window and peered at the vast concrete patchwork: row upon row of corrugated-roofs that covered an area bigger than our whole village, rice fields and all. Entire mountains seemed hollowed out, leaving a lunar landscape in which cranes bent their backs instead of peasants. Blocks of cement and girders swung hypnotically through the air. Occasionally, a farm would appear to be holding out between the storm of swirling construction dust; the crop coated in an eerie layer of ash. Piles of rubble and debris littered the roadside, bare wintry trees rose up brittle and cinder-coloured.
As we approached the city centre, newer high-rise buildings, hotels, restaurants and shopping malls crowded one on top of another; the overpass that spanned the river was frantic with cars and wagons.
“It’s huge …” I said.
Zhi filed her nails, disinterested. “It’s a circus. They’re building a bridge to the sun. Every month a new road appears – what you see here wasn’t here last year. They can’t make the maps fast enough.”
A huge portrait smiled down from a brightly-lit restaurant. “Chairman Mao doesn’t wear glasses!” I protested.
Zhi glanced up from her nails, rolled her eyes. “That’s not Mao, noodle brain, that’s The Colonel. We’ll go when you get paid and eat chicken burger and fries. Then we’ll hang out in the park.” Zhi pointed to a white island glistening amidst the smoggy shades of grey: pagodas and a humped bridge, a partially frozen lake laced with snow-burdened willows.
“Girls go there on Sundays, when they’re tired of window shopping. But you have to watch out for the snake.” Her eyes widened. “A few years ago, the park keeper went missing; he was swallowed alive by a python twenty feet long and a foot wide. They found his eyeballs in the reptile house.”
“Aiya!”
“Come on, wimp, or we’ll miss our stop.”
We wrangled for the exit and jumped down from the bus.
Zhi threw out her arms. “Welcome to Nanchang, Cousin! Fastest growing shit-heap in the motherland.”
Our national pride – a limp red flag – drooped from a flagpole at the centre of the square.
“I didn’t imagine it to look so … grubby”
“You’ll get over it,” said Zhi, already several paces ahead.
We walked in the shadows, coiling through the crowds that shifted and churned. The frequent blast of car horns hurried cyclists along as they wheeled against the kerb and out again, netting together in an unfathomable formation. My heart leapt when I passed a man in a straw hat pulling a barrow of coal bricks and for a moment I thought it was Father. Along the kerb, I found a pair of wet, discarded biker gloves and stuffed them in my coat pocket.
We turned a corner down a back alleyway where a group of big noses in suits rolled out of a bar called The Blue Banana. Their gruff laughter rose to meet us and the smell of fish juice and liquor smarted in my nostrils. A couple of women wearing low-cut sequinned tops staggered after them. Mother always said the westerners were decadent and unruly, but this was the first time I’d seen them.
“Zhi,” I panted. “Can’t we stop for a rest? I’m hungry.”
“Not now, we’ve got to make you official.” She beckoned me over to a street phone, hemmed in by looming slabs of coal-stained buildings, and was already tapping in a number.
“Hi, I’m going to need a fake high school certificate, an unmarried status card and a work permit pass. How soon can you do them?” Zhi’s voice didn’t falter. She rummaged in her pocket for a lipstick and daubed a street name on the back of her hand. “I’ll meet you there, ciao.”
She hung up. “Now we need to fix your hair so you look like a dagongmei with prospects.”
I’d come too far to turn back and needed a new identity, one good enough for the city and the factory gates.
That night, Zhi and I slurped hot and sour soup at the junction between Zhongshan and Shengli Road, where street vendors traded hats and felt bags, ivory boned-fans, high heeled shoes, flip flops and jewellery. I browsed the stalls, exploring the treasure trove of textures, letting threads of wool, silk, linen and gauzy chiffon glide through my fingertips, each conjuring a different image - of Empresses and Beijing Opera singers, film stars like Priscilla Chan. I flushed, remembering the tall, professional westerners at The Blue Banana – “No shame, they have no shame,” corrected Mother’s voice in my head.
The stalls were swarming with young workers like Zhi, dagongmei, who buzzed with a newfound taste of freedom. They sang Cantonese pop songs, bartered loudly, bragged about their pirated Hong Kong movies. They puffed Marlboro cigarettes, whose smoke coiled upwards in the sharp night air and mingled with the smell of rendering duck fat.
Zhi saw a couple of factory girls she knew from Forwood, but she pulled away suddenly in the direction of a stall selling necklaces. We tried on beads made of pearls and fake rubies. For a few hours, I forgot about my family and was free. Zhi, I noticed, kept checking over her shoulder.
I steered the conversation onto Forwood. “It must be strange coming back to the city; everything here is so different, so exciting compared to the village.”
“But at home, I get to rest.”
She wouldn’t tell me what was bothering her. That evening, as we huddled together beneath her coat, dovetailed inside a shop doorway, I lay worrying. I felt sure that Mrs Nie, my figurine, was urging me to keep an eye out for Cousin. Long after Zhi had fallen asleep I watched the streets empty around us. I promised my figurines that I’d keep Zhi closer than my shadow. It was the early hours of the morning when finally, I let sleep take me. A shallow sleep stippled with questions – like why, if Zhi was so successful, could we not afford to sleep somewhere warm?
Outside The Dragon Hotel, the boy arrived late with the fake documents that would help me secure work.
“So where are they?” said Zhi.
“Cash first,” he replied.
“Only when she gets the documents – I want to make sure it’s not a photo of some northern girl who looks nothing like her.”
“Sssh. Keep your voice down, lady, the cops are everywhere this time of year.” He marched us away from the hotel entrance, into a nearby alley.
The boy gripped Zhi’s arm. She tried to brush him off.
“Let go of my cousin, you’re hurting her!” I yelled.
“Ah, so the manglieu can speak? Your boss will soon have that knocked out of you.” He took an envelope from inside his jacket and dangled it above me, just out of reach. “This what you’re after, eh? Ask politely, eh?” The boy’s teeth were yellow and uneven. His breath sme
lt of rice vinegar. He gave a thin snigger.
I punched out, flattening him to the wall.
Zhi grabbed the documents. “Run!” she screamed as we bulleted into the thronging street.
We didn’t look back until we reached a square where I knelt, panting on the pavement.
“Well done,” Zhi wheezed. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
The factory buses were all blazoned with a green arrow. Zhi told me the arrow was Forwood’s logo. She gave a sardonic laugh, “It’s supposed to represent the company’s progressive and dynamic ethos.”
Voices ricocheted down the workers’ bus as the girls talked.
“Will there be enough work for us all, Cousin?”
Zhi examined her red, newly painted nails. “Don’t ask me! The gates open at midday. You stand as good a chance as any of this lot, because I work there.”
“What? You mean there’s no guaranteed work? But you said – I ran away because you promised there’d be a job for me at your factory. What will happen if they’ve all gone? Mother and Father will never speak to me again.”
“Mai Mai.”
“Don’t call me that, I’m not a child any more.”
“You ran away because you didn’t want to marry a coffin maker’s son, not because of anything I promised.”
I grew angrier then, but a voice whispered in my ear. “We stand a better chance than the girls on the next bus.” An ashen face, as narrow as a sunflower seed and with grey eyes, peered through the gap between our seats. “Personnel usually dole out the jobs quickly,” she said. “My advice: keep your head down, show them your hands and let them see they’re nimble. It doesn’t matter if you’re a child, so long as they can put you on the line.”
“And if they don’t?”
“They will. I’ve been around. After a few years in the city, I’ve seen it all.” The girl’s smile faded and she held out a hand. I locked fingers with her, nervous that she might not let go.
The Secret Mother Page 4
