Chapter 9: Place Card

They went to Ningbo on the morning train, in their own clothes, with nothing in their hands.

The black car Madam Xu had promised stood waiting at the station.

Mu Qing walked past it, and the driver's face did not change, and they took a taxi.

The Xu house stood behind a grey wall in the old quarter, four courtyards deep, with a red gate and stone lions.

Lanterns hung from every eave.

Two hundred guests were already moving through the second courtyard in silk and good wool, and a quartet played under the plum trees.

Mu Qing stood in the gate in his white shirt and his plain dark trousers.

Ran stood beside him in his school blazer, with his hair flattened and his exercise book under one arm.

"They're looking," said Ran.

"Let them," said Mu Qing.

"I don't mind. I'm only observing."

A steward in a black coat came forward with a list.

"Name?" he said.

"Mu Qing, and Mu Ran."

The steward found them, and a small white card, and handed it over without meeting their eyes.

"Table sixteen," he said. "Through the side passage, please."

Mu Qing turned the card over.

It said Mu, Kitchen, in tidy black ink.

Ran read it over his arm.

"It's spelled correctly," he said. "That's a point in their favour."

"Papa," he added, a little quieter. "Is the kitchen table the one near the bins?"

"Probably," said Mu Qing.

"Cousin Qing!"

A man in a pale grey suit had come down the steps with his arms already open.

He was thirty, handsome in a polished way, with sleeves turned back to the elbow and a ready, friendly face.

Mu Qing had never met him, and knew who he was at once.

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