Chapter 5: Seven O'Clock

Lu Qing put the phone down and looked at the man asleep on the bench.

He had been asleep for three hours, and Lu Qing had not once wanted to wake anyone so little.

He picked up the green tin instead and counted the papers inside it.

The pink carbon was there, folded in four, with a smudged red stamp at the bottom.

"You should go home," he told the sleeper quietly. "I'll leave a note. There's a meeting."

"What meeting?"

Meng Yuhe's eyes were open.

He did not stir, and his voice was clear.

"The village. Tonight. They've called it about the pond," said Lu Qing.

Meng Yuhe sat up and put his feet on the floor.

"I'll drive you."

"You don't have to."

"I know," said Meng Yuhe.

The Qingxi village hall had a concrete floor, forty folding chairs, and a portrait of a former chairman who looked disappointed in everybody.

Tonight it held about a hundred people.

Lu Qing counted them from the door, and his stomach sank.

Aunt Fen was in the front row with her thermos and six aunties in a line.

The fish seller had a seat by the aisle and a folded newspaper that he was not reading.

At the back, near the door, were the young families who had never once bought a fish from him.

Meng Yuhe came in behind him, in Grandpa's old blue shirt under his jacket.

He went and stood against the back wall with his arms folded and his cap low.

Nobody looked at him except Aunt Fen, who turned right round in her chair and mouthed something enormous.

"Sit down, Little Qing!" she called. "I saved you one!"

He sat down beside her, and she gripped his knee.

On the little stage, Qian Lixin was behind the table with the village stamp and a pot of red ink.

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