Chapter 5: Envelopes at Dawn

Jinyu was down the stairs in her stockings before she had finished buttoning her gown.

The back room was empty, the cot made, the quilt folded in a square.

The low window to the roof tiles stood open and let in a cold wet draught.

She did not stop to think.

She hauled herself through it onto the slick grey tiles.

She ran along the ridge in the half-light with one hand on the chimney and her heart gone cold.

She thought, she's gone to give herself up.

She thought, she's gone to him.

She thought, I let her go to sleep on my shoulder and she was never going to stay.

Three roofs along, the lane ended in a courtyard of small crooked houses with washing lines strung between them.

A lamp burned in a back doorway.

Jinyu crouched behind a chimney and looked down.

Qiao stood in the courtyard with her satchel on her shoulder and her glasses on her nose, looking neat and calm and tired.

A woman in a patched cotton jacket stood in the door with a baby on her hip.

Qiao took a brown paper envelope from the satchel and put it in the woman's free hand.

"Count it," Qiao said softly.

The woman did not count it.

She held it against her chest with a shaking arm and her face crumpled.

"Miss Lin," she said. "Miss Lin, God keep you."

"Please don't."

"My husband pulls a rickshaw sixteen hours. We thought that money was gone forever."

"It was never gone," Qiao said. "Not while I could count."

The woman kissed Qiao's bandaged hand.

Qiao went white.

She took her hand back gently and said, "Go in. It's cold."

The door closed.

Qiao stood alone in the courtyard for a moment, with her eyes shut.

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