Lucy smiled into the mirror and squeezed her sister’s shoulders while her eyes filled with floating tears.

‘It will be all right, Ka Lei, I promise.’ She couldn’t hold her sister’s gaze and looked away briefly to gather her courage. If she fell apart they’d have no chance of going through with it. ‘Believe me, I only did it to try to make enough money so that we could be happy. You know that, don’t you, huh? I would suffer anything for you. Please believe me, Ka Lei. I would die rather than see you hurt, but tonight is just one night out of your whole life. You are brave, strong, you can do it. He will be gentle with you. He gave me his word. It won’t hurt.’

Lucy got no response. Ka Lei seemed to have accepted her fate without question. It was as if she faced an execution for which she was prepared. She scooped her hair up and tied it back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck – baring her neck for the block. All her dreams were shattering around her. She said nothing. She was nothing.

Man Po was in the front of the taxi with Max. He turned to leer at the girls. Max talked to him sharply and told him to keep his eyes front and stop dribbling. His large head tried to fix itself forward but it kept being drawn back. Lucy was in no mood and glared at him, while Ka Lei stared at her lap and felt the shame of his lechery as Lucy gave her sister instructions.

‘We go in together, but we separate in the lobby. I will wait for you there. I’ll show you where in a minute. You come and find me when it … you are finished. You must go straight to the lift, don’t look at the reception desk, just get straight in the lift and ask the attendant for the tenth floor. Give him this.’ Lucy handed her some money. ‘Go to suite number one hundred and four. Mr Chan will meet you there, okay?’

Man Po turned to grin at Ka Lei. Lucy smacked him on the back of the head and he thought better of looking back again.

They reached the hotel.

‘Do you need us to wait?’ Max asked.

‘No, we will manage.’

The sisters left the taxi and walked towards the hotel entrance. The concierge held the door open for them, and Lucy discreetly handed him a tip. Ka Lei looked like a frightened rabbit. Lucy took her arm firmly and they walked to where Lucy would be sitting and where Ka Lei could find her later.

For a second Lucy thought her sister was going to run – she could feel the tension in Ka Lei’s body – but she held on to her fast. There would be no turning back now, not now they had come this far.

They reached the place where they would separate and Lucy steered her sister towards the lifts. She watched Ka Lei’s slim frame being swallowed up by hotel guests, in elegant evening attire, making their way to the cocktail lounge to relax over their Martinis and catch the harbour views before dinner. She looked again towards the lift and watched the doors start to close. She was half-expecting Ka Lei to come running back out. She did not. She was gone.

Lucy sat down on one of the lobby chairs to wait. She heaved a big sigh, a monumental sigh that caught in her throat and came out as a groan. Although Lucy felt full of remorse for what her sister was about to go through, she also felt a glimmer of hope inside her. The debt was almost dealt with – three-quarters of it was gone, or as good as. It was a small thing, in the end – virginity. Lucy had sold hers to a Taiwanese when she was much younger than Ka Lei. She had sold herself to feed them both, when their mother’s money had run out. What else could she do? Hong Kong wouldn’t look after them, they had to do it for themselves or die. ‘Virginity’ was just a word. Inside was what counted. Time would heal; Ka Lei would forget.

Lucy cut the mental process of self-recrimination short as she caught sight of a likely punter. She wondered how audacious it would be to proposition him in the lobby of such a great hotel.

At the same time as her sister was being raped, Lucy was giving her number to an Australian businessman.

52

Lucy expected to see Ka Lei reappear from the lifts at any time, but instead she got a call from Chan telling her to come and collect her sister.

The door to the suite was ajar. She walked through the lounge and into the bedroom where she discovered Ka Lei alone, sitting on the edge of the bed.

‘Ka Lei?’ Lucy tried to steady her sister as she rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed. ‘Ka Lei, I’ve come to take you home.’

She was a mess: her hair hung over her face and her nose was running.

Lucy went into the bathroom to fetch tissue and tried to wipe her face for her, but Ka Lei pushed her hand away. Instead, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

Just when Lucy was beginning to wonder how she was going to manage the situation, Ka Lei stood up, her fists tight to her sides. Her head was bowed.

‘Are you ready to go?’ Lucy asked, as she smoothed Ka Lei’s hair and pulled the creases from her blouse. Ka Lei nodded. Lucy tried to check her face to make sure she wasn’t looking too horrendous, but Ka Lei pulled away from her and Lucy decided it was probably best just to go.

Ka Lei followed her sister, shadow-like, out into the corridor and into the lift. She walked through the lobby, head down, taking small steps, following in her sister’s path, staring at her sister’s heels.

Outside, they hailed a taxi and travelled home in silence. Once or twice Lucy tried to whisper some consolation into her sister’s ear, but Ka Lei wasn’t listening. As soon as they entered the flat Ka Lei walked straight into Georgina’s room and closed the door behind her. Lucy sat in the kitchen and listened to her sister sobbing.

Lucy phoned Georgina. She didn’t know what else to do – the door was firmly shut in her face and yet she knew how deeply her sister was hurting, and how much she needed to be helped by someone. Better Georgina than no one, Lucy surmised, although she wished it could have been different. Georgina had known nothing about the deal. Lucy knew she’d never be able to do it otherwise – two against one and Lucy would have lost. But neither of them could understand the importance of paying back the debt. Their view of life was very different to Lucy’s. They lived in a more innocent world. Lucy knew that whatever it took, it had to be done.

She waited for Georgina in the lounge, hoping to talk with her when she returned. But Georgina burst through the door and cut Lucy off mid-sentence as she strode through to the bedroom to find Ka Lei.

They talked for hours. Lucy sat in the kitchen listening to them, straining to hear what was being said. Occasionally she heard Ka Lei start sobbing again, and as that subsided the whispering would start. Eventually there was silence, and Lucy went to bed knowing that she had a lot of reconciling to do. She would have to make it up to her sister somehow.

53

Chan left the hotel room with a new spring in his step. He felt like such a man. The smoothness of her skin, the way her black silky sheets of hair fell over her tiny shoulders when she slumped forward trying to hide her nakedness from him. The sound of her whimpers as he had entered her. He was on a high that gave him a hard-on several times a day. He would have to own her. He would have to have sole access to her. From this moment on she would know no other man but him. Perhaps she would even bear him a child? God knows he was sick of waiting for his wife to produce one. Not that he ever saw her much. She spent her life in the tennis club or the shopping mall with friends. Luckily for Chan, she had no idea what his life was like.

But Victoria Chan knew more about her husband’s affairs than he realised. She knew all about his concubines – ‘the old faithful’ and ‘the young greedy’. It wasn’t that she kept tabs on him. His infidelity was never in question. It was rather that it didn’t concern her.