13

Lucy went behind the breakfast bar to make tea.

‘See Ka Lei later. She a student nurse. Works at the government hospital not far from here. One more year be qualify. Very good girl.’

As Lucy busied herself making tea, Georgina took the opportunity to study her. Lucy wasn’t pretty. Her looks were brash, hard. Georgina felt a small pang of disappointment. Lucy looked very different from her mother, whose beauty had been subtle and soft. Then she was cross with herself. She hadn’t come all this way to find fault with her cousins.

‘So funny, when you write me, huh? My sister and me, we talk juz couple of weeks ago. We say: we wonder how old you are and if we ever meet you. Funny, huh? We never thin you come Hong Kong. It’s pretty strange, huh – meeting like this for firs time? How you fine us?’ Lucy asked.

‘My mother left a list of people I should contact …’

Georgina felt sadness surge. She swallowed hard and tried to stay focused, not think about her mother for just a few seconds. She was jumpy and tired. It would be too easy to get over-emotional.

Lucy placed her hand on Georgina’s arm. ‘Very sat, about your mommy … very sat.’ She turned back to wait for the water to boil.

‘She had been ill for a long time. Four years,’ Georgina said in hushed tones, more to herself than anyone else, as Lucy had her back to her and was busy washing cups.

Georgina thought about those years. She had nursed her mother through two relapses. She’d never really expected her to die. She never thought her mother would ever leave her. She wondered how she had survived those early days, after her mother’s death. At the time she had felt so completely lost. She had gone back to work. The bookshop was just as she’d left it. Iris, her co-worker, was still wearing the same brown court shoes and pink blouse as she had always done, and the same coral lipstick that clung to the edges of her front teeth. Nothing was different, except Georgina.

Iris had never been good with emotions. The sight of Georgina’s distress had made her uncomfortable.

‘Have you no other family?’ she’d asked. ‘No one? Are you sure? You must have some relatives?’

‘I have two cousins in Hong Kong but I’ve never met them,’ Georgina told her.

‘Maybe you should take some time off and go and visit them, Georgina. Hmm? I can cope here. I have to take on some temporary staff nearer to Christmas anyway. I’ll take on somebody now, to cover for you, just until you get back. How’s that?’

Then Georgina had sat down on one of the unopened boxes in the storeroom. ‘I don’t know what to do any more.’ She had put her head in her hands. ‘I feel as if I don’t belong here, without my mum.’

‘You may find what you’re looking for in Hong Kong, Georgina.’ Iris had knelt down beside her and smiled kindly. ‘Who knows? You can only try. Life is a challenge. Sometimes it just throws up loads of shit at us, for no reason. It makes no sense at the time, but it makes us stronger, makes us grow. You need to grow, Georgina. You are twenty-two years old. You’ve been in this shop for five years now. You came in here with all sorts of plans. You were going to go to university. You were going to travel. You had a boyfriend. What happened to Simon?’

‘It just didn’t work out.’

‘You did a marvellous job looking after her, but it’s time for you to live your life now. It’s time to find your wings and learn to fly.’

It made Georgina smile to remember how Iris always erred towards the theatrical. But it had stirred something within her, and that afternoon she’d gone to see the Hos. They sat at a table overlooking the market. Mrs Ho stayed with her while Mr Ho went to fetch her some of her favourite wonton soup. When he returned, Georgina told them she was thinking of going to Hong Kong.

‘Good idea,’ Mr Ho had replied.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ Mrs Ho had retorted angrily in Cantonese. ‘How will she cope out there, on her own? Look at her! Skin and bone!’

Mr Ho had stood his ground. ‘But she’s not coping here, is she? Better go where she has some family to look after her. New start for her.’

Mrs Ho had scowled at her husband, turned back to Georgina, and spoken to her in English.

‘You better stay here, Georgina. You have friends here, don’t you?’

Georgina pushed the wontons around her soup.

‘Not really,’ she answered. ‘Most of my friends went to university when I stayed here. I have you and Mr Ho. I have Iris. That’s it, really.’

‘Better stay here with us then, huh?’ It had broken Mrs Ho’s heart to see her so sad.

Then Georgina put down her spoon and looked past Mr and Mrs Ho, down to the market below where the stallholders were shutting up shop, and for a second she thought she saw her mother. She looked away quickly.

‘They are my cousins. But I’ve never met them. Do you think they would even want to see me?’

‘Of course they would want to see you, Georgina. Why wouldn’t they? But maybe it’s not such a good idea to go there right now.’

‘But I think, perhaps, I should.’ For a few seconds she felt the sadness, which seemed to be cemented to her heart, crack and fall away and hope begin its return.

Mr and Mrs Ho had looked from one to the other. Then Mrs Ho had shrugged and smiled resignedly. Reaching over, she’d brushed Georgina’s hair away from her face and kissed her cheek.

‘Okay then. Maybe you should go,’ she had said with a sigh. ‘Maybe you should go to Hong Kong, Georgina, and find your family.’

And now, for better or worse, Georgina had found them.

14

‘I’m gonna make you some tea, okay?’

‘Yes … sounds good … thanks.’ Georgina yawned and sat down heavily on the stool.

‘I hope I’m not stopping you from going to work, Lucy. I’ll be fine here by myself, honestly.’

‘Hey, no worry, right?’ Lucy handed her tea in a chipped cup. ‘Working later.’ She smiled, turned away and began busying herself. ‘Good, huh? Give me more time to get to know you, huh?’

‘So you work when you want to?’

‘For sure!’

Lucy turned away from Georgina and searched for something in a cupboard. ‘And what kind of work do you do, Lucy?’

There was a pause, as Lucy pondered the question that she knew she would have to answer sometime. She stopped and turned and met her cousin’s gaze.

‘I work in nightclub.’

‘You’re a singer!’ Georgina exploded. ‘How cool!’

Lucy laughed. ‘No … but my mommy was a singer, did you know that? Ah! Juz a momen. I remember something I want to show you.’ Lucy slipped out from behind the breakfast bar and shuffled into the bedroom. She stood on a chair and pulled down a box. ‘Georgina, come see what I have here,’ she called as she carried on rooting through the box’s contents and pulled out an old tattered photograph. She held it aloft to show Georgina as she walked in behind Lucy. ‘See anyone you know?’

Georgina sat on the bed beside Lucy. She took the photo from her and studied it. It was an old black and white print of a man and woman and two girls, all in traditional Chinese dress. They were posing in front of a painted backdrop: tranquil water and weeping willows. Georgina turned it over – there was writing on the back: December 1950, Hong Kong, and some Chinese script. Turning it back, it was her mother’s smile she recognised first, then the shape of her face. Feng Ying was the smaller of the children, holding on to her elder sister Xiaolin’s hand, and she was staring into the camera with her head tilted to one side.

‘Nice picture, huh?’

Georgina nodded, transfixed by the treasure she held in her hands. ‘So beautiful.’

‘I’m gonna get you a copy, okay?’