Bee Leng continued to stare, her red mouth like a gash across her face. Then she laughed, a half-suppressed snort followed by a giggle. “Really? The cursed house, with the English widow who dances all night?”

“That’s not—” Gean Choo gestured with her palm, the movement pulling at the wound where she’d been cut. “That’s ridiculous. It’s just a house.”

“Simply Asiatic superstition,” Bee Leng said, momentarily switching to English, affecting the British accent of a colonialist. She giggled again.

This was doing nothing for Gean Choo’s nerves, nor her temper. “I will pay your honourable mother within the month,” she said. She didn’t know how, not with Lai Hock breathing down her neck, but she’d manage. Somehow.

Bee Leng finally flattened herself against the wall, allowing Gean Choo to pass. “Ma says you’re two months overdue.”

“I’ll repay her with interest.” Gean Choo entered the shared room where she kept her things. It was situated in the middle of the townhouse, lacking a window. Inside were two women engaged in hushed conversation on the floor, though neither looked up as Gean Choo went to her bed—a narrow wooden shelf affixed to the wall above another woman’s pallet. Bee Leng followed her in, leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed.

“Live-in job? Needs a fortnight’s notice.”

“I’ll cover the extra two weeks.” Gean Choo pulled herself up onto her bunk, ducking to avoid banging her head against the hanging baskets used to keep foodstuff away from vermin. She put aside her new clothes and threw everything else she owned into the empty bag—some toiletries, another set of clothing, just as threadbare and discoloured as the shirt she was wearing. Carefully, she wrapped the one photograph of her parents—taken on their wedding day—in a handkerchief. Then she changed into her new clothes with no concern for modesty, the starched collar rough against her skin.

“Address? So Ma can reach you when you miss the date. Again.”

“It’s—” Gean Choo paused. She had no idea, aside from it being in Tanjong Katong, along the east coast, some ways distant from the town centre. She went through her old shirt, reaching inside the pocket. Miss Skelford had given her a slip of paper with four digits and the Edevane name written upon it. “That’s their telephone number.” She handed it to Bee Leng, then picked up her bag. “Please, if your mother wants to get paid, I must go.”

As she took her first step down the narrow staircase, Bee Leng called out. “Hey. How will you pay if some hantu takes you?”

Just send the invoice to hell, was what Gean Choo wanted to say, but instead she turned and smiled, eyes lowered in contrition. “If hantu are there, I’ll beg for mercy. ‘Let me pay up before I die,’ I’ll say. ‘I still owe Koh Bee Leng’s mother.’”