We dip under the harbour and surface in Tsim Sha Tsui in a couple of minutes. If Cedar was here, he would like to discuss that, the idea of taking a train under a whole wide harbour. But how did they build it? How does the water not get in? He would be full of questions, I would have at least some answers, they would be welcome and no-one would call them ‘mansplaining’.

The station escalators take us out onto a crowded shopping street, with shiny surfaces at street level and pipes and wires heading in odd directions across the walls above. The street smells of traffic, the vegetation of the park opposite and spicy food frying somewhere. The air is thick with humidity, car horns, conversations in Cantonese. Hong Kong, I want to say to Lacy, we’re right in the heart of it now, but she’s slipped in behind me, having given up dodging pedestrians.

My navigational skills extend as far as getting us to Harbour City with relative ease, but not to the restaurant I have in mind. The shopping centre is vast, several centres opening seamlessly one into another, one designer store followed by the next, a disorientating enclosed world of lights and sounds and more people. We settle on a place that has dim sum on its menu and a view of the outside.

There are booths available, but we take a window table.

‘You write order in pencil,’ the waiter says, pointing to the order card as he sets the pencil on it. ‘You want Chinese tea?’

I look at Lacy and she nods.

‘Tea for two . . .’ the waiter says, half question half statement, as he picks up the pencil and marks it on the card. Before he leaves, he turns over our eggcup-sized teacups as a sign that we’re ready to drink tea.

I open the laminated menu. Lacy sits with hers in front of her on the table, looking down at the cover, a watercolour of a Chinese junk entering a harbour, its sails blue with twilight, a lantern casting light on its deck.

‘Prawn har gow.’ I flip my menu around to show her the photo. She’s eaten prawn har gow, pleated just like these.

‘Oh, cool.’ She picks up her menu, checks which page I’m on and opens hers to the same one. ‘Yeah. Pan-fried pancake with scallion, too. Let’s get one of those. I’m good to have it without pork floss, in case you were wondering. You see there’s optional pork floss? Whatever that is.’ She makes a face, as if some pork floss has just got stuck between her teeth. She turns the page. ‘Hey, red-bean sesame balls look totally like sweet sesame balls.’

She picks up the card and pencil, and marks her choices so far, one of everything we’ve talked about.

‘Wontons in chilli oil looks like number forty-five,’ she says, marking it too.