Hmm. The word?

Engulfing.

Like a black hole.

But just all … all … all white.

A white hole.

TRI BRAWD.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

How am I feeling? Charles wonders.

I am feeling …

Claustrophobic.

Disgusted.

Nervous.

Stupid.

Fastidious.

Sad.

Alone.

Charles worries that he may have shingles.

‘Would you mind showing Ying Yue and Wang Shu through to the kitchen while I pop outside for a minute, Charles?’ Avigail asks, as Charles scratches gingerly at a suspicious rash on his upper forearm.

‘Perhaps you might … I don’t know … bathe her head in some warm, salted water? I just need to pop outside for a second – I won’t be … uh … long … if that’s okay …?’

Avigail promptly disappears, leaving a delectable cloud of Body Shop Japanese Cherry Blossom Strawberry Kiss Eau de Toilette in her wake.

Wang Shu is still on the phone, talking in Chinese.

‘Bathe her head?’ Charles murmurs, horrified.

‘There’s no need,’ Ying Yue pipes up. ‘Mother is tough. She hates any fuss. She doesn’t welcome any fuss.’

After she finishes speaking Ying Yue quietly inspects all the locks on Charles’s front door.

‘Plenty locks,’ she says, approvingly.

Ferocious innocence.

No judgement.

Nothing.

‘Ha. Yes …’ Charles almost winces (making up for Ying Yue’s lack of judgement by sternly judging himself). ‘To keep me in!’

Ying Yue glances up, thoughtfully, and still, miraculously, no sign of judgement.

‘Uh … joke …’ Charles mutters.

‘Ah.’ Ying Yue smiles broadly.

Ying Yue doesn’t really understand jokes. And she doesn’t really speak English. I mean … she isn’t … she can’t … not … not really. She doesn’t truly speak any language. Well, she can speak, just a smattering, but she doesn’t fully possess any language. And no language fully possesses her. She slips and trips and falls cheerfully between the letters. Yes. That’s her. That’s Ying Yue, holding on for dear life to the lip of an e, the tail of a q.

It’s quite impermanent, quite temporary – her grasp of these things. Everything’s just hashed together, just piecemeal, just loosely tacked into some semblance of coherence – of intelligibility – by giant, scruffy stitches of sincerity, simplicity and goodwill.

Charles suddenly crosses himself, in his mind, for protection, even though he isn’t currently – never has been, and never will be – a Catholic.

Protection from what, exactly, he doesn’t yet know.

Perhaps he never will.

2.

EVERY TIME YOU MAKE A TYPO, THE ERRORISTS WIN

Perfectionism is actually a major part of the problem. Perfectionism and entitlement.

Charles knows this. He understands that his fervent desire for things to be ‘just so’ is a stupidly anal, self-involved, un-evolved way of being. Grannon sometimes links ‘entitled’ behaviour (a modern scourge) to a tendency that is found to be prevalent in the Cluster B Personality Disorder Matrix called ‘Magical Thinking’. This is something that very small children with porous ego-boundaries are apt to engage in, i.e. believing that their internal urges/desires will somehow be ‘magically’ expressed in the outside word.