After some time, Kit moves in with Ga Ling, who goes parttime at the factory, then quits altogether. By way of explanation, she says that Kit is taking care of her so well that she doesn’t need her day job. Wai Lan notices that during the week Kit sometimes brings home a friend and, after they’ve had a few drinks together, leaves him alone in the bedroom with Ga Ling. She’ll hear some grunting and moaning on the other side of the board, a moment of quiet, then a door opening and closing. A day or two later, Ga Ling will be showing off a new dress or hairstyle, or Kit will have an expensive bottle of whisky on the table. For weeks Wai Lan continues to pretend she’s ignorant about what is happening. Then one evening Ga Ling comes to her door and tells her an extra friend has come along.

“There’s no one to keep him company,” she says with a friendly shyness that Wai Lan hasn’t seen since their first day together at school. Ga Ling lowers her head and raises her eyes, biting her bottom lip in appeal. “Please,” she asks.

It doesn’t snow here, so, talk me through it: grey mist on mountains; dirt-cloudy breath; white, mirror lakes; a car window. Rain. Where we used to live. Talk me through it. Words unlock, wooed from their moorings; leave the finite, the solid. Dreams: black streets without temperature and my fingertip pressed against the sky, tracing circles, looking for evidence of travelers.

It’s the last day of factory work for Wai Lan. Even after giving Kit his share, she can still earn a day’s pay or more in half an hour. In the beginning, she finds many of her customers repulsive, some of them sad. To get away from their faces and the stink of their sweat and mouths, she often finds her thoughts turning to Sing. She wishes that she could have been at once older and more pure for him. She shakes out such thoughts with each untying of her hair and tries not to remember.