There was talk about Jason going away to university, to England, like all the other clever boys. He made it clear he’d rather be here, with Siew Li, and his parents were secretly relieved. Money was not as plentiful as it had been—the Japanese had run their factory into the ground during the occupation, and it was a struggle to get the business back on an even footing. His father was certain he did not want his son to take over the company—it was a lamed creature, and besides, his child was destined for better things than trade.

In the end only Siew Li’s name became a sticking point. His mother addressed her variously as Sue and Sally, only trying to wrap her tongue around the flat Chinese syllables after Jason put his foot down. “Hurry up and get married,” she finally said. “Then I can just call her daughter.”

•

They did get married, and had the twins. Jason tries to remember this as a happy time, but with the distance of years it is overshadowed by what came next. There must have been a good few months, maybe as long as a couple of years, when everything proceeded as it should. Janet has left a selection of old family pictures by the hospital bed, in the apparent belief that this will make him forget how they have fallen apart since, and Jason cannot recognise himself in them. He sees a painfully young man, awkward, bespectacled, hair carefully slicked down. Beside him is a girl, her eyes fierce. They each have a baby in their arms.

He would like to have a period of time to cling onto as purely good—but is he just fooling himself? He knows the tragedy of happiness is that you often don’t recognise it till it’s gone, but surely never having had it in the first place is worse? When he thinks of himself as a young man, a young father, it feels hollow, tainted.

At the time it was pleasant enough, coming home and hearing about Siew Li’s day, kissing the twins, marvelling at how they changed. There was so much to do, it seemed, to keep the household running. Mollie visited often, even after she got married. Then she was pregnant, excited to have her baby meet its cousins.

The conversations of those days are now impossible to recover. He remembers them never fighting, the babies never being difficult. Surely that couldn’t be? Siew Li had settled down, her radical days behind her, her English improving through regular use. She was still working for a union, but not agitating, just carrying out very sober contract negotiations. Which was fine, he was as staunch a supporter of workers’ rights as the next man. She got wrapped up in politics, campaigning during the election, but this was supposed to be a democracy after all, and it wasn’t like she was standing for office herself.