“We couldn’t bring her out—it was too dangerous. She didn’t want to die in prison. Back then, there were amnesties from time to time—the army dropped safe-passage papers from helicopters, and if you held one of those, they wouldn’t shoot you, and the police wouldn’t dare arrest you. Special Branch took you in, even gave you a new identity, kept you safe from reprisals. More and more people did that, just to get out. But Lifeng had actually killed someone, you see, and that was the one thing that couldn’t be forgiven. If you surrendered, everything else would be forgotten,
but not—”

“Not murder.”

“It wasn’t murder. We were at war.”

Henry says nothing. No point arguing. Xiongmin’s old, he thinks, and I’ll be old soon. A few more decades in this world, at most. Just finish this story, and carry on. This place isn’t a museum, it’s a memorial. Poor Siew Li. Did she really think she could change the world? In the end, it comes down to this—a dying village with nothing to offer but the past. Would she have been glad, if she’d lived to see this?

He isn’t even that surprised about the killing—why would he be? He knew what that rifle was for. And the thought of his mother dying alone in the jungle—no, not alone, she had this man, and she had—

The thought fizzes in his chest. “Daughter. You said you had a daughter.”

Xiongmin nods.

“She was born inside? Is she still here?”

For a moment Xiongmin hesitates, almost fearful. But what does it matter now? “You spoke to her earlier. She works here with me. Behind the counter at the entrance.”

Her? Henry stares at the woman, now bent over arranging the little Chairman Maos. Her long hair swings over her face. When he can see her again, Henry thinks: Yes, of course. She is a few years younger than him, nut-brown from the sun, crinkled around the eyes from laughter.

Xiongmin is calling out to her, pointing at Henry. “Your half-brother is here!” he is shouting. His voice is wild. It seems impossible these words could exist.

The woman turns to look at them, gaping, then smiles with painful intensity, the same wide smile as in Siew Li’s photographs, becoming unbearably like her. It’s her face, Lifeng’s, Siew Li’s. She has Janet’s nose, she has Henry’s eyes. Before she opens her mouth, he knows what she will say.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

State of Emergency has been in the works for more years than I care to remember, and I couldn’t have done it without the kind support of many, many people. Apologies to anyone I have inadvertently left out below; my memory, like most memories, is all too fallible.