Yet she was gone, and so was that other woman, Lina. Their office was locked up tight, and no one knew anything. He felt implacable rage, unfairly, that she should be able to just disappear like that. He was stuck here, there was nowhere he could vanish to. All of them, with their grand plans. They’d stolen her, and she’d let herself be taken. Why hadn’t he been enough for her?

The next weeks were unbearable. He showed up at work, but sat in meetings glowering into empty air. His boss didn’t have the authority to send him home, and so put him on filing duties instead. This just fed his bottomless rage. Relegated to busywork, as if he were already useless! He’d had their future planned out, their fortunes set to rise along with the new country’s. All she’d had to do was play along. Was even that beyond her?

After work, he’d stop off at the kopitiam for a consoling bottle of beer or two, then show up to collect the kids late, eyes bloodshot. One time, he showed up after ten, and his mum said, kindly but firmly, “You might as well leave them here, you’ll just be dropping them off again in a few hours.” This was the closest she’d come to a rebuke. “Why not just let us take care of them until you can cope again?”

Some weeks later, Mollie showed up at his flat. Without saying anything, she opened all the windows wide, found a broom and dishcloth, and started meticulously cleaning the place. He watched her from the sofa, a detached part of his brain noticing how hard she had to scour the grime. It hadn’t taken long to get ingrained. She drank from the tap, lapping like a cat, but otherwise took no breaks until the place was set to rights, grunting a little when she had to bend or stretch. He shouldn’t let a pregnant woman pick up after him, he thought, but couldn’t make himself move. She didn’t ask him where anything belonged, and he wouldn’t have known anyway. It was all Siew Li’s system.

Three hours after she’d arrived, she flopped down next to him. He wondered if he should thank her, or if she was angry with him. This isn’t fair, he thought. I’m the one left behind.

“This won’t do,” she finally said. He turned to look at her, but no response seemed possible. “Did you have dinner?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

She rolled her eyes, stomped into the kitchen, and came back with a slice of white bread thickly spread with strawberry jam, right up to the edges. “Eat.”