The nurses are, as always, kind but uninformative. We can’t tell you anything, Mr Low, they coo. You aren’t her family. But isn’t it sweet that you care, Mr Low. We’ll be sure to pass on your condolences.

He cannot get used to this changing roster of staff. There are too many nurses, some of them foreign and difficult to understand. The doctors are all young, and often look tired. None of them have time to listen to him, not when it takes him such a while to get the words out. It isn’t his fault, he used to be very good with language—all his teachers at school were British, Oxbridge-educated, and when he drafted letters for his English superiors, they never failed to tell him how superb his phrasing was. You might be one of us, they said.

When Janet arrives, he tries to explain why he is upset. She gives the appearance of listening to him while staring into her compact mirror, retouching her make-up in short, angry strokes. Her cheeks are beginning to look gaunt, he notices.

“She wasn’t really your friend,” says Janet, before he has finished. “It’s Stockholm syndrome.”

“She was company.”

“I’m company. I come every day. Why don’t you just make some new friends?”

“They never stay long enough.”

“How long do you want to stay here?”

And then they are silent, trying to pretend she has not asked how much longer he intends to live. She puts away her lipstick and roots around in her handbag. Unexpectedly, her hand emerges with a tangle of wool, which shakes out into the beginnings of a scarf.

“Knitting,” she explains unnecessarily, slightly embarrassed. “Like an old woman, I know.”

“It’s good to have a hobby. Your mother used to sew.” Although not in an arts and crafts way, he wants to add. Just to survive, just to have clothes for the baby. For you. There is a cloud of words he cannot fight through—he just wants to say her name, Siew Li.

Janet seems to feel something of this. “You never talk
about her.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

It is his standard response, and shuts the conversation down. Janet is used to this, and does not push. Perhaps she is glad—both she and Henry spent their childhoods asking about their mother, who was not dead, but not there either. Their questions met with evasion, and then rage. Now that they have established a routine, an unbreakable silence, Janet seems happy to accept what cannot be known. Perhaps she has her own secrets.

“She sent letters, didn’t she? Those ones with the Malaysian stamps. We worked out later they must be from her.”

So they knew. He thought he’d been so clever. “What does it matter now?”

“I wanted to ask you, but Henry wouldn’t let me. We were so scared of you.”