It was easy to stay in a cocoon, unless someone sliced you free. And if this happened at the right moment, you emerged fully fledged, a new being. The first tug at the silk thread, the first unravelling, came when Lina spoke to her that night at Happy World.

•

The ride couldn’t be all that long—there was only so far to go, even looping round themselves, in a space this small—but she felt herself losing her sense of time and movement in the dark. “I mean, what do you want to do with yourself?” came Lina’s voice. “Learn shorthand and become a typist or something? Some other boring job?”

Siew Li bit back a smart-aleck retort and muttered something about not knowing what else to do, needing to support her mum, uncertain times.

“That’s the point.” A skeleton did a quick jig in front of them, unhinged its jaw and raised a jerky arm as if about to eat it. “The world is changing, can’t you feel it? Of course nothing is certain. We need to keep up the pressure, otherwise it’s too easy for the people in charge to forget we exist. Which side of history do you want to be on?”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Isn’t it? Once you know the right thing to do, what else is there to think about?”

“Not everyone thinks this is right.”

“They’re too used to the wrong situation. Until now, it’s been the British in charge, and the ones who try to be like them. But this isn’t their country. They say we should be grateful, but for what? Being exploited? They weren’t trying to help us, they came here to steal from us. They need us. Their country is so much smaller—”

“Smaller than Singapore?” interrupted Siew Li, whose grasp of geography was shaky, though even she could tell this was unlikely. Still, the idea of Britain being a small country was irresistibly odd.

“Than China, of course. Maybe even Malaya.” She sounded less certain about this last point, but pushed ahead. “They have power because they’ve taken so much from us. Look what’s happening around you. White men saying this is their land and making us work on it for almost no money. It’s time for us to fight back. And that’s just the beginning—if the Chinese tycoons take over from them, that’s no better. So they do a bit of charity work and put their name on a school, that’s supposed to be enough? You know what a better world could look like. You know in your heart. Why not work to make it happen?”