Siew Li was doing well. She allowed herself a moment to acknowledge this, then asked Lina if she had to be home for dinner, or if she’d like to go for fish ball noodles on Chin Chew Street. They ended up ordering far too much food and picking at it for hours, gossiping about everyone else in the office. Lina, to her relief, found the ideological know-it-all men just as annoying. She wished they’d had this talk sooner.

That seemed to do the trick, at least enough that Lina and a handful of others showed up at her wedding, a small affair at Wesley Methodist. No banquet, they’d decided, just a sandwich buffet after—better to put the money towards their new flat, which was a stretch even with Jason’s family helping them.

Then there was no time to think of anything but the impending birth. Her mother came round every other day with tonics and strengthening foods, and she cut back on her days in the office as she became unfeasibly large. When her water broke, it was just like in the movies, pain and frantic joy all mixed as Jason rushed her to Kandang Kerbau in a taxi where, to their surprise, it turned out to be twins, so they needed both names after all. A boy and a girl. Henry and Janet.

Just a couple of months after the births, while she was still on leave, Lina came round and said she had to come to this rally. What rally? “I’ll explain on the way. You’ll want to be there, trust me, nothing in your life will matter more than this moment.” So she left Jason in charge of the kids and hurried with Lina to Happy World stadium, where there were oceans of people (more than ten thousand, she later read) and banners everywhere saying “Merdeka”. Over the stage was a huge flag, a blue circle with a red star at its apex, and beneath that the firebrand, Lim Chin Siong, announcing that he’d left the main party to set up Barisan Sosialis, the Socialist Front. The cheering was deafening. They controlled more seats in the assembly now. The leftists didn’t need to work with the running dogs. They had strength enough on their own.

This was like the old days. If she’d ever thought having children would pull her away from all this, now she knew it was in her veins. When Lim Chin Siong spoke, he had the force and clarity of absolute truth. The government was taking them for granted, and there was no hope for a leftist future unless they took matters into their own hands. What good was it otherwise, moving from one dictatorship to another? Siew Li joined in all the chants, becoming part of something so much vaster than herself, ten thousand of them speaking as one. What on earth couldn’t they accomplish together?