“I’m a nosy bitch.” She waited.

He sighed. “She already has a child.” He took in Margaret’s frown of puzzlement. “You have never heard of China’s One-child Policy?”

“Ah.” Understanding dawned. Of course she had heard. And she had always wondered how it was possible to enforce such a policy. “What can they do to you if you do have a second child?”

“When you get married,” he said, “you are asked to make a public commitment to having only one child. You sign what they call a ‘letter of determination.’ In return you receive financial and other privileges—priority in education and medicine for your child, an increase in income, better housing. There is also strong pressure to be sterilised. But if you then go on to have more than one child, you will lose all your benefits, maybe even your house.” He shook his head slowly, clearly concerned. “And during the second pregnancy there will be other pressures, psychological, sometimes physical, to have an abortion. The consequences can be terrible, either way.”

Margaret tried to imagine the US government trying to tell Americans how many children they could have. She couldn’t. But at the same time she knew what unchecked population growth would do to a country that already comprised a quarter of the world’s population. Starvation, economic ruin. It was a dreadful dichotomy. “Is she going to have the baby?” He nodded. “But did she and her husband sign this ‘letter of declaration’?”

“Yes.”

“Then why is she so determined to have another child?”

“Because their first child was a girl.”

Margaret pulled a face. “So? What’s wrong with girls? Some would say they’re a lot better than boys.” She grinned. “And, in my humble opinion, there’d be a lot of merit in that view.”

“Not in China.”

And she saw that he was serious. “You’re kidding. Why not?”

“Oh, it’s not easy to explain,” he said, waving an arm in a gesture of futility. “It has to do with Confucianism, and the ancient Chinese belief in ancestor worship. But perhaps more than all of that, there is one very practical reason. Traditionally, when a son marries he brings his new wife to live with his parents, and as the parents grow aged the younger couple look after them. If all you have is a daughter, she will go to live with her husband’s parents, and there will be no one to look after you in your old age.”

“But if everyone only has one child, and every child is a son, there won’t be any women to bear the next generation of children.”

He shrugged. “I can only tell you how it is. The orphanages are full of baby girls who were abandoned on doorsteps.”

“So your uncle is going to talk her out of having the baby?”