He ordered, and the girl brought a tray of delicacies for them to choose from. Margaret picked a small dish of toasted sunflower seeds to nibble on. The tea came in colourfully patterned china cups set in deep saucers and covered with lids. Hot water was poured over a sprinkling of dried green leaves in the bottom of the cups from a heavy, traditionally shaped brass teapot. The girl left it at the table for them to top up their own. The green leaves floated to the tops of their cups, expanding and turning fleshy as they rehydrated. Li replaced the lids. “Better to wait a few minutes.”

They sat in silence then for some time. Not a difficult silence, not awkward or self-conscious, but comfortable. Words seemed unnecessary somehow. Li looked at her hands, clasped on the table in front of her. He marvelled at how pink the flesh was beneath the nails, how delicate the fingers that wielded the instruments of autopsy, cutting open corpses to unravel the mysteries of death.

“What on earth made you want to be a doctor?” he asked suddenly, almost without meaning to. And immediately he regretted it, fearing she would take offence at his tone.

But she just laughed. “Why? Is it so awful?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be . . .” He tailed off and shook his head. “You know, when you told those students I was squeamish about being at autopsies, you were right.”

She looked at him, surprised. “But you must have been at dozens.”

“I have. And I want to throw up every time.”

Which made her smile. “You poor soul.”

“I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to do it. Cutting up dead bodies. Or living ones. In fact, that’s probably worse. Diseases and cancers. People dying all the time.”

“That’s what got to me,” she said. “People dying on me. It’s much easier dealing with the dead. You don’t get attached to them.” She removed the lid from her cup and sipped at the tea. It was still very hot, and wonderfully refreshing. “I used to think medicine was vocational. You know, something you were born to. But I’m pretty cynical about it now. Most doctors I know are in it for the money. I’d wanted to be a doctor as long as I could remember. To help people, to save their lives, to ease their pain. But it’s not like that. There’s never enough money, there’s never enough time. When you graduate from medical school you think you know it all, then you find out you know nothing. Whatever you can do, it’s never enough.