When the call came, my first thought was, At last I can get out of this stifling house and away from that creepy room. But I immediately felt guilty. With Emily married off and me in residence, Father would be all alone with mother’s ghost whenever he came to visit the Stable. But maybe he would just stop coming. After all, he had his business, his own house, and the Nest, with Second Mother Polly and her six children, so noisy and boisterous and full of life. But then, who would tend Mother’s spirit? She would be all by herself in that empty room without our noise to cheer her up. That house really ought to be sold off, but it was an eventuality no one in the family had the stomach to face.

I felt sad and forlorn on her behalf, and maybe a bit for myself too, which was ridiculous. I knew I couldn’t stay. I didn’t want to marry, and there was no suitor in sight anyway. This was my chance to get away and lead an independent life. I felt sorry for Father, and I felt sorry for Mother’s ghost. For my own part, I tried to feel happy. I went to Father’s office to tell him.

“Emily sent a message from Captain Lee’s boat at the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter,” he said. “They’re going to Chek Keng this afternoon to make arrangements for the Chinese wedding. She wants to know if we’d like to come.”

The thought of that marriage made me feel suddenly wistful, though I couldn’t admit the reason, even to myself.

“What has my life come to?” said poor Old Mah. “I’m now related to peasants.”

“Don’t be classist, Father,” I said, practising a word and a concept I’d learned from Professor Duffy. “Weren’t we peasants two generations ago?”

“We were gentry in England two generations ago,” he muttered.

“Insofar as we are Chinese, we are peasants,” I said. “Lucky peasants, to be relatively well-off. Anyway, what does it matter? The world is changing so fast. And Tak-Wing and Tak-Tam are all right.”

Driver Lim took us to Causeway Bay. There was a crowd on the boat already: Tak-Wing and Emily, Tak-Tam and Ting-Yan, Captain Lee, Old Cheung, and Emily’s bandmates, Isadore Davis Wong and Tanaka Shigeru. Both Wong and Tanaka were a bit older than Emily and Tak-Wing, maybe in their mid-thirties. Emily held Wong’s youngest daughter, along for the adventure, in her lap.

Someone had brought a giant bag of lychees and everyone was eating them and arguing about politics.