“He isn’t dreadful,” I said, remembering the baked Alaska Tak-Wing had treated me and Emily to last week at Jimmy’s Kitchen in its brand new Pottinger Street location. I couldn’t believe that fancy restaurant had let us in, but Tak-Wing had learned the graces of aristocracy, and they didn’t dare refuse him. The baked Alaska had impressed me mightily—a towering heap of snowy meringue on fire, which gave way to a mountain of cake, ice cream, and chocolate sauce once a fork was stuck in. Every element was a novelty: the burning rum (imported, and not something a Chinese woman would normally drink); the meringue (imagine the luxury of time to beat egg whites to such a froth); the ice cream (dairy products were exotic and slightly off-putting until one developed a taste for them, but they were also English and therefore fancy); chocolate sauce (which is not really a Chinese taste); cake (which we traditionally steamed rather than baking); and most of all, the miraculous combination of heat and cold, which could only be achieved using strange foreign appliances that we did not have in our own home and wouldn’t have known how to use even if we did. “He’s a lot of fun. And like Emily, he’s nice to look at. They make a good match. You have to decide, Father, whether you’re a modern Chinese or an old Confucian patriarch. If you’re the modern Chinese you want to be, you have to let Emily do what she wants.” My behaviour was outrageous for a Chinese girl of good family. But Mother was not around anymore to make me do better. We had Amah, of course, but because she was not our mother, we ran roughshod over her with little respect for her thoughts or feelings. I regret that too now, but she is long gone. I tell her so sometimes, when we go to sweep her grave. I hope she hears me.

Amah said, “Poor Old Mah. You raised your daughters to be too clever. And then you left them to their own devices.”

Father knew it was true. He spent what little time he had away from his business with his second family, not so much because he cared for them more than he cared for us, but because Second Mother Polly was there to make sure that he did. He often felt guilty about neglecting us and annoyed at Amah for holding him accountable.