“Stay focused, dear Violet,” Professor Duffy said. She worked as a volunteer at Selwyn-Clarke’s clinic too. Though she didn’t have my training, she had the wisdom of age, books, and travel. Because she was European, however, her look would have attracted attention on the streets, so she mostly stayed in the clinic and helped with the patients Dr Selwyn-Clarke or Dr Lai Po-Chuen had brought there. “Your people need you,” she said.

Had I been thinking aloud?

“I want to help Emily, but I don’t know how.”

“Why do you look after her the way you do?”

What kind of question was that? “I don’t know.”

“Isn’t she older than you?”

“Yes.”

“In most Chinese families, isn’t it the custom for the older sister to take care of the younger one?”

“Well,” I said, like a stunned rabbit, “yes.”

“So why is it upside-down in your family?”

Lots of things in my family are upside-down, I thought. But aloud, I said, “I don’t know. That’s just how it is. Everyone in my family has always taken care of Emily. Mother, before she died. Father too. Because of her beauty, I suppose.”

Professor Duffy raised an eyebrow. “But Violet, you are also beautiful.”

“Huh?”

“You are also beautiful.”

“I’m not. I’m the ugly clever one. Emily is the beautiful helpless one.”

“What utter nonsense. Is that how your family talks? You and Emily are both beautiful. You look very much alike. Both clever too, I suspect.”

I stared at her like she had lost her last marble.

“You couldn’t be more different in spirit,” she said. “But in appearance you are clearly sisters.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s the looniest thing I’ve ever heard. But it doesn’t matter. If I don’t help Emily now, she and Raymond could die.”

Professor Duffy reached into the folds of her jacket and pulled out a book. She handed it to me. Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes.

“That’s a funny name, Djuna Barnes,” I said.

“Up-to-date stuff. When this war ends, the world will become a bigger place. You might use some of the time you now spend worrying thinking about who you want to become.”

Emily came to me before I could get to her. Little Raymond lay bawling in her arms. She had her best dress on, light blue speckled with little white flowers, and a pair of stockings from before the war, but the stockings were torn and the left leg was wet with something dark and oily. She had made the mistake of going home after that infernal cricket match.

“Blood?” I asked her. Tak-Wing was not human. Any last vestiges of pity I felt for him evaporated.

“I hit him back this time.”

“Will you let me examine you?”

“No, Violet. What’s to see?”