As for me and Ting-Yan, we realized we were each other’s nearest and dearest. For a few years after the war we stayed in Chek Keng with Ting-Yan’s mother, Siu-Wai, as well as Cheung’s widow, Yim-Fong, with whom Siu-Wai was close.

Emily remained with us, even after Courchene left, and Amah joined us, to help with Macy and Raymond. So for a few years, we were quite the community of women! I worked there as the village doctor, and patients came to see me from all over the Sai Kung Peninsula. We farmed. We burned spirit money and incense for Captain Lee, Old Cheung, and Tak-Tam, too, at the village altar. We bought a new tang tsai from a neighbouring family who had lost most of its members in the initial invasion. We called it the Bo Nay—another type of tea, you know, not as delicious as oolong, but the best for cutting grease. We put a new Tin Hau statue in it, and taught Macy and Raymond how to fish.

Grief-stricken by her losses, Yim-Fong threw herself into farming and fishing at Chek Keng. She thought Cheung was a hero for killing all those military policemen, but she thought he was a monster too. When she learned that Tak-Wing had tried to poison Emily and Raymond, she was horrified. She didn’t know what to do with this knowledge. She decided to do what a lot of us did with our memories of an unbearable past: she tried to forget. She farmed, she fished, she cooked for us, and she spoke very little. When the East River Column asked her to help the Communist side in China’s civil war, she threw herself into the work of smuggling gasoline, guns, and penicillin. She was so happy to be useful.