The air was noticeably cooler and greener-smelling up on the Peak than it was down in the city. When we got to the upper station, I took out my camera, a Kodak Brownie my father had given me as a birthday gift the year after my mother died. I’d used it mostly to photograph plants and bugs until I was in my teens, and then I used it mostly to photograph Emily and Father. I’d never had a lot of friends. I took photos of the bride and groom, and they took a few of me in my jaunty but overwarm jacket. We looked down into the city below. We could see the Central Market, the Gloucester Building, the Douglas Steamship Wharf, and the whole built-up city besides. Beyond it lay Victoria Harbour, dotted with big international freighters, regional cargo boats, foreign navy ships docked for R and R, tugboats, walla-wallas, launch boats, yachts, coast guard boats, ferries to various destinations, Chinese junks with their distinctive red sails, and lots of fishing boats and little sampans too. It was very pretty, and the fine sight made me relax, in spite of my worry about what trouble this wedding might bring.

The Peak Hotel had closed last year, but we wandered the grounds and looked in the windows at all the fine furniture made of oak and black leather. In the hall, there was a real grand piano covered in dust. Above it hung a chandelier netted with cobwebs. In one of the upstairs bedroom windows, I thought I saw flames lick the curtains, but when I looked again there was nothing wrong.

Tak-Wing produced a picnic lunch of sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, tea eggs, and a cake box containing pork buns, pineapple buns, and yellow cake. To drink he had brought two bottles of Awakening Lion aerated lemonade, which delighted Emily. We pretended the abandoned hotel was Tak-Wing and Emily’s castle, and we were dining at a long table in the main hall rather than out on the crumbling front steps. The air was thick with moisture. It began to rain, and we had to pack up the food and picnic blanket in a hurry and take cover under the hotel’s awning. The sun came out and poured its light over us even as the rain continued to descend. I finished the roll of film, and put the camera away. Emily and Tak-Wing kissed and I pretended not to see. To me, the light and mist seemed thick with spirits. Not ancestral ghosts, but mountain spirits breathing their magic into us as we stood there sheltered from the actual rain but not the elemental forces of wind and water.

Then we took the tram back down into the city, and the two of them went off to have dinner with Tak-Wing’s family at Tai Hang, while I went to the Kimblewick to inform Father.