Chapter 1

The last paper of the midterms was over. Gi Ran came back from her form teacher's office for the final period of the week, the Friday class meeting. She stopped in the doorway of second-year class one. Eyes flicked over her, and the room went back to its joking and its noise.

A year of it had been enough to get used to. People looked her over, and they looked down a little while they did it.

Wenyuan Foreign Language School was the famous private school in Pingchuan, the one for rich families. Everyone in the class had money or a name behind them, which at least kept a bit of polish on what they said.

Since she started here she had rarely met the open shutting-out, the laughing, the bullying she had known in primary and middle school. That showed what a friendly place Wenyuan was. It also showed how little Gi Ran asked for.

In the corner a few girls stood in a huddle, glancing now and then towards her, chattering about something. One of them lost patience and stamped her foot. "Class is about to start. Xiao Xiao, go on!"

Xiao Xiao was as small as her name. Standing next to her friends she seemed to sink out of sight. She held her chin in both hands and stared at Gi Ran's back. "I... I really don't dare."

The girl reading quietly at her desk had a thin back. Her long hair was tied in a ponytail that lay still on her shoulder. Her uniform was cut a little differently from what most of the class wore. Her spine was perfectly straight, like a young pine.

"What has Miss Xiao got to be afraid of? Gi Ran isn't going to eat you."

"Exactly. She'll say yes."

"Go on. Go on."

They pushed Xiao Xiao out. She crossed the few steps to Gi Ran's desk and looked back at her friends with her teeth gritted.

The friends pretended not to see. They made fists at her the way characters do in cartoons and mouthed, You can do it.

Xiao Xiao had nothing to say to that.

No going back now.

A shadow fell across Gi Ran's chemistry book. She looked up and found the small classmate standing there saying nothing, and her face went puzzled. "Do you want something?"

Xiao Xiao met that cool look and stepped back without meaning to. She called herself pathetic, kept her expression together and nodded hard.

Gi Ran was a patient person, even though she kept as far from her classmates as she could. "What is it?"

Xiao Xiao took a deep breath. She looked hopeful, and her voice came out small. "It's my birthday on Sunday. Can I invite you to my party?"

Gi Ran frowned slightly. She could not think of a single thing between them beyond the fact that they sat in the same room, and she had no idea why she was being asked. She was not close to anyone in the class. She was not even on nodding terms with them.

And a party meant a present. Gi Ran spent almost nothing outside her studies, and her tutoring pay and her scholarship had not come through yet. There was nothing in her purse.

She started to refuse. "Sor-"

Xiao Xiao pulled an invitation out of her uniform pocket, a small pretty thing shaped like an envelope, and set it on the desk. "You don't need to bring a present. My dad said to invite plenty of people from class. We'd all be happy if you came!"

The girl's big round eyes were full of hope and did not blink. Somehow they made Gi Ran think of the little goldfish her uncle kept, and her own look softened before she could stop it.

Gi Ran had been to one classmate's birthday party before. The memory was not a good one. She held Xiao Xiao's eyes for a few seconds, reached out and touched the invitation, said nothing for a moment, then said, "Thank you. I'll come."

Two small dimples appeared before Xiao Xiao could stop them. "Thank you, Gi Ran. The address and the time are inside. I'll be waiting for you at the weekend."

Two minutes before the bell, Xiao Xiao flashed her friends a victory sign. Then it caught up with her and she said under her breath, "Gi Ran is so cold. I was terrified just then."

One of them agreed. "That's what being top of the year does to you, I suppose."

---

Second-year class six was famous for coming last.

With the midterms over, class six were like monkeys let out of a cage at the zoo. The howling carried the length of the corridor.

"I've set up a game against the Number Three school basketball team. Want to play after school?"

"Go, go. Let's make the most of it before the results come out."

"What are you worried about? Ning's bottom of the year for certain. Relax."

"Keep it down. Leave Ning some dignity."

Ji Changning was slumped at her desk with one leg crossed over the other. She had an earbud in each ear, and the logo on them was a famous one. The raised foot and her fingers moved with the music. Her eyes had no focus in them and were somewhere else entirely.

The Wenyuan uniform was more like a formal suit. Four sets a year, one a quarter, and none of them cheap. What changed from year to year was only the detail and the cut. Boys had a jacket and trousers, girls a jacket and a skirt, with a jumper and long trousers for winter.

It said plainly enough how much money the place had.

Ji Changning did not like skirts, so every year she bought two extra sets of the boys' uniform. Wenyuan was not strict, and the school and the head of discipline shut one eye for the sake of the Ji family and let her wear them.

A tall boy from the sports stream tapped her shoulder. "Ning."

She did not move.

He tapped again and put some volume into it. "Ning!"

She jumped, came back to herself and pulled out one earbud. "What? What is it? You'll wake the dead."

He handed her a small envelope-shaped invitation. "Xiao Xiao came by. It's her birthday at the weekend and she wants you at her party. She called your name for ages and you didn't answer. She said she still had to get back and hand out the rest, so she asked me to give you this."

She took it without thinking. The Xiaos and the Jis did business together. She and Xiao Xiao were the same age and got on neither well nor badly. Xiao Xiao disliked girls who did no work and drifted through school. Ji Changning disliked girls who looked like model students and were rebels underneath. The two of them were polite to each other in public. By rights she could not miss the party, and would not be allowed to.

But. The trouble was in that but.

He saw her drift off again, scratched his head and said, "Job done. I'm off."

She waved a hand and sighed at the envelope in it.

"Oh dear. How am I supposed to live now."

---

School ended on Friday and the gate was packed with expensive cars. Gi Ran held her bag against her chest and threaded through the gaps the way she always did. On the far side she put the bag on her back, walked a stretch of road and reached the bus stop.

Wenyuan had boarding rooms, the two-person kind students liked, each with its own balcony and its own bathroom. The fittings were fine. The price was finer.

From the Wenyuan stop to the city village where Gi Ran lived took an hour and a half. It was early November. The north was turning cold and the sun went down earlier every day.

She found a seat at the back of the bus and took out her vocabulary book to go over it in her head. The mother of the family she tutored for was a doctor, and had pointed her at a few papers in The Lancet that suited a beginner. They were full of technical words she did not know, so she had to get through as many as she could.

It was nearly dark when the bus reached her stop. The street lamps worked one in two, like an old man with half his teeth gone. The whole area had been marked for demolition once. Low flat-roofed houses stood in uneven rows among a few shabby blocks no higher than three storeys. The plan had been a smart new estate. For some reason the developer walked away, and the place had sat ever since looking nothing like the city around it, as though the city and the years had both given up on it.

Across from the city village stood a thick stand of ash trees, almost bare now with winter coming. Beyond the trees was a park, and the park ran up to the most famous villa district in Pingchuan. The people who owned houses in the village looked that way now and then and tried, through all that green, to imagine their own side turned into something like it.

None of it was Gi Ran's worry. The light in her home was on early. She unlocked the door. "I'm back."

The Gis lived on the third floor of one of the shabby blocks. Her uncle's family had the floor below.

The block in fact belonged to her uncle. He was a plain, honest farmer who had understood nothing at the time and had been talked into buying it, which took nearly all his savings. Nobody lived on the ground floor, which served as a cellar and a store. Her uncle had the second floor. The third had been an attic full of junk, and he gave it to Gi Ran's family on terms that were half rent and half gift.

It was not big, but there were only three of them. The cramped attic had been divided into two bedrooms and a sitting room. The bare bulb filled the little sitting room with light, and the room felt warm.

Her mother worked at the textile mill. She had a cold this week and had been moved from twelve-hour shifts to eight, so she was home early, sitting in the light with her embroidery. Her needlework was good and her petals looked real, so she often took in pieces after work to add to what the family had. Today her mind wandered and the fine needle went into her finger. She did not feel it at all. Gi Ran came over, drew the piece out of her hands and looked at the finger. "Mum, does it hurt?"

"Oh. Ranran's home."

Her mother had only just caught up. Her face went light and dark under the bulb. She rubbed her daughter's hair and asked what she always asked. "How did the exams go? Your dad's minding your uncle's stall at the vegetable market, he'll be back soon. Are you hungry? The noodles he rolled at lunch are still in the fridge. Shall I cook you a bowl?"

Gi Ran was not blind. She could see something was wrong with her mother. She had the sense not to ask. She put down her bag, went behind her and rubbed her shoulders and her neck, answering patiently. "They went well enough. I'm not hungry yet. I'll eat when Dad's back."

Her uncle's family rented a stall at the vegetable market. When they could not manage on their own, her father went down to help.

Speak of the devil. Her father came in with a cloth bag, changed out of his muddy shoes at the door and said, "Ranran's back. Your uncle put a cabbage by for me today. Just what you like."

He looked up and took off his hat, his mask and the thin scarf at his neck. A wide burn scar came into view. It ran crookedly up from his back to the left side of his neck and onto the lower half of that cheek. At first sight it was frightening.

"Dad, let me help," Gi Ran said.

"No need, no need. Since when did either of you have to cook?" He smiled at his wife and his daughter, tied on his apron and went briskly into the narrow kitchen. Where nobody could see him he braced his hands on the counter. One line of tears ran down the ugly scar and into his collar. He wiped it away with the apron and called out, "Nearly ready. Noodles tonight. Our Ranran likes her dad's meat sauce best, doesn't she?"

"She does." Gi Ran's eyes narrowed a little. The coldness she carried home from school was gone. "Thanks, Dad."

Her mother patted her hand. Her shoulders felt easier. She smiled and picked up the needle again. "The pair of you."

Gi Ran went to her room, the smaller bedroom, kept in perfect order. Apart from a bed a metre and a half wide there was only a wardrobe and a desk. A three-tier shelf unit stood on the desk, packed tight with textbooks and workbooks. On the top shelf were a few beginners' books on medicine, and beside them a row of beginners' books on computing.

She opened her bag meaning to do a couple of practice papers, and out with them came the invitation with its faint scent.

She pressed her lips together, hesitated a long time, then put her head round the door. "Mum."

Her mother looked up. Gi Ran's features were sharp. Her mother's were soft, the sort of face that belongs to the water towns in the south. "What is it?"

"A girl in my class has invited me to her birthday party."

"Well, that's good news. Shall I help you get her a present?" Her mother's eyes curved. There was nothing wrong with her Ranran except that she had no friends to go out with. If... Something crossed her mind and she went blank for a moment, then leaned slowly back against the sofa and asked carefully, "Which day is it?"

"Sunday."

"Sunday's good. Sunday's good." She said it twice, then called towards the kitchen. "Old Gi, we're taking Ranran out on Saturday, aren't we?"

Her father carried a plate of torn cabbage out to the table in the sitting room and wiped the sweat off his face. "Yes," he said, and did not want to say it. "Saturday."

Gi Ran had no idea what they meant. "What about Saturday? Out where?"

Her father kept working the apron between his hands. He turned to face her. The muscles in his face moved, and the scar moved with them. It seemed to take everything he had to say it to a daughter who knew nothing. "Ranran. Your mum and I have something to tell you."

---

After school Ji Changning put her earbuds back in, picked the loudest, hardest song she had and played it. Hands in the pockets of her uniform trousers, she scuffed her way to the gate. She had hung about in the classroom on purpose, so by the time she came out there were only a few cars left.

A plain black Mercedes sounded its horn when it saw her, and the driver opened the back door.

She chewed her gum, acted as usual as though she had not seen it, and walked on.

The Ji house was east of the school. The dance studio she rented was north.

She did not know where she ought to go. She did not want to go home. After a long argument with herself she headed for the little studio.

It was in the basement of a shopping centre in the middle of town, only about thirty square metres, with the whole wall opposite the door mirrored. Somebody was already there stretching a leg against the mirror. She took one look at the state of Ji Changning, put her leg down and said, "Are you sleepwalking?"

Ji Changning threw her bag aside without any dignity, took out the earbuds and rolled them in her palm the way old men roll walnuts, then spread herself over a chair. She looked round the room and let out a long breath. "Lai. Take a good look at the empire I built. There won't be many more days of looking at it."

Meng Lai had short hair, cut well, and years of dancing had given her the body to carry it. She could toss her head and look startlingly good doing it. "Has your dad finally had the heart to cut off your allowance? Your brother in on it too?"

Ji Changning sighed again. "Worse."

Meng Lai took two bottles of sugar-free yoghurt out of her bag, gave one away and kept one, and settled in for the story. "Go on."

Ji Changning squeezed the bottle. "Short version. My dad isn't my dad and my brother isn't my brother."

Meng Lai said nothing.

Then she leaned back out of range. "Say that again, with detail."

Ji Changning opened the bottle and took a huge swallow, hoping to drown her sorrows in yoghurt. It was sour enough to take her eyebrows off. "It means they handed the babies to the wrong families when I was born," she got out. "I'm not my dad's."

Meng Lai said nothing again.

Then she dropped the yoghurt and managed exactly one sound. "What?"

Ji Changning's room was on the first floor. She had been online until the middle of the night, and when she got up for the bathroom she thought she would take something from the kitchen while she was at it, so she went straight down. She passed the study. A little light came through the door, which had not been shut properly, and out with the light came a voice that sounded exhausted. "What do we do about Ningning?"

There was only one Ningning in that house.

She could not stop herself putting an ear to the door frame. She heard every word clearly and not one of them would go together in her head. She had no idea how she got back to her room. What sense she had left went on keeping her feet quiet, so the two in the study would not know she had been outside listening.

Back in her room she had no appetite for the internet. She pulled the quilt over her head and lay in the dark with her eyes open, going through it with the few brain cells she had left.

One. Ji Changning, which was to say herself, was not the Jis' own daughter.

Two. The Jis had found the family the babies were swapped with, and both sides had given DNA, and the test was finished.

Three. The two families had settled on Saturday to meet.

Her imagination could run as far as it liked and it would never have put her inside the real daughter and fake daughter story, the one television had worn out years ago. She turned over and over and slept at last, and every picture in her dreams was miserable. The Jis resenting her for taking their own daughter's place. Her real parents deciding she was good for nothing. When the alarm went off she got up with her hair everywhere and found, as expected, two large dark rings under her eyes in the mirror.

Today was Friday. Tomorrow was Saturday, the day she had overheard.

Part of her was looking forward to it. Part of her wanted to run.

Ji Changning had gone quiet, so Meng Lai assumed she was turning it all over. Who would have thought a plot worn out in novels would land on her own friend. Dad not her dad, brother not her brother, and the Jis were rich by any measure, so the drop in how she lived would be hard enough to swallow on its own. Meng Lai squeezed her bottle, struggled for a long moment, and came out with, "Look on the bright side. Worst comes to worst, your big sister will dance for a living and keep you."

Ji Changning came back to herself, looked at the big soft girl and whatever she had invented in her head, and laughed. "You're one year older. Don't give me big sister."

Meng Lai held up a finger. "A minute older is still older."

It was coming either way.

Sooner or later made no difference.

Ji Changning picked up her bag and took a taxi home.

The Jis lived in the villa district where land cost more than anywhere else in Pingchuan. It was fully dark by then, but the moon and the stars were bright, and between them and the district's lighting and its security the walk was easy enough.

She hovered at the door a long time, then rubbed her face hard, put on something closer to a normal expression, and opened it.

In the big ground-floor sitting room the crystal chandelier threw out a cold, hard light. Her father and her brother must have come in not long before. Neither had taken off his suit jacket. They sat facing each other on the sofas, as serious as two men in the middle of a business negotiation. At the sound of the door they both stopped talking.

Her father produced his usual kind, slightly awkward smile. Chairman Ji, whose word was final at the company, never knew what to do in front of his daughter, like any number of ordinary fathers. "Ningning's back. Have you eaten?"

Ji Changning glanced at the kitchen, where nothing had been cooked. She took out her earbuds and said flatly, out of habit, "I've eaten. If I waited for you two to come home for dinner I could starve to death and you wouldn't know."

It was a cruel thing to say. It was also how the three of them had talked to each other for more than ten years.

When Ji Changning was very small the company was on its way up and her father worked without knowing day from night. Her brother was boarding at middle school. The nanny was careless, and Ji Changning, who was two, was shut in the house and nearly starved.

Things got better after Granny Ji came to Pingchuan to help raise her.

Her brother got on with her slightly better than her father did. He stood and took her bag without having to think about it. His sharp features softened a little. He sighed, so faintly it was almost not there. "Ningning."

She shrugged, drew a zip across her mouth and went and sat down.

Outside the door she had still been working out what face to wear to look as if nothing was wrong. Now it all seemed pointless.

The home was not a home. It was a house to stop in. She woke to a cold ceiling and closed her eyes on one. She came back to a cold sitting room and touched cold walls. Even a delivery turned cold by the time it got there.

Ji Changning decided she had nothing left worth protecting, and asked first. "There's something you want to tell me, isn't there."

"Such as that tomorrow you're taking me to meet some people. Or rather, to meet my real family. Am I right?"