Chapter 14

Gi Changning shivered twice. The main bedroom window was wide open, and the cold pouring in made her pull the big floral padded jacket tighter.

The jacket was thick and frumpy and smelled of another decade. Whoever made it had been generous with the cotton, and it was warm as anything. When her mother dug it out, Gi Changning turned her nose up for about a second before the sheer thickness of it won her over. Now she wore it whenever she was in the house.

She leaned on the door frame watching the men fit the air conditioner. "Are you... is money quite comfortable for you now?"

"Mm." Ji Ran nodded. She had on a long black down coat that came to her ankles, with lace-up boots, both hands in her pockets, and her breath went out white. "The scholarship and my tutoring pay both came through, and Dad and my brother keep sending me spending money. There isn't much I need, so I thought I'd get something for the house with New Year coming."

She smiled. "Mum and Dad would never have let me if they were in. The only way was to do it while they were out. When they get home, it's your mouth that has to get me through the telling-off."

Talking to Gi Changning, Ji Ran never said anything like the parents who raised me. She said Mum and Dad. A stranger listening would have been lost, and Gi Changning could somehow always tell which father she meant.

Gi Changning thumped her own chest. "Leave it with me."

At the start of winter, doing her homework with the bedroom air conditioner on, Gi Changning had never felt right about it. She wanted to wave a hand and have one put in the main bedroom too, so her parents would not have to lie there in the cold.

But her purse was cleaner than her face. She had been planning to take some sponsored posts and buy it herself, and here was Ji Ran, who had gone and done it first.

Her parents were old-fashioned about this. In their eyes a child who has not been to university and has no job is not independent, and should not be buying things for the house. Ji Ran had agonised over it, run through clothes and shoes and food and drink, even thought about simply handing over a bank card, and settled in the end on an air conditioner.

Once it was in, they shut the windows and ran it. The room warmed up, the cold was sealed outside, and the whole space turned comfortable.

The fitters had a cup of hot water and the two girls saw them down. At the foot of the stairs Ji Ran checked the time. "I won't come up."

"Don't be like that." Gi Changning took her hand and swung it. She was bored at home and did not dare put music on and dance the way she used to, and now that Ji Ran had finally come round of her own accord she was not letting her go easily. "Sit with me a bit. There's loads I can't do, you can teach me. Go on."

At the mention of schoolwork Ji Ran paused. She knew Gi Changning's midterms had gone badly and had no idea what she usually scored. "Which questions? I'm not much good at arts subjects."

Gi Changning took that for the modesty of someone top of the year and pulled her up the stairs. "Maths. There are loads of the long questions where I can do the first part and then I can't see where it's going."

An afternoon of coaching in Gi Changning's room left Ji Ran more tired than teaching a badly behaved nine-year-old.

Gi Changning's foundations were shaky without being terrible, which is the worst of it. A lot of what she knew did not join up with how the questions worked, and half understanding is fatal. On top of that she liked working backwards from the answer, which left her knowing the result without knowing why, so the same question in different words stopped her dead.

Ji Ran let out a long breath, wrote her a set of questions aimed at the weak spots, and said, "Do these after your homework and give them to me at school tomorrow. All right?"

Gi Changning, by contrast, was glowing. In lessons the teacher had the whole class and the whole year's pace to think about and could not slow down for her, and Ning had a private streak of pride that stopped her taking basic questions to a teacher, in case she got told it was too easy to be asking about. With someone her own age she had none of that weight on her. She asked everything, the things she knew and the things she did not, and Ji Ran, from all those hours tutoring a primary school boy, took a question back to its roots and covered every side of it so clearly that Gi Changning felt something open up in her head.

"Yes, yes." She nodded away and put the questions carefully in her bag. "Don't worry, I'll get them all done."

Ji Ran stood and loosened her stiff shoulders, ready to go home. "It doesn't matter if you don't. Leave the ones you can't do."

Gi Changning saw her down and waved. "See you tomorrow."

Ji Ran nodded. "See you tomorrow."

---

The sun went down. Ji Ran put her hood up and walked back towards Jinhua Gardens one step at a time.

There was a trace of a smile on her mouth. That afternoon at the Gis' had made her very happy.

Buying her parents the air conditioner, or just sitting there a while, either one of them settled something in her.

The cramped flat, a place she knew, the ordinary smell of cooking. Once it was fitted, Ji Ran wanted to leave. She was afraid that staying any longer would make it hard to go.

It was the first time she had been back to the attic since the swap, and she had chosen a day when neither of them would be there. She could not have said what she was afraid of.

Perhaps that they would be too warm with her, and Gi Changning would feel the gap. Perhaps that they would be too cool with her, and she would be the one left with it.

There was no going back anyway, so avoiding the awkwardness was better for everyone.

Without quite noticing, she was at the villa door, opening it with her fingerprint.

The light had gone. The sitting room, which took the sun so well, went dark as the sun went, and the underfloor heating held the winter outside.

She turned the lights on and changed into slippers.

With the room suddenly bright, the first thing she saw was the heavy massage chair, which matched nothing else in it.

Her father and her brother both worked bent over desks all year, which is hard on the neck and the back, so Ji Ran had bought a massage chair. She had meant it for a study. They each had their own study, and they argued about whose it would go in for so long that in the end they reached an agreement and put it in the sitting room, where either of them could use it.

Every argument between those two was a novelty to Ji Ran.

The Gis almost never quarrelled. Her mother dealt with the outside world, her father ran the house, and Ji Ran's job was to be no trouble and work hard. Each of them did their part, and each of them put the other two first without having to think about it.

The Ji men were not like that. Every row was a debate, with the claims and the evidence set out, and both of them trying to win.

Ji Ran lay back in the chair and listened to the machine working, picturing her father's and her brother's faces when they first saw it.

Not bad at all.

---

That evening her mother came home on the works bus.

The attic was not well soundproofed, and from the stairwell she could already hear the hiss of a wok, and a moment later the smell of it reached her and her feet went faster.

She got her key out and said, out of habit, "I'm back."

She did not finish. Her body went still, she frowned, put a hand out without meaning to, feeling the air in the room, and said, "What?"

The sitting room, which should have been full of cold air, was warm through. She looked around, saw the main bedroom door standing open with warmth rolling out of it, went over and looked up at a brand new air conditioner, angled cleverly so that it reached the sitting room as well, humming away.

She went to the kitchen in a few steps. "Old Gi, where did the air conditioner come from? Did you buy an air conditioner?"

He was in the middle of cooking, and smiled ruefully. "It gave me a fright too when I got in."

He turned the food out of the pan. "Ranran bought it."

"Ranran?" She stopped, then grabbed for her phone. "Where did she get the money? No. I'm going to have words with her. What is a schoolgirl doing buying something that expensive? Can it go back? If it can't I'll give her the money, that child."

Gi Changning, working through her questions, heard that something was wrong, opened her door, caught the end of it and crossed the room in one stride to put a hand over her mother's. "Mum, Mum. Ranran bought it out of her scholarship. You know how big the Wenyuan scholarships are."

Her mother's voice went up. "If she's got a scholarship she should be saving it for university, not buying us things."

Gi Changning had never seen her in such a state. She steered her onto the sofa and put her hands on her shoulders, kneading, not very expertly. "Mum, slow down. Ranran bought it while you were out precisely because she knew you'd refuse. She says she's got nothing to spend money on, and New Year's coming, so it's a present."

Her mother did not move, then sniffed. "Does a present have to cost that much?"

She wanted to say the money should be saved for university, because university costs something, all of it, eating and living and getting about. Then she thought again. In a family like the Jis, how would Ranran be short of that?

Gi Changning heard the catch in it. She did not try to comfort her and did not ask why. She said, "It's how Ranran feels about you. If you won't take it, think how that lands on her."

Her mother sat there and the tears came down without her noticing, onto her trousers, darkening a small patch.

When she stayed quiet, Gi Changning laid it on. "Honestly. If Ranran hadn't got in first, it would have been me."

Her mother patted her hand. "I just don't feel right about it."

A poor house had given Ji Ran no good memories. The way her mother saw it, Ji Ran had been the one setting the pace for all of them, and those results of hers had quietly laid a road under the Gis with the end of it almost in sight.

The exams, university, a job, a household of her own.

What is left for a parent to do?

Her father came out with the food and wiped his hands on his apron. "Next time. Next time Ranran comes, don't let her go. I'll put a proper table together and we'll all sit down."

"Yes!" Gi Changning agreed at speed. "Don't worry. Next time she's here I'll block the door. She won't be able to leave if she wants to."

Her mother laughed through it. "All right. Come and eat. I'll make Ranran something new one of these days."

That night her mother lay under the quilt with one arm out of it in her nightclothes. In the warm air her fingers were not stiff the way they used to be. She had the chat app open on the thread marked Ranran, and typed something and deleted it.

Her husband finished washing his feet and got into bed without a word, then said, "When I went to Ningning's parents' evening I saw Ranran. New uniform. Looked lovely. Standing with Ningning they could have been sisters, and I looked at them and thought, if only they were both ours."

She came back to herself and elbowed him. "There's nothing special about your face. You can dream."

"That's why they both take after you," he said, going along with it. "Ranran thinks about us. So the two of us weren't a complete failure as her mum and dad."

"Get away with you."

She sat against the headboard thinking, then pushed the quilt back, put her slippers on, went to stand in front of the air conditioner, held her phone up and took a photograph. She looked back. "Will Ranran be asleep at this hour?"

Ji Ran kept regular hours, early to bed and early up.

He checked. "About now, yes."

She got back under the quilt and sent the photograph. "Then she can look at it in the morning."

---

Ji Ran's body clock woke her on time the next morning. She changed and went down to find the Ji men already up and fighting over the massage chair.

Her brother was being precise. "Your accumulated use yesterday was forty-five minutes and twenty-three seconds. That is fifteen minutes twenty-three seconds over the agreed time and should be deducted today."

Her father was not to be outdone. "Nonsense. My accumulated use yesterday was forty-one minutes. Your timekeeping is inaccurate and it prejudices the agreement. I remind you that you are liable for every word you say."

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

So this was what the rich were like.

Her brother was unmoved. "We can pull the chair's own usage log. From the times and durations we can establish your actual use. Under the agreement, whoever went over on the previous day does not get first use on the next, so today it is my turn. Do you accept that?"

"I accept it," her father said, and after two seconds of silence gave up on reasoning altogether. "But I am your father."

Her brother had nothing to say.

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

Breakfast was on the table unopened, in the hotel's packaging. She started opening the boxes and sighed over her shoulder. "Come and eat. Too long in that chair isn't good for your bones or your muscles either. In moderation, please."

What she actually wanted to ask was where the two of them got the energy.

Home after midnight every day, up early, not merely alert but with enough left over to hold a debate. It was remarkable.

Since Ji Ran had spoken, the two of them exchanged a look, walked through to the dining room and quietly laid the breakfast out. Her brother explained under his breath, "We do restrain ourselves."

Her father nodded along.

As a rule the two of them were only home early in the morning and in the middle of the night. On the rare day off, what they fought over was the little time that left, a miserable thirty minutes each, and if one of them had more the other had less. Of course there was going to be an argument.

Ji Ran did not know whether to laugh. "Eat."

Afterwards she got her phone online to see where the bus had reached and work out when to leave.

Having checked, she opened the chat app, and the phone buzzed twice. A thread that was pinned to the top and had been silent a long time jumped up, with a red dot on it marked 2.

Two unread.

Her heart started going faster. She opened it nervously. A photograph and one line, and when she had read them the smile would not be kept off her face.

Mum: [air conditioner.jpg]

Mum: It's lovely and warm. Next time you come, you're not leaving.