Chapter 2

Saturday, barely light yet. Gi Ran's father put on a thin high-necked jumper, stood at the mirror and pulled the collar up as hard as it would go, trying to cover the rough scar on his face.

No collar in the world goes that high.

His lips moved without sound. In the other half of the mirror his wife was digging out the leather boots she wore once a year at New Year, wiping the dust off them carefully with a damp cloth and a dry one.

Neither of them spoke. The bedroom was quieter than a bedroom should be.

He folded the collar back down, sat heavily on the bed and said in a low voice, "Qing. I don't want to send Ranran back. But..."

But he did badly want to see the daughter who had been handed to the wrong family all those years ago.

Which of them would she look like, what sort of person was she, and would she be willing to own two poor, shabby parents like them?

A drop of water hit the boot.

Gi Ran's mother rubbed the mark away hard with the cloth, then lifted her wrist to her eyes. The cloth was not soft, and it left a small red patch on her face. "Tell me," she said. "How does a thing like swapped babies happen to a family like ours?"

She could not hold it any longer. She put the boots down and held on to her husband, and her body shook.

Being parted from your own flesh and blood has to hurt.

Being told that the daughter you raised for sixteen years, who worked so hard and gave you so little trouble, is not yours, hurts in a different way.

His big hand went up and down her back.

The tears soaked through to his shoulder, and where they touched the skin they took him back for a moment to the day of the fire. Hot enough to frighten him.

Gi Ran stood against the door frame of her parents' room. Her long hair was loose instead of tied back, and it hung down over her face.

She stared at the floor tiles. A chipped one showed a patch of colour that was neither black nor grey, as muddled as her head was now. She seemed to have thought about a great deal. She seemed not to have thought about anything.

It had been a long time since Gi Ran stayed up all night. She finished her homework and then worked through practice questions until morning. When the sun came quietly across her desk, the clean rough paper was covered in chemistry equations in no order at all and a lot of English words.

Her mother's question was her own question.

How does a thing like swapped babies happen to you. She had lived with her mum and her dad for sixteen years, and then one day they tell you that you are not their girl.

It was absurd enough that Gi Ran half believed she was inside a twisted dream.

A sound came from the bedroom.

She came back to herself and turned into her own small room. She had put on a pale green knitted jumper with a panda embroidered on the chest. Her mother had knitted it by hand out of the best wool, soft against the skin, and Gi Ran treasured it and hardly ever wore it out of the house.

She gathered her hair up in front of the mirror and found, as expected, a face puffy from no sleep and a faint pair of dark rings. She gave up and let the hair down again. It covered a little of it.

The noise outside grew. Her parents were getting their things together. Her mother took her husband's hand, knocked on Gi Ran's door and raised her voice on purpose so her daughter would not hear the catch in it. "Ranran, we're leaving."

"All right. Wait a moment, Mum, Dad."

Just go out as you are.

Gi Ran patted her cheeks, breathed in deeply and put on a smile as though nothing had happened.

Last day of being their daughter. Don't give them anything to worry about.

The thin-looking girl walked out into the Saturday morning sun, got between her parents and hooked an arm through each of theirs.

---

Ji Changning changed into a blue and white tracksuit and saw in the long mirror, as expected, that the rings under her eyes had gone a shade darker.

Pathetic.

She pressed her lips together, pushed the suitcase out of her way and sat down at the dressing table. Her fingers touched the glass bottle of foundation, then the concealer beside it, then the bottle again.

Outside competitions and performances Ji Changning hardly ever wore makeup. She disliked the feeling of a layer on her face. It made her feel she could not breathe.

But the rings were too obvious to leave.

For all the hard things she said, a small buried hope put out its feelers without asking her, and it wanted the strangers she shared blood with to think well of her when they met.

She sat still for a long time, then gave in and picked up the bottles.

If she was going to be pathetic she would be pathetic all the way.

In her father's room, Ji Changfeng pushed open the door.

The young man was already half a head taller than his father. He stood in front of him without a word and held out a handkerchief folded into a neat square.

His father took it and smiled bitterly. "Changfeng. Has Ningning been wanting to get away from me for a long time?"

Nobody had expected Ji Changning to put it all on the table the night before. Caught out, her father had promised as hard as he could. "Ningning, listen to me. If you don't like that family, I'll fight with everything I have to keep you here. All right?"

Ji Changning had been leaning back on the sofa. She laughed, as if it hardly mattered. "There's no need to be so polite. I can earn my own money. Once I'm of age I won't need anyone."

Then she picked up her bag and left without looking back.

What she did not see was that when the bedroom door upstairs had closed, her father bent over and put his head down on his knees. There were a few silver threads in his hair, and under the harsh white chandelier they flared until it looked as though the whole head had gone white. "What on earth have I done all these years?"

He was asking his elder son. He was also asking himself.

What exactly had he been thinking about, and how important could the company have been, to push his daughter that far away.

Far enough that he could not even see her back any more.

Ji Changfeng had no answer for him.

It happened by chance. The one who noticed the babies might have been swapped was Ji Changfeng's aunt on his mother's side. She said nothing to the girl herself. She told his father, then found the other family's address, and after a good deal of pleading both families went for a paternity test.

Rushed through. Sent off in the morning, results in the afternoon.

Everything about the other family had been on Ji Changfeng's desk before the result came back. That day he went through the file over and over, and the A4 paper, still warm from the printer, began to curl at one corner.

He did not want to admit it, but he had the feeling Ningning might prefer that family to this one.

He looked at the red rims of his father's eyes. Say that out loud and Chairman Ji, who was ruthless and decisive everywhere else, might well burst into tears on the spot. So Ji Changfeng kept the sharper thought down and said, "Dad. It's nearly time."

Ji Changning picked up her school bag and set it on the suitcase she had packed long since, hooking the strap over the handle. She checked her face one last time in the mirror. The makeup sat well, the dark rings were covered, a little colour on the lips to lift the whole thing, and nothing left to show she had been up all night. She picked up her phone, put both hands in her pockets and got into the car like someone with nothing left to lose.

Ji Changfeng drove. Ji Changning and her father sat on either side of the back seat.

She tilted her head and watched the view pull away through the window. The house and the district shrank to dots. She had come down this road for five or six years, and knew it well enough that her body knew it. After today she might never come back.

Whether that was relief or regret she could no longer tell.

Passing a metro station she sat up and wound the window down fast, because a figure in pale green was being carried along with the crowd into the entrance, and a small puzzled sound got out of her.

Her father asked at once, "What is it? Did you leave something at home?"

The pavement was thick with people. Ji Changning wound the window back up, leaving a crack for air, and said coolly, "Nothing."

That pale green figure, from the side. Why did it look so much like the girl from her year the whole school talked about?

---

The two families had agreed on ten in the morning, at a five-star hotel some way out from the middle of town, hills on one side and water on the other, clean air, quiet and far from everything. A good place for a holiday.

From the city village to the hotel was east to west across the whole city, with one change on the metro and a ten-minute walk from the station. The ginkgo leaves lay thick along both sides of the road, and all three of them had the gold of it in their eyes. Perhaps it was the place that did it. The tightness they had carried since morning suddenly loosened.

Gi Ran's father had his nose and mouth and the scar together under a medical mask. He put an arm round his daughter's shoulders, and his voice came out muffled. "Ranran. If that family treat you badly, your mum and I will take them to court to keep you at home."

Her mother laughed too. She touched her forehead to Gi Ran's, and her breath fell on her daughter's pale face. "Your dad and I aren't good for much, but we can raise two girls easily enough."

So don't be afraid, Ranran.

Wherever you go, blood or no blood, you are ours.

Gi Ran could not help it. Her eyes went red in a second. She turned her face away and took both their arms. "It's all right."

Once she was of age her life would be hers to arrange.

They crossed the car park, which was full of expensive cars, and came to the revolving door.

The hotel was grand, down to the doorman's uniform. He saw how shabbily the Gis were dressed and there was not a trace of contempt in his face. He showed all three politely into the lobby. "Good morning, sir, madam. Do you have a booking?"

The lobby was carpeted and their shoes made no sound on it. A manager in a three-piece suit came forward smiling, and his voice and Gi Ran's father's arrived at the same moment.

"Mr Ji. The Spring Returns room is this way."

"Yes. Under Spring Returns."

The three Jis, who had been walking ahead, stopped. Under the manager's puzzled eyes they slowly turned round.

Six people. Six pairs of eyes.

The two families met in the hotel lobby with no warning at all.

---

Awkward.

Awkward enough to kill.

Spring Returns was a large courtyard room done in old style, with a winding water channel outside the door for parties to sit beside. A few leaves had landed on the little stream and nobody was clearing them. Inside, the table might have had a line drawn down the middle of it. The two girls sat at the far ends. Both sets of parents, and the brother, were studying them and thought they were not showing it. Their eyes went back and forth and the heat of it was hard to sit under.

Ji Changning had nothing to say.

Gi Ran had nothing to say either.

Ji Changning certainly knew who Gi Ran was. Everyone at Wenyuan did. The story was that the head had waived her fees and spent a large sum in scholarship money to get her, and since the day she arrived she had never placed anywhere but first in any exam, large or small.

Where she stood in relation to Gi Ran could be put as a line of verse.

You live at the head of the ranking list, and I live at its tail.

The classes said the same thing. Wenyuan was small, and the second year had six classes in all, arts and sciences together. Gi Ran was in class one, the one that got everything. Ji Changning was in class six, the one they had nearly given up on. On the rare occasion they passed each other, Ji Changning did not dare meet her eye. All she felt was the cold coming off that slightly out-of-date uniform.

Gi Ran tied her hair back with a band. She knew who Ji Changning was.

That went back to the start of her first year, to the welcome ceremony. Wenyuan held it in the afternoon to suit the day pupils, straight after military training, the whole intake marched into the main hall.

Nearly all the acts were from the second and third years. Only one came from the first.

That was Ji Changning.

Gi Ran's seat was in the middle, neither near nor far, exactly right. Ji Changning had her hair loose to her shoulders, and under the stage lights you could just make out the glittering extensions clipped into it. She wore a loose short-sleeved top and ripped jeans, and she led the dance club through a street piece.

It brought the hall down.

They were all young, barely into senior school, and the roar and the screaming nearly split Gi Ran's eardrums. She looked at the girl in the middle of the stage and thought that the grin on her, free of everything, was brighter than the spotlight.

So Gi Ran remembered the name.

That was a world she would never reach in her life.

And here the two of them had been thrown together with no warning, their circumstances sliding past each other at speed while fate enjoyed itself.

Gi Ran picked up the cup in front of her. It had been sitting a while and the warm water had gone cold, which suited her, because it gave her something to do while she got her head in order.

Her father tested the side of a cup and reached for the pot to top it up, and met the Ji son's hand on the way.

The two of them looked at each other. Something passed between them. Ji Changfeng took the pot steadily, went round the table and filled every cup.

The sound of pouring set the room going.

Mr Ji said something for the sake of saying it. The chairman who sat unmoved through any negotiation managed, drily, "So... is anyone hungry? I'll have them bring the food."

Everybody shook their head.

His eyes drifted and settled, without his meaning them to, on the side of Gi Ran's face, which he knew. Something rose in him that he could not have put into words.

His wife had died not long after the birth. His elder son took after the Ji side. Seeing Gi Ran in the lobby just now, he had nearly lost hold of himself.

The likeness. The real likeness.

He did not need a laboratory to tell him. One glance was enough, and Mr Ji was certain that Gi Ran was his own daughter.

Gi Ran's father thought the same.

Anyone with eyes could see Ji Changning's brow and eyes in his wife, and find his own nose and mouth in her too. That soft face, the kind the southern rain towns produce, was full of defiance, and underneath the defiance any parent could see something else, which was nerves.

Both of the Gis went soft at once.

Once the silence was broken the rest came more easily.

The swap had been accident and carelessness, mostly. The two families went into the same hospital, their due dates fell in the same stretch of days, and the labours even started on the same day. Only the births were a dozen or so hours apart.

Because Ji Changning's mother had a hard delivery.

That was how it happened. Two families whose surnames sound alike and are written differently each carried home the other's daughter.

By the time the dishes were all on the table, both sides were saying "Ranran" and "Ningning".

Gi Ran's father kept his mask on the whole time they talked. The Jis were polite and did not ask. He was the one who hesitated. A rough finger came up to pull the mask off, then went back down again. When the last dish arrived he wet his lips and said carefully, "I'm an ugly sight. Don't hold it against me."

His wife laced her fingers through his. With his free hand he took the mask off, and the vicious scar came out, moving with the muscles of his face like a centipede.

Mr Ji and his son had known about the Gis for some time, and neither of them reacted at all.

Ji Changning was shocked by the face of the father she was born to, and straight after the shock came pain for him. When she was small and knew nothing she had sworn she would be independent and cook for herself, copying what she saw on television and getting nowhere near it, and the flames had caught her hair and her fingers and she had howled.

A burn that size. How much must that have hurt.

She thought it, and then she asked it. "Does it... does it hurt?"

He froze. Then his eyes went wide, as if he could not believe it, and then he put together a clumsy smile. He was not handsome when he smiled. He stumbled over the first question his own daughter had asked him. "No, no. Not for a long time now."

Her mother could not hold it. One tear came down and landed on the back of the hand her husband was holding.

Ji Changning had no idea what to do. Everything the word "mum" carried was a long way outside her life, and she did not know why a simple question of hers would make the woman whose blood she shared cry. She stood up, went round to the Gis, dug about in the pocket of her tracksuit and came out with a packet of tissues, which she held out. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

Her mother took hold of her and did not let go. A mother's smell went off in Ji Changning's nose like an explosion. For a moment she was back across all that time, a baby again, and a pair of hands had finally picked her up. Every lonely year of it dissolved, all of the resentment went in an instant, and she found herself holding the small soft woman back and saying, without deciding to, "Mum."

Only a mother has arms that warm.

The rest of the world shut itself off.

Gi Ran took a deep breath. It was like watching a film she had somehow walked into, and the ending of the film was so good that she wanted to push through the invisible wall and be inside it.

She drank a mouthful of the bitter tea instead.

You can't, Gi Ran. You can't go and spoil it.

She worked at keeping the corners of her mouth up. She felt she ought to be happy now.

Except that from today she would never again walk the broken little road home. "Mum" was gone out of her life for good. There would be no more of her dad's meat-sauce noodles, no more torn cabbage, no going back to that small smoky kitchen of a home.

Did she mind? Of course she minded.

A handkerchief folded into a neat square came in from the side and was put into her hand.

The tall young man stood next to her, and his shadow went round her like something standing guard.

Gi Ran looked up.

His face, which was not much like hers, had a smile on it. He touched his sister's hair and held her eyes. "Ranran. Will you let us give you a home again?"

Mr Ji, who turned up regularly on the financial channels, sat with his back rigid and his eyes close to brimming with hope. Years of never smiling at work had left him unable to produce a warm, soft expression, so he put all the love he had into the look.

Gi Ran said afterwards that her father had moved nobody but himself. What the chairman's face was doing at that moment was not kindly. It was not in the same neighbourhood as kindly. If anything it was the opposite.

Gi Ran took the handkerchief.

Was she lost? Yes, she was lost.

Gi Ran or Ji Changning, the Jis or the Gis, all of them were walking towards something none of them could see.

Like a river. Like time.

Rolling on, and not to be held.