Chapter 4

Xiao Xiao's birthday party was at a seaside resort with no metro line to it. From Jinhua Gardens it was nearly two hours on the bus.

Gi Changning came jogging down to the gates of Jinhua in a tracksuit, carrying a small bag, pleased with the world.

Ji Ran was already waiting at the bus stop.

Gi Changning covered the last stretch in a few bounds and landed beside her. "You look good today!"

Ji Ran had on a thick white jumper, black jeans and a khaki trench coat over the top. The cuffs and pockets of the coat were embroidered with a twining pattern that lifted it, and against it Ji Ran looked all the calmer.

"Thank you." She seemed a little shy about it. "Mum made it over for me."

Gi Changning had been in the Gi house for half a day and knew only from Ji Ran that their mother was good with her hands. She had not known it was this good. The more she thought about it the brighter her eyes got. When she next had a performance, could Mum make her a costume?

The bus pulled in.

Gi Changning had no travel card, so Ji Ran tapped twice without having to think about it. Not many people took this route at this hour, and the two of them found a pair of seats at the back.

Gi Changning hugged the little bag and looked pained. "My favourite make of earbuds. Brand new, never used, and Xiao Xiao gets them."

Then she pulled out her phone. "Come on, come on. I forgot yesterday. Scan me on WeChat."

Ji Ran took her phone quietly out of her coat pocket and brought up her code, not very practised at it. She was not good with gadgets. Even the phone was a cast-off her cousin had passed on, and she mostly used it to check the time, set an alarm and pick up notices from her teachers in the class group chat.

The scan beeped. Gi Changning sent the request and Ji Ran's phone buzzed.

Accepted.

Gi Changning whistled happily, remembered halfway through that she was in public and swallowed the rest of it. Neither of them had thought to swap numbers yesterday, so there had been no way to arrange where to meet, and it had taken a call on Mum's phone to sort it out.

The ride was long and dull, and Gi Changning kept the conversation going in fits and starts. "How did you sleep?"

Ji Ran nodded. "Well. You?"

Better than well. She had been up all night the day before and was dead on her feet by nine. She was asleep the moment her head touched the pillow, and when she next looked it was nine in the morning and the breakfast Mr Ji and Ji Changfeng had left out for her had gone cold.

"Not bad either." Gi Changning ground her teeth, a bit embarrassed. "I fell out of bed."

Gi Changning could sleep anywhere, but she was a terrible sleeper. At home the bed was big enough that she had got away with it, though she often woke with her head hanging over the edge. The bed at the Gis' was a metre and a half wide, nowhere near enough room for her to thrash about in, and on the way down she had nearly hit the desk.

The view ran backwards past the window. The sun was low and not yet gone. They came into the stop under a sky full of red.

It was the longest Gi Changning had ever spent on a bus, and her back ached. She got off, stretched her arms and her legs and went through a short routine, and the joints cracked one after another.

Ji Ran was used to buses. Beyond a shiver at the cold sea wind, she felt nothing much.

Linjiangxian lay at the south of the city. Being on the coast, it often hosted races out on the water, so its facilities were complete and a rescue crew was on call around the clock. The views were good, which made it a fine place to stay when nothing was on, and over the years it had built a name for itself nationally. What it charged was not worth discussing.

Ji Ran had heard of it. In middle school there had been a girl from a comfortable family who used to say, from a height and with a show of modesty, that she had eaten at Linjiangxian at the weekend, and that this amounted to getting into society. The rest of them would make longing noises.

In senior school, where Wenyuan put a rich child in front of you at every step, people still gathered each other up with, "Linjiangxian this weekend?"

It was Ji Ran's first time in the south of the city. What she saw first was a scattering of separate small villas, set well apart on purpose to keep some privacy between them.

From the outside they were nothing special.

Out beyond, the gold of the late sky lay across the wide water. A few jet skis tore it open in rolling lines of wave, and the spray threw back colours that seemed to cut the line between sky and sea, racing to get at the sun.

Gi Changning took Ji Ran's hand and led her in like someone who had done it a hundred times. "Linjiangxian belongs to the Xiaos. Parties, events, anything like that, people come here. For the Xiao daughter's birthday she'll have booked the best place months ago."

The best spot in Linjiangxian was Villa One. The cars outside it were parked solid, and security in matching uniforms kept things in order.

On the way in Ji Ran had the pleasure of seeing how well liked Gi Changning was. A good many people called out to her. A few of the ones she was close to were carrying a volleyball, and they knocked fists and traded a few hand signs, all high spirits. "Ning, come on. Volleyball."

Gi Changning waved them off. "No, no. I'm not getting into that with you lot."

Being turned down did not bother them. They went off laughing with their arms over each other's shoulders.

At the door of Villa One the two of them showed their invitations.

When he saw Ji Ran's, the attendant's smile widened a fraction. His white gloves were spotless. He handed the invitation back whole and said, "Good evening. The birthday girl left word with us that you are an important guest. One moment, please."

He had barely finished when Xiao Xiao came down the stairs at a run with her skirt gathered in one hand and stopped in front of Ji Ran, delight all over her. "Ranran, I'm so glad you came!"

Ji Ran had never known what to do with that sort of warmth, so she handed over the present. "Thank you for inviting me. Happy birthday."

Xiao Xiao took the rather shabby-looking cloth bag and her round eyes curved. "Thank you, Ranran. May I open it now?"

Ji Ran nodded.

The goldfish purse was the size of a palm, the stitching fine and close, not a loose thread anywhere. Xiao Xiao ran the pad of a finger over the bright little fish, careful that her new nails did not catch it.

She had been given a great many presents, luxury goods, jewellery made to order. None of them had suited her like this small purse.

"I made it," Ji Ran said, a bit awkwardly. "I hope you like it."

Xiao Xiao's eyes shone. "Did you embroider the fish as well, Ranran?"

Ji Ran nodded, and somewhere inside Xiao Xiao a silent firework went up. She held the purse against her chest as if it were precious and swore, "I'm going to look after this properly!"

Ji Ran watched her eyes for a few seconds and thought that, opened wide like that, they were even more like a goldfish.

Gi Changning, who had been ignored by her host for some time, clicked her tongue. "Xiao Xiao. Can you still see me?"

Xiao Xiao put the purse back in its bag, covered her mouth with a hand, all theatre. "Oh? When did you get here?"

Gi Changning had nothing to say.

She had said it. She and Xiao Xiao just did not get on.

She rolled her eyes and shoved the present into Xiao Xiao's arms, which produced a string of shrieks. "Careful! If you scratch the purse Ranran gave me, you and I are finished!"

As if there had ever been a point where they were finished.

Gi Changning hooked her arm deliberately through Ji Ran's, felt the muscle under it tighten and then let go, and coughed. She could out-theatre Xiao Xiao any day. "Ranran, Ranran. Who are you calling Ranran? Do you even know our Ran that well?"

Xiao Xiao blew scornfully on her new nails. "Ranran and I are in the same class. I'm closer to her than you are, whatever you say."

Gi Changning blew on her own nails in the same style, except she had no nails and had to make do with her fingers, and said with great satisfaction, "Sorry. Ranran and I are already at the stage of having met the parents."

Xiao Xiao had nothing to say.

Ji Ran had nothing to say either.

Finding herself in the middle of a battlefield, Ji Ran sighed, and the nerves she had been hiding went out of her with the nonsense. "All right. The pair of you are children."

Xiao Xiao snorted and gave way first. "I'll take the purse upstairs. Enjoy yourself, Ranran, I'll be back down in a minute."

The buffet was already laid out on the ground floor. Since most of the guests were Xiao Xiao's own age there was no alcohol, only juice, fizzy drinks and mixed soft drinks.

The air conditioning had been on a long time and the temperature was right. You could take your coat off and not feel cold.

Villa One had earned its position. Through the huge windows the sea was perfectly clear, and on the curved sofa beside them friends sat in twos and threes, eating and watching the jet skis race, laughing now and then.

Gi Changning pulled Ji Ran over to the puddings and dropped her voice. "There's a pastry chef here who makes a mille-feuille like nothing else. Nobody outside can copy the taste of it. I used to hate coming to Xiao Xiao's birthdays, but for that mille-feuille I'll put up with a lot."

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

Then she leaned back out of range. "That really is impressive of you."

"Well, you won't get another chance at it." Gi Changning put on the face of someone making a great sacrifice, took a small patterned silver plate off the rack and served her one. "Try it. You won't be sorry."

Ji Ran breathed in the sweetness hanging over the table and bit into it, not quite believing. Her eyes went wide. "Oh."

The pastry was so short it almost melted, and with it came sweet cream and smooth cheese, and under those a thread of bitterness from dark chocolate and the sharpness of cranberry. The layers all arrived at once and cut straight through the heaviness that puddings usually have.

It was like a piece of music going off in her mouth, and it took her mood straight up with it.

Gi Changning sounded genuinely regretful. "They've changed the recipe. I wish I could get hold of it."

Ji Ran nodded. For once she agreed with her entirely.

Probably because of the age of most of the guests, the slice was not big, two mouthfuls at most. Ji Ran got the last piece onto her fork, hesitated, put it in her mouth and looked up as she chewed, and saw only the back of a girl in a pale yellow dress.

Gi Changning noticed her go still. "What is it?"

"Nothing." Ji Ran's brow creased slightly. "It feels like somebody's watching me."

Gi Changning made nothing of it. "I'm going to the toilet. If you need anything, find Xiao Xiao. She's the host, don't worry about bothering her."

Ji Ran smiled. "All right."

It was Ji Ran's first time at Linjiangxian, and Gi Changning felt responsible for her. She looked back about three times on the way, which left Ji Ran not knowing whether to laugh.

Without Gi Changning chattering about the puddings beside her, Ji Ran felt oddly at a loose end. She lifted a neat and pretty matcha mousse onto her plate, and before she could taste it something hit her shoulder hard.

The silver plate went down with the little metal fork and the mousse, and spread across the floor in a soft wet smear.

The girl in the pale yellow dress lifted her hem and pointed at a corner of it that was perfectly clean. Her voice was thin and sharp. "Do you walk with your eyes shut? This dress was made for me. Can you afford to replace it?"

Ji Ran's pupils contracted. The memories came up before she could stop them. She looked at that face and, even under the makeup, could name her exactly. "Xue Miaomiao."

Xue Miaomiao put a theatrical hand over her mouth, bright stones set into red nail polish, as though it had only now come to her. "I thought I must be seeing things. So it really is you, Gi Ran."