Chapter 9

That evening, Gi Changning, who knew her results were not fit to show anyone, was working hard at looking like a good child and fighting her homework.

Anything that was copying she dashed off at speed. For the workbooks she looked up what could be looked up and guessed the rest. That left the maths paper. She climbed the mountain of functions and the mountain of geometry and came face to face with the moving point P, and it annoyed her so much that she searched for the answer on her phone while muttering, "It's one point. What has it got to busy itself moving about for?"

Everyone was home and dinner was ready. Her father knocked. "Ningning. Food."

"Coming." She opened the door as wide as it would go so her parents could take in the heroic sight of her hard at work, and when she saw how pleased her father looked she sat down at the table very satisfied. "Oh, are those fried dumplings?"

Her mother handed her chopsticks. "The filling left over from the dumplings yesterday. Try them."

They were crisp and they smelled wonderful, and the filling was fine and fresh. Gi Changning crunched through five of them one after another, found a gap and asked carefully, "Dad, Mum. The thing is, we've got a parents' evening on Friday. Which of you is going?"

Her father put a dumpling onto the small plate in front of her. "Your mum, obviously."

Gi Changning glanced at her mother. She had not been with the Gis long, but years of dancing had made her quick at reading people. In this house her mother looked gentle and never lost her temper, and as the one holding the family up she was in fact the strong one, and something in Gi Changning did not want to see disappointment in her face.

So she suggested, "Mum works so hard. Why don't you go, Dad?"

He waved both hands at once. "Looking like this? I'd embarrass you."

He knew that in Gi Changning's old life she would have been the centre of everything. He considered himself a man of no particular use, and he had no way of making up the drop in how she lived. What he could do was keep her from being laughed at in public.

Even though he badly wanted to go to his daughter's first parents' evening.

Her mother watched the two of them from the side and chewed more and more slowly. As a parent she had half worked out that Ningning's midterms had not gone well. She opened her mouth to say something and in the end said nothing.

She knew very little about Ningning, about her past, her results, how she had grown up, any of it. Partly because there was time, and it should be taken slowly, and a child's privacy should not be trampled on. Partly because she had been absent for sixteen years and had no standing to criticise anybody's marks.

Over on the other side Gi Changning was shamelessly tugging at her father's sleeve. "Dad, go on. If anyone laughs at you, tell me, and I'll teach them what respect means."

She leaned hard on teach, so it was plainly not going to be a verbal lesson.

Her father was helpless. "You child."

"Old Gi, you go." Her mother put her chopsticks down and watched her husband's face go to shock, smiling as she did it. Besides the children, the shadow her husband had carried for years was a knot in her too. Ranran had always been too sensible to wheedle at anyone, which had hurt her without her being able to do anything about it. Now there was a chance, and she did not mind giving it a push. "I took a day off for the registration. The supervisor won't sign off another one this week. Spare me a little, Old Gi?"

Gi Changning clapped, silently gave her mother every star she had, and pressed on. "Yes, exactly. Mum is worn out at work. We can't drag her out to a parents' evening as well."

Her father was no good with words and had just been stabbed in the back by his own wife. All he could do was repeat, "No. No."

Her mother closed it. "There's nothing to say no to. You not going to Ningning's first parents' evening is what won't do."

"All right," he said. "All right."

Gi Changning had nothing to say.

Woo. Her mother was magnificent.

---

At Jinhua Gardens it was another quiet day.

Ji Ran got halfway through her homework and went down to make something to eat.

Her father and brother were back late at weekends, let alone on working days. At least the fridge was no longer the bare thing it had been. It was full now, with fruit and vegetables and everything else.

She put a pot of porridge on, steamed two bags of frozen buns and some small purple sweet potatoes, fried courgette with egg, and while she waited washed an apple and ate it at the table.

The shadows of the trees moved outside. In the whole of that large house there was nothing but the hum of machines and the sound of an apple being eaten, and somehow Ji Ran thought of what Gi Changning had said to her. Put music on and dance about. It sounds like company.

At the Gis', if either of her parents was home, there was never a quiet like this.

Her father went back and forth between the sitting room and the kitchen, mopping, clearing, tidying, or making a racket with oil and salt and soy and vinegar. Her mother embroidered, or worked the sewing machine with its steady knocking.

None of it loud. It came through a closed door and tapped lightly on the ear, and it was not noise. It only felt warm.

The rice cooker's timer ended with a chime and cut the memory off. Ji Ran took a breath, put the core in the bin, served herself with the serving spoon and left the rest in the pot for her father and brother.

She ate, washed up, went upstairs, finished her homework and fell asleep to the sound of the wind.

The next morning her father and brother had ordered breakfast in from a hotel, and Ji Ran came down exactly as it arrived.

Over the food, Mr Ji put a prawn dumpling on her plate and reached for a subject. "How are things at school?"

Ji Changfeng came in behind him. "If anything happens, you must tell us."

"Yes, yes," his father said.

"They're fine." Ji Ran paused. "There's a parents' evening on Friday. Which of you is coming?"

The air thickened the moment she said it. The two of them looked at each other, and something electric went across the gap.

Nobody spoke.

Ji Ran did not understand it but could tell it was serious. "Is it difficult to decide?"

"Yes. Very." Ji Changfeng smiled and was honest with her. "We both want to go, and obviously only one of us can."

Ji Ran was blank for a moment, then said slowly, "I don't mind if you both come."

Although she would have to ask her form teacher.

Ji Ran left for the bus, and the moment she was gone her father pulled rank as head of the household. "Right. I'll go on Friday."

Ji Changfeng wiped his mouth unhurriedly with a napkin and did not give an inch. "You went to Ningning's last time. It's my turn."

Mr Ji drank some tea and arranged himself as if for a negotiation. "This is Ranran's first parents' evening, so the count starts again. I go first. You go next."

Ji Changfeng began straightening his cuffs, and his face was alarmingly sharp. "I object."

---

On Friday afternoon the expensive cars arrived one after another, windows coming down at the school gate so people could greet each other with a show of modesty.

Wenyuan did not let outside cars in. However big you were, you parked outside like everybody else.

Mr Ji used his position as chairman to abuse his power and pin his elder son down in a meeting at the company, then put on a suit, did something to his hair and arrived at the school in excellent spirits.

He got out, looked around and saw a slightly stooped back he recognised. His eyes were good. He went over. "Brother Gi. It really is you."

Gi Changning's father wore a black wool coat and had his hair neatly done, with a mask on his face. His wife had put the whole outfit together and there was nothing wrong with it, but in surroundings as polished as these he could not stop himself turning away from the looks.

Mr Ji clapped him on the back as if by accident, which made him straighten up. Being the older of the two he took the liberty of calling himself elder brother. "Shall we go in together?"

Gi Changning's father had been worrying about not knowing a soul, with only a vague idea of where the classroom was, and agreed at once. "Yes. Thank you."

It was only a week since the girls had changed places, and both sides were in an awkward and complicated position. They wanted to see how the daughter they had raised was getting on, and were afraid the other family would read something into it. At home they watched every word in case they hurt a child without meaning to. So they kept out of each other's way.

What the girls did about each other was the girls' business. The parents had to know where the line was.

A few steps inside the gate, two girls came towards them.

Gi Changning's father looked at Ji Ran's brand new uniform, which made her no different from anyone around her, and something went bitter in him.

Mr Ji looked at the delight on Gi Changning's face, which was nothing like the coldness she had worn at home, and could not help a pang.

The two of them glanced at each other, found the same feeling in a sigh that neither made, put an arm across the other's shoulders and walked straight past both girls, being scrupulously even-handed about it.

Ji Ran and Gi Changning had three question marks between them.

---

At the classrooms they had to split up. Gi Changning brought her father in to her desk. Not all the parents had arrived. Most of the class were larking about, and a few were finishing the noticeboard. They all called out when the two came in.

"Ning?"

"Is that Ning's dad? Hello!"

"Hello, sir."

"That's a good coat. What make is it?"

Gi Changning winked at her father like a cat asking to be praised and slapped away a hand that was sneaking out to feel the fabric. "No make. Made for him. If you wreck it, are you paying?"

The sports boy, who knew her well enough, took two large steps backwards on purpose. "Everyone's a witness. I never touched it. She's not pinning that on me."

Class six was always lively, and the parents who had arrived were carried into it and started laughing and talking across each other.

Gi Changning's father, who had come in with every muscle tight, slowly loosened. Under the mask his lips pressed together and the smile reached the lines at the corners of his eyes. He sat in Gi Changning's seat, and nobody in the room asked about his odd way of dressing, and somebody said masks were sensible in flu season.

Something he had buried began to put out a shoot. The world outside did not seem so bad after all.

All of which came to a halt when the form teacher handed out the results.

The teacher did her best from the front. "This is the first midterm since the arts and science split, so there's room to improve and to catch up. However busy you are, please keep an eye on your child's results. If they've chosen the university route rather than the international section, they have to take it seriously. Yes?"

Gi Changning's father looked at the name at the very bottom of the list and nodded like a machine.

Heaven as his witness, it was the first time in his life he had been the parent of the pupil who came last.

---

In class one, the hand holding the results sheet was shaking slightly.

Good heavens. It was the first time in his life Mr Ji had been the father of the pupil who came first. Ji Changfeng had been in the top stream at a good state school, full of clever children, and had done well without ever taking first place in the year.

Mr Ji put his hand under the desk and pinched himself.

He did not wake up. It was not a dream.

At the front, Comrade Sha Kesheng was in full flow. "The class has done exceptionally well this time. I know that with families as well placed as yours, study and the university exams are not the only road available. But I can see from the pupils' attitude how seriously you take this stage of their education, and as their form teacher I'm very grateful for your support."

The parents, praised without quite being praised, applauded with restrained dignity.

Sha Kesheng stepped aside, let her eyes rest on Ji Ran's desk and nodded at Mr Ji. "As usual, we'll now ask the father of Ji Ran, first in the year, to say a few words."

Mr Ji had no warning at all. He went up to the front and gathered himself. "Good afternoon. I'm Ji Ran's father, and I'm very glad to..."

Chairman Ji, who had never lost his head in a crisis, stood in front of a classroom and came out in a cold sweat.

Thank God I came, he thought. If Changfeng had come to this he would never have handled it.

---

The parents' evening ended, and the parents filed out, giving way to each other.

In the corridor Mr Ji and Gi Changning's father met at opposite sides of the stairs.

Both stopped. Both walked quickly to the other and took the other's hands in his. The father of the pupil who came first and the father of the pupil who came last looked at each other with wet eyes, and out of two completely opposite feelings produced exactly the same sentence at exactly the same moment.

"These have been hard years for you."