Chapter 39

When Li Lan came into the kitchen the next morning, her mother was cooking and on the phone at the same time. "Sister, I'd love to lay on a few tables to celebrate, but I can't — Lanlan's got two more exams. She says she's off to Beijing and Shanghai in a couple of days for a chemistry competition and a biology one, so we daren't disturb her studying.

"I know. Whoever schedules a competition for the holidays? Holiday or not she can't rest — even today, she was up at dawn with her books. I wanted her to have a lie-in and she wouldn't."

The complaint in the tone was entirely at odds with the delight on her face.

Li Lan watched the performance with nothing to say. She had got up early. She had not been studying with anything like the diligence being described. Seeing her come in, Chen Ying said into the phone, "Sister, it's time we ate, I'll leave it there."

She hung up and beamed. "Good timing, love. Take the dishes through and I'll ring your father in for breakfast."

Li Lan picked up a dish. "Mum, was that Auntie? Is she coming over?"

Chen Ying was smug. "She is. About your exam, of course. I told your uncle last night and your aunt was on the phone first thing this morning — heaven knows where she heard it — insisting on telling everybody and having a proper celebration."

Li Lan didn't believe a word of heaven knows where. As far as she knew, on her mother's side of the family there were no secrets: telling one person was telling all of them. She imagined her aunt was broadcasting down the phone at this moment, saving her mother the trouble of ringing round.

Chen Ying paused and went on. "Then I thought, you said last night you'd still got exams — and what if a crowd of them turn up and disturb your studying? So I put them off. Your uncle said he'd come over shortly, and since it's only him I let it go."

And she went off humming to wake the two who were still asleep, in a tone entirely unlike her usual one. "Two lazy piglets. Breakfast's ready, up you get."

Since last night she had been in a state of inexplicable animation. So had Li Quan, Li Lan reflected, looking at the chicken, duck and fish in his hands as he came up the stairs.

---

At the table Chen Ying had a thought. "Lanlan, shall your father and I drive you to Yu city for the assembly? It's only a minibus, but it's less trouble than the train."

Li Lan swallowed her mouthful. "No need. We're assembling at the station this time, so I'll take the train straight there." The chemistry exam was in Beijing, only six hours by rail, so there was no flight: they'd gather at the station and go.

Li Jingyu, newly awake, was envious. "I've never been to Beijing. Actually — you flew to Guangzhou. What's flying like?" He looked at her hopefully, and since nobody else in the family had flown, the whole table turned to her, curious.

Li Lan thought about it. "Much like a train. The seats are very narrow, and you have to wear a seatbelt."

"I want to fly." He was still envious, and his mother patted his head. "Then work hard at school like your sister, and you can fly to a competition too."

On the subject of school he had nothing to say, that not being his strength. Thinking of her son's marks, Chen Ying, in a good mood all morning, couldn't help a sigh.

Li Cheng, beside him, yawned, caught the sigh, worked out the cause in one glance, and asked deliberately, "Oh, and your son's on holiday too, isn't he? How were his end-of-term results?"

Li Jingyu glared at her covertly. Of all the things to bring up.

The question opened the floodgates, and with no outsiders present Chen Ying spared him nothing. Thinking of those results, she looked stricken. The two girls needed no worrying about; the boy had been born to collect on a debt.

"Don't ask, it upsets me. How do your brother's marks get worse every single time? If he had marks like Lanlan's I'd have nothing to worry about. He's in his last term of primary after this holiday, and with results like that how is he getting into middle school?"

Li Cheng enjoyed this thoroughly and twisted the knife on purpose. "Go on, what did he get?"

Chen Ying sighed. "A hundred and twenty-odd for Chinese and maths together. Do you think he should repeat a year, and see whether he can get into a decent middle school?"

Li Cheng laughed without mercy. "A hundred and twenty. That's barely a pass each."

He turned his head, guiltily — one of them hadn't passed at all. Not that he was going to lose on presence. "Eating doesn't even shut you up. As if you're so good at school. If you're so good, why aren't you off to Tsinghua like Li Lan?" What was so funny? He simply wasn't good at studying.

Li Cheng wasn't annoyed; she was baiting him. "I may not be good at school but I've never scraped a pass."

While the two of them squabbled, Li Lan heard the part about repeating a year and headed it off. "Mum, you want him to repeat?"

Her mother nodded; she'd been considering it.

"Nobody repeats primary these days. His marks might pick up at middle school — and if they don't, repeating a year of middle school is better than repeating primary."

It sounded like reassurance, and only Li Lan knew it was hollow. In fact his marks would get worse every year rather than better, and by high school he had all but taken up permanent residence at the bottom of the class. Her father used to say, self-deprecatingly, that he'd be grateful for a second- or third-from-bottom. So repeating a year would have made no difference whatever.

Her mother didn't know that, and these days she listened to Li Lan, and found the reasoning sound. "True enough. He'd better carry on, then. Thank goodness for nine years of compulsory schooling — at least we needn't worry about a school taking him."

Li Jingyu, who knew perfectly well his marks were indefensible, finished the argument with his sister and then had the sense to eat quietly. He assumed the family's cleverness had all been allocated to Li Lan. He couldn't follow the questions, and what was he supposed to do about that? It was hard on him too.

---

After breakfast, Li Lan was told to go and study rather than help, while Li Cheng was dispatched to the washing-up and Li Jingyu to sweeping.

Li Cheng muttered over the sink. "Why doesn't Li Lan have to wash up? She didn't cook either."

Her mother was openly partial. "Your sister's got exams to prepare for. If you had exams I wouldn't make you either."

Li Cheng glanced towards her parents' bedroom, where Li Lan was plainly sitting at the computer typing, not reading anything. But at present, in her mother's eyes, nothing Li Lan did was wrong, and there was no point in arguing. Also, evidently, two days home and she was already surplus to requirements — normally that took a week. Life is uncertain; used and discarded.

Li Lan was not, in fact, chatting. She was picking up the novel she'd suspended for the exams, and the typing was the outline for what came next.

She logged into the site's back end. The story had broken off on a small cliffhanger, and after nearly two months there were still a good many readers demanding updates. Reading the comments, she felt obscurely guilty, and then quietly closed the page.

She wasn't going to post yet. She meant to start writing again, certainly, but she needed to find the feel of it first, and posting properly could wait until after the exams. She felt a little sorry about it — though after two months of waiting another fortnight would hardly matter. Probably.

She opened Word expecting to be rusty after two months, and found she got into it faster than she'd thought; possibly because writing doesn't require much thinking. In two hours she managed nearly six thousand characters — nothing beside the really prolific writers, but among her own best.

Around ten she rubbed her aching fingers, stretched her back and left the computer to go and read, her head now conveniently empty. Li Jingyu, who had been waiting hopefully beside her for some time, was into the chair and a game immediately; while she'd been using it he hadn't dared interrupt in case it was something important.

Two rounds in, he had to shut it down, because Chen Shanxing arrived.

He heard his mother and his uncle talking before they'd reached the third floor, and sure enough there were footsteps on the stairs. He had just closed the game and come out when the two of them appeared in the doorway, and Li Lan and Li Cheng came out of the bedroom too.

Chen Shanxing was through the door and calling out at once. "Where's Lanlan? Let me look at our Tsinghua-and-Peking student."

Li Lan's face did something complicated, and her mother joined in from the side. "Lanlan, your uncle's here."

Under the entertained gaze of her siblings she walked into the middle of the room and produced, resignedly, "Uncle."

He stood in front of her with open approval. "Well, Lanlan. This is really something. If it hadn't been so late when your mother rang last night I'd have come then. A near-certain Tsinghua or Peking student in this family — Yingzi, you've raised a fine student there."

Chen Ying laughed proudly in front of her brother. "Haven't I. Li Quan and I were beside ourselves last night. Brother, tell me — how many girls in this county are like our Lanlan?"

He nodded agreement. "Never mind the county. I doubt there are many in the city, or the province."

"Exactly. Exactly."

Li Lan found the mutual congratulation funny, though being its subject was awkward. Mercifully it didn't run long. He asked carefully about the schedule for her two remaining exams and then endorsed her mother's decision. "You did right. A celebration dinner can happen at any time; her exams can't be disturbed."

Then he turned to Li Lan. "So — are you confident about the other two?"

She didn't overstate it. "They should be all right."

Her mother, worried about pressure, put in, "All right or not doesn't matter. You came first in maths — the other two can go badly and it won't hurt."

Chen Shanxing glanced at her. "There you're wrong, Yingzi. Whatever Lanlan says, I don't expect she'll do badly in these either."

"Really?" That pleased her still more. "Although I do worry about the pressure. Doing well would be lovely, of course."

While they talked, Li Quan came up with another armful of vegetables, saw his brother-in-law in conversation with Li Lan, and smiled. "Brother, you carry on talking. I'll go and cook."

Chen Ying checked the time — nearly eleven. "Brother, don't go at midday. Li Quan was at the market first thing buying chicken and duck and fish for his daughter, all waiting to be cooked. Let's have a proper lunch."

He didn't stand on ceremony. "All right. I'll benefit from Lanlan's glory as well, then."

Listening to the talk from the front room, Li Quan, tidying up in the kitchen, felt lighter on his feet than he had in some time.