Chapter 13

"You can go."

Ning Shu turned to leave, and after a few steps she found she could not quite swallow it.

In the last life that boy Lu Zheng had bullied her half to death. Now she was a grown woman in her head and he was a small wretch, and a very pleased-with-himself small wretch at that.

Not getting any of it back would be a bad bargain.

Lu Zheng saw her come back and asked, "What else do you want?"

"I had things to do today. You had me grabbed off the street and wasted half my day. And that's the end of it?"

Lu Zheng gave the steward in black a look, and the steward took a wad of red notes out of the leather bag and put it into Ning Shu's hand.

The steward said, "I apologise for the rudeness just now. The money is the young master's gesture."

Ning Shu held the wad and ran her thumb along the edge of it. Lavish. That was Lu Zheng exactly.

Good. She had wanted to do this for a long time.

Ning Shu raised her hand, counted one two three in her head, and got ready to throw the whole wad at him and shout, "Take back your filthy money!"

But just as she was about to let go, Lu Zheng said, with no expression at all, "Want to die? Try it."

His eyes were deep and they were cold, and the cold of them went into the bone.

A cool draught came past. Something in Ning Shu went small, and she took a few steps back, and her hand stopped where it was.

Never mind. These days you cannot eat your principles.

Ning Shu pushed the money into her bag, shaking, and made herself sound hard about it. "I'll let it go this time. Don't do it again."

A black Mercedes came up, and the two bodyguards saw Lu Zheng into it. As he got in he did not forget to look back at her. "Get in. The driver will take you."

The driver was startled. The Lu family's young master could not bear anything unclean and had never let an outsider into his car. Why would he be putting a strange girl in it now?

"No thank you!" Ning Shu refused flat.

Lu Zheng watched her go off like something fleeing and gave a cold laugh. She had changed a good deal, coming back. There was more of what she actually felt in her now, and less of the flattery and the smiles that meant nothing.

The one thing that had not changed was that she was a coward.

Ning Shu walked along the street with nothing to do, and then remembered that she was supposed to be buying tonics for her grandparents today, and that Lu Zheng had very nearly made her forget.

She had just reached the Carrefour nearby when her aunt rang, and her aunt's voice came down the phone fast. "Ningning, get back to the hospital, something's happened!"

Ning Shu's heart went up into her throat. "What's happened to Gouwa?"

"Never mind that, just come back!"

Ning Shu hung up and flagged a taxi at the kerb and went to the hospital, and up to the third floor of the inpatient wing. In the ward Gouwazi was sitting on the edge of the bed swinging his legs and watching television with nothing better to do. He blinked at her when she came running in. "Sis."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"Then Auntie…"

"Oh, it isn't me. It's my aunt," Gouwazi said. "Mum and Dad have gone over to obstetrics."

It took Ning Shu a long moment to work out that Gouwazi's aunt was her mother, Ye Furong.

"What could have happened to her?" Ning Shu asked.

Gouwazi shook his head. "Don't know."

As long as it was not Gouwazi, Ning Shu was easy about it. As for how her mother was, nobody could really blame her for having a heart of stone. She felt nothing about it at all.

Ye Furong had never treated her as a daughter. Why should she put a warm face to a cold backside and insist on treating the woman as a mother?

Still, Ning Shu decided to go over and see how things stood.

There was a crowd outside obstetrics, and a lot of faces she had not seen in a long time. They were relatives from her father's side.

Her father's mother was there, of course, a stout, well-off old woman with white hair and jewellery all over her, with a great noisy crowd behind her, blocking the door of obstetrics and holding on to some poor young nurse and asking her everything under the sun.

Her uncle and aunt stood off to the side, worried out of their minds.

Ning Shu went straight to her uncle. "What's happened to Mum?"

"We don't know. Something about it not being her time yet, and then sudden pains and bleeding. They only just brought her in and the doctors are still working." Her uncle rubbed his hands together, and still found room to comfort her. "Don't you worry. She'll be fine. She'll be fine."

Just then the doctor came out of the emergency room and the old woman's family all pushed forward, worked up, and crowded round him. "Is my grandson all right? Aiyo, doctor, you have to keep our precious grandson safe. Nothing must happen to him!"

Her uncle got over there too. "How's my sister? Is she all right?"

The doctor pulled off his gloves. "The mother is in no danger and the baby is fine. The pregnancy is a little unsteady, which may be because she's weak or because she's too tense. Her family should comfort her and get her to stop worrying."

"What does unsteady mean? Is something going to happen to my precious grandson?" The old woman's face changed on the instant and her claw of a hand closed round the doctor's wrist. "That won't do. This child is the blood of our Ning family. Nothing can be allowed to happen to him. Doctor, you tell us what to do. You have to keep my grandson safe."

Seeing how old she was, the doctor could only say helplessly, "Don't worry. I'll look after the mother."

"No, doctor, I don't think you've understood what my mother means." Her father's sister came over. "If it comes to saving one or the other, the mother or the child, you must save the child."

The old woman said quickly, "That's right. You keep our precious grandson!"

This was not a melodrama on television.

The doctor said awkwardly, "That sort of extreme case very rarely happens. And if it did, we would still put the adult's life first."

"Ah! Have you no conscience as a doctor? Is a child's life not a life?" The old woman was beside herself. "I'll report you, see if I don't."

Her uncle could not stand any more of it. It was his own sister lying in there, after all. He said to the old woman, "In-law, how can you say such a thing? A child's life is a life, but is an adult's life not important? If anything really did go wrong, of course you save the adult first."

The old woman looked at him with distaste and moved a little further away from him. "A daughter married out is water poured on the ground. Mind your own business. You don't get to put your hands into the Ning family's affairs."

"But the person lying in there is my own sister!"

The doctor shook his head and made to leave. He saw this sort of family business at the hospital more often than he could count. The old woman would not have it and tried to hold on to him and have it out, and the nurse stepped in quickly. "The hospital has its rules and we go by them. The mother and the baby are both safe. What you've described is a very extreme case and it hardly ever happens. We'll keep them both safe. Please trust us."

The old woman made a cold sound, and let it drop at last, and as she turned she came eye to eye with Ning Shu, and the contempt in her face deepened.

This grandmother had given Ning Shu a great deal of grief in the last life. She wanted sons, she doted on the little brother at home, and Ning Shu got the sour looks and the hard words. All of which was one thing. The worse part was that she was overbearing and sharp-tongued, and the moment Ning Shu did the smallest thing wrong and caught her eye, it was either a beating or a mouthful.

The Ning Shu of the last life had a soft temper and never dared answer back however she was treated, which this grandmother despised her for completely.

But now Ning Shu had learned a few things about feng shui and the arts, and from the woman's face alone she knew that a woman like this was no good sort.

The space between her brows was narrow, her cheekbones stood out sideways, her nostrils were small and there was a bead on her lip.

Which said she was small in spirit and quick to anger, that she counted every grain and had to win, and that she was a fine hand at bending the facts.

A petty face like that is one to keep well away from when you meet it.

Her aunt saw the old woman looking over and nudged Ning Shu to go and greet her.

Ning Shu made a cold sound instead and said nothing.

The old woman had considerable fight in her, and now she turned it on Ning Shu. "A wild child brought up in the countryside. No manners in her at all. Doesn't even know to greet her elders."

Ning Shu said, "If the elder behaved even a little like an elder, I would."

"Aiyo, now she's lecturing me. There's no knowing how that grandmother of hers brought her up out there. Is there no heaven left, and no law?" The old woman had plainly been pushed past her limit by that.

Ning Shu stayed perfectly steady. "First, how my grandmother brought me up is nothing whatever to do with you. Second, you sent me away back then, so I don't own your family, and I don't regard any of you as elders."

The old woman put a hand over her chest, nearly out of her mind with it, her breath coming badly, and her daughter and son-in-law hurried to hold her up. "Mum, don't lower yourself to this wild child. She doesn't own our Ning family, so we won't own her. When the estate is divided she gets nothing. Her share can go to our Xinyi. Calm yourself."

Xinyi was the daughter of her father's sister.

The old woman heard that and the anger went up another floor, and the smoke nearly came out of her nose. "I'm not dead yet and you're already counting the estate."

"How could I! Aiyo, I'm only furious, that's all. This girl, she's got no idea how to behave."

Ning Shu did pity the old woman, in fact. How you treat people is how people treat you.

In the last life, with the woman not even dead, the brothers and sisters had been at each other over the property until there was blood on it, and taken it to court.

The Ning family had money, but they were nowhere near a great house and nothing at all beside Lu Zheng's sort. New money at best, and the people in it were small-eyed and small-nosed and had seen nothing of the world, and the smallest gain would set them on each other.

The nurse came out then. "This is a hospital. Stop shouting. You're disturbing the patients."

Her uncle went over. "When can I see my sister?"

The nurse said, "You can see her once she's awake."

Two hours later Ye Furong was moved to a private room, and she had come round, though there was not much spirit in her. The moment she woke her hand went to her belly, and it was still there, and she let out a breath.

She already had a son of ten. Another son with this one and her place in that house would be settled for good.

The whole crowd poured into the room, and the old woman came in with her face already down and demanded, "What have you been doing? You can't even hold a baby steady. If anything happens to my precious grandson you'll be sorry for it."

The cool, well-bred manner Ye Furong had shown her brother and Ning Shu was gone without a trace. She was a different woman. She dropped her eyes and took the scolding and said, "Mum, don't worry. I'll keep this child."

And the moment Ning Shu came into the room it was as though somebody had put the air conditioning on. A cold draught went through her and into the bone.

She shivered before she could stop herself.

But the moment she looked at Ye Furong, the gooseflesh came up all over her back.

Inside Ye Furong's belly there was a child, black from head to foot, eating its way through a piece of red infant flesh, mouthful by mouthful.