Chapter 15

Ning Shu gave her son her word, and told him in turn not to do anything rash. If the thing was difficult enough that neither of them could handle it, she thought her grandmother had better be told. Her grandmother was a great master with a name all along the trade, and one ghost baby, however deep its resentment, ought to be within her.

As it turned out, Ning Shu never got as far as ringing her. Her uncle lost his nerve first and blurted the whole thing down the phone.

That was because Ye Furong had got much worse over those few days. The bleeding grew heavier and she grew thinner, until even her eyes had sunk back into her head and there was nothing left of her but skin and bone.

Her aunt and the hired carer stewed her old duck soup and pigs' trotters every day to build her up, and still the life in her went out of her bit by bit, and by now she was not even clear in her mind. She lay in a kind of fog and knew nobody.

Thinner and thinner, but the belly bigger and bigger.

Her uncle could not bear what was happening to his sister, and he went straight to the doctors' office to ask. The doctors could not explain it either. None of them had ever met anything like it. It went against everything that ought to be true and there was no making sense of it.

Her uncle thought of what Ning Shu had said, and told the doctor, "Then take the baby out of her. You can't let this child have her life."

The doctor was in a worse position than he was. "The baby is this big now. Inducing at this stage would be very dangerous."

The old woman was passing the office and heard that, and went off like a firework. She shoved the door open and came at her uncle with her stick up.

"What did you just say? What did you say? Get rid of my precious grandson? That's murder, that is. How can there be a person in the world with a heart like yours? I'll kill you. I'll kill you."

Her uncle could hardly do anything to a white-haired old woman, so he took several good cracks of the stick, and said, "What my sister's carrying isn't a good pregnancy. It has to be got rid of. I can't let it take my sister's life."

"What kind of talk is that? Is there no heaven left, and no law?" The old woman was wild with it. "You dare put a curse on my precious grandson. I'll go to the police. I'll have them take you away."

Her uncle made a furious noise. "On what grounds? I haven't done anything."

"On the grounds that you're plotting against my precious grandson!"

The noise brought everybody out. Her aunt got hold of her uncle quickly, and the father's sister and her husband got hold of the old woman.

The doctor looked at the family and decided they were more than he wanted. "I have work to do. Would you please take this outside."

They came out of the office, and just then Ning Shu's father arrived from the company in a hurry.

Ning Shu's father, Ning Hengtao, was a man in his forties, and a feeble, useless sort. At home he did whatever his mother told him and had no mind of his own.

The old woman caught hold of Ning Hengtao's hand, in floods of tears. "Hengtao, that's your wife in there, and it's your child in her belly. Now you tell me. This man wants to do away with the pair of them. How can I not call the police and have him taken away?"

"Mum, calm down. Don't make yourself ill over it."

Ning Hengtao went on and on soothing his mother, and got her over to the bench along the wall. "I'm here. Nobody is touching a child of the Ning family."

Ning Shu watched her father from a distance and shook her head. Past forty and still a boy run by his mother, doing whatever she said. He was kind enough underneath, and he had not treated Ning Shu badly. The trouble was that he was useless and had no backbone, so the whole house had fallen into the hands of that troublemaking old woman, and there had not been a quiet day in it since.

Ning Shu walked slowly over. She looked at the old woman, and then at her father, and said at last, "Two years ago Mum was carrying a daughter and you made her get rid of her. Did that happen or did it not?"

The old woman's face changed at the words, and her father stared at her, unable to believe it. "How… how do you know about that?"

Not many people had known about it at the time, only a few of the family, because it would not have sounded well if it had got out, and the Nings cared about their face.

"Never mind how I know." Ning Shu's voice was cold. "That daughter you got rid of bound her resentment up inside her, and she's got into Mum's belly now. She's eaten your precious grandson and she's drinking Mum's blood, and she means to be born out of her."

Everyone standing there was stunned, and the father's sister and her husband, who were a little superstitious as it was, were frightened to the point of shaking. The abortion had been their idea in the first place. The old woman did not like daughters, so the child would only have been a nuisance once it was born, and it seemed better to see to it early.

And if she really had come back as a spirit that would not rest, the first people she would want were them.

The father's sister said quickly to the old woman, "Perhaps we should listen to her. Look at what Furong has been through these last weeks. There may really be something wrong with that baby."

The old woman's brows went up and she jabbed a finger at her daughter's head. "And you've been to university. A girl who's barely stopped drinking milk talks nonsense and it frightens you out of your wits."

The father's sister said shakily, "If it's nonsense, how does she know about that girl? We kept that from her mother's family."

The old woman looked at Ning Shu and spoke to her like a servant. "I don't know where you've picked up this gossip, but I'll tell you now, there's no such thing. What daughter? I never saw any daughter. My family's precious grandson is going to be born, and that's the end of it. And if any of you dares make trouble, I'll have the police on you."

Her uncle wanted to argue it out, but Ning Shu held him back and shook her head.

There was no reasoning with a person like that. Ning Shu had seen more than enough of the old woman's way of shouting sense down in the last life. Nobody had ever managed to finish an argument in front of her.

The old woman set off for Ye Furong's room with her stick, full of fight. But just then Ning Shu saw Ning Yuanzi in her red dress appear from somewhere, grin at her, walk up behind the old woman and put a leg out. The old woman went over with a yelp, flat on the floor, and lay there howling.

"Aiyo, Mum! Are you hurt?"

"At your age you can't be falling like that!"

The father's sister and her husband and Ning Hengtao all rushed to get her up.

The old woman swung her stick about and shouted. "Who tripped me? Tired of living, are you?"

The father's sister had hold of her. "Mum, nobody tripped you. You weren't looking where you were going."

"What? Nobody tripped me?" The old woman looked blankly round her. "Somebody put a leg out just now. That's why I went over. How could there be nobody?"

"Mum, have a look and see if you've hurt yourself anywhere," Ning Hengtao asked urgently.

That got through to her, and she put a hand to her head. "Aiyo. My head's gone a bit swimmy."

The husband hurried off for a doctor and a nurse, and they got the old woman onto a stretcher and took her down to emergency to be looked over. Her uncle and aunt went off to Ye Furong's room, and Ning Shu was left alone in the corridor.

Ning Yuanzi was leaning round the door of the ward, giggling behind her hand. She looked back at Ning Shu and made a V with her fingers, and Ning Shu could not help smiling at her.

The little wretch. She was a handful.

But it had been satisfying.

Ning Shu put a thumb up at her, where nobody could see.

Just then Gouwa appeared from somewhere and said, "Sis, do you know that kid?"

"Mm?" Ning Shu did not follow.

Gouwa pointed at Ning Yuanzi. "That little girl in the red clothes. You know her?"

"God!" Ning Shu was staggered. "You can see her?"

Gouwa looked up again, and the corridor was empty. There was not a soul in it.

"Eh? That was quick. She's gone."

Ning Shu said, "You really can see her?"

"Why have you got that look on your face," Gouwa said. "Like I've seen a ghost."

Ning Shu said, "You have seen a ghost."

"Ha. So you were making hand signs at a ghost just now."

"…I was, as it happens."

Ning Shu thought of the old saying, that good people die young and a menace lives a thousand years, and decided there was nothing wrong with it.

As for Gouwa suddenly being able to see Ning Yuanzi that day, Ning Shu turned it over and could make nothing of it. Surely this daft little scrap of a boy was not about to open the heavenly eye too?

If anybody at all could open it, it was not worth much. Her grandmother had said there were no more than ten feng shui masters in the whole country with the eye open.

Though seeing ghosts did not have to mean the eye was open. There are plenty of ways of seeing one. Ordinary people walking a road at night run into something unclean now and then, and there is nothing strange about it.

Two days later her grandmother came tearing into the hospital.

She had set out the same evening her son rang her, and travelled through the night, bus and then train, and got there at last.

When Ning Shu met her at the station her face was grey with it, and she had plainly not slept properly on the way. It hurt Ning Shu to look at her. Her aunt wanted her to go to a hotel and sleep first and come to the hospital after, and her grandmother would not hear of it. Her daughter's life was hanging by a thread.

She flagged a taxi outside the station and went straight to the hospital.

She came into the ward and saw Ye Furong lying there with hardly a breath in her, and the old woman who had been hard as iron her whole life wept. She went to her daughter's side and took hold of her hand. "Furong. What's happened to you? How have you got so thin?"

Ye Furong had an oxygen mask on and was too weak to get words out. She heard her mother's voice and her breathing quickened, and she made a noise in her throat, as though she were trying to say Mum.

She went on making it, urgently, and she took her mother's old wrinkled hand and moved it onto her round belly, and the tears came out at the corners of her eyes, and there was nothing in them but despair.

But the instant her grandmother touched the belly her face changed. She snatched her hand back and stumbled several steps away, and stood there getting her breath.

Ning Shu had never seen her grandmother, who was steady about everything, look as frightened as that.

The fear in her grandmother's face turned to anger, and she shouted at her daughter.

"What in God's name have you done?"