‘My father died when I was eight years old. When my mother remarried, Meihui moved into a little house in the next street so that she could be near me. She helped my mother with the children, the shopping, anything, but then she slipped away to her own home. And in time I began to follow her.’
He gave her a warm smile. ‘So you see, I had a Norah too.’
‘And you depended on her, just as I did on mine.’
‘Yes, because she was the only one who could make me understand what was different about me. She taught me her language but, more than that, she showed me China.’
‘She actually brought you here?’
‘Only in my head, but if you could have seen the fireworks she set off in there.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘She used to take me out to visit London’s Chinatown, especially on Chinese New Year. I thought I was in heaven—all that colour, the glittering lights and the music—’
‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Olivia broke in eagerly.
‘You saw it too?’
‘Only once. My mother visited some friends who lived near there, and they took us out a couple of nights to see what was happening. It was like you said, brilliant and thrilling, but nobody could explain it to me. There was a lot of red, and they were supposed to be fighting somebody, but I couldn’t tell who or what.’
‘Some people say they’re fighting the Nian,’ Lang supplied. ‘A mythical beast rather like a lion, who devours crops and children. So they put food out for him and let off firecrackers, because he’s afraid of loud noises and also of the colour red. So you got lots of red and fireworks and lions dancing. What more could a child want?’
‘Nothing,’ Olivia said, remembering ecstatically. ‘Oh, yes, it was gorgeous. So much better than the English New Year celebrations, which always seemed boringly sedate after that.’
‘Me too. It was the one thing I refused ever to miss, and that drove my mother mad, because the date was always changing—late January, mid-February—always lasting fifteen days. Mum complained that she couldn’t plan for anything, except that I’d be useless for fifteen days. I said, “Don’t worry, Mum, I’m always useless”.’ He made a face. ‘She didn’t think that was at all funny.’
‘Your grandmother sounds wonderful,’ Olivia said sincerely.
‘She was. She told me how everyone is born in the year of an animal—a sheep, an ox, a rat, a dragon. I longed to find I was born in the year of the dragon.’
‘And were you?’
He made a face. ‘No, I was born in the year of the rabbit. Don’t laugh!’
‘I’m not laughing,’ she said, hastily controlling her mirth. ‘In this country, the rabbit is calm and gentle, hard-working—’
‘Dull and plodding,’ he supplied. ‘Dreary, conventional—’
‘Observant, intelligent—’
‘Boring.’
She chuckled. ‘You’re not boring, I promise.’
It was true. He delighted her, not with any flashy display of personality, but because his thoughts seemed to reach out and take hers by the hand in a way that, she now realized, Andy had never done.
He gave her a rueful grin.
‘Thank you for those kind words, even if you had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find them.’
‘According to everything I’ve read, there’s nothing wrong with being born in the year of the rabbit.’
‘And you’ve obviously read a lot, so I guess you know your own year.’ He saw her sheepish look and exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, please don’t tell me—!’
‘I’m sorry, I really am.’
‘The year of the dragon?’
‘It not my fault,’ she pleaded.
‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ He groaned. ‘Dragons are free spirits, powerful, beautiful, fearless, they soar above convention, refusing to be bound by rules and regulations.’
‘That’s the theory, but I never felt it quite fitted me,’ she said, laughing and trying to placate him. ‘I don’t see myself soaring.’
‘But perhaps you don’t know yourself too well,’ he suggested. ‘And you’ve yet to find the thing that will make you soar. Or the person,’ he added.
The last words were spoken so quietly that she might have missed them, except that she was totally alive to him. She understood and was filled with sudden alarm. Things were happening that she’d sworn never to allow happen again.
She would leave right now and retreat into the old illusion of safety. All she had to do was rise, apologise and leave, trying to avoid his eyes that saw too much. It was simple, really.
But she didn’t move, and she knew that she wasn’t going to.
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