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cigarette holder. The photos had captions – guff like ‘woman is beauty’ and ‘true love is forever ’ in Chinese, and other stuff in English, the language of fashion and modernity.
    He thought what a good actress she was – just from the pictures you could tell she was inhabiting each role. She’d had to do a lot of acting on the phone for all those months. But he hadn’t made it difficult for her. Their Friday night exchanges had been ritualised, absent of true communication . Are you well? How is college? How are your marks? How is the food? Yes, great, okay, rubbish. Only on food had they gone into any detail. She’d tell him about the strange things she was eating and the tastes she missed. He’d emphasise the importance of a good education and they’d say brisk goodbyes. Every remembered word bought a wince – what a tower of deceit.
    The cab passed houses with slanting slate roofs, given a look of ruddy health by their red brick walls and wide windows. The front doors looked flimsy and none of the windows had bars, even on the ground floor. It was remarkable how much care had been lavished on the little gardens. No one seemed to be growing vegetables and no dogs were chained up. There was no litter, the trees were bushy, the pavements flat and smooth. Everything spoke of contented prosperity. But, with no streetlife – no food stalls or vendors, and not even many pedestrians – it was all rather dreary.
    The cab pulled up and the driver tapped a meter. It said seventeen. Jian gave him two of the orangey-brown notes and received three chunky gold coins in return. He tried to calculate how much that had been in yuan. A not unreasonable thirty. No – an outrageous three hundred. Standing on the pavement, he watched the taxi pull away. Had he just been conned?
    He was standing outside a row of three-storey houses. He checked the printout. Among the squiggles were digits – thirty-four, the same number displayed on a wooden panelon the house before him. The path to the door passed a brick mounting that held rubbish bins. Odd place to put them, in the way of visitors.
    He rang the bell and planned what to say to his daughter . He’d play it cool and ask her how she was eating. She’d apologise for stressing him out like that. She’d be impressed that he had come all this way out of paternal concern and would apologise for her unfilial behaviour. He’d be magnanimous . He would not get angry, not yet. The door was opened.

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    An unfamiliar Asian girl held the door on a chain.
    Jian said, ‘ Ni hui shuo zhong wen ma?… Do you speak Chinese?’
    ‘ Hui .’ A mainlander – that was lucky.
    He held the vanity book open at an image of Wei Wei looking dreamy with a fake butterfly in her hair.
    ‘ Zheige nu’hai zhu zai zher ma? … Does this girl live here?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Did she live here?’
    ‘Yes. A long time ago.’
    ‘I’m trying to trace her. She’s missing.’
    He flashed his PSB namecard. The logo of Tian’anmen Gate was in red above embossed black characters. He’d had them specially made, in thicker card than the government issued.
    ‘Come in.’
    He had said it out loud, just like that, without thinking. Missing. Now the heavy word clattered round inside his head.
    The hallway was carpeted. He bent to take his shoes off but she told him not to bother and led him past bicycles into a cramped kitchen. On a plate sat some half-eaten bread and paste dish.
    ‘I interrupted your dinner.’
    ‘It’s okay.’
    ‘What is that?’
    ‘Pizza.’
    ‘Is it tasty?’
    ‘It’s simple to cook.’
    ‘You eat with a knife and fork. That’s clever.’
    ‘It’s easy.’
    ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Song.’
    The only time Wei Wei had ever talked about her flatmates was to call a certain Song ‘a top-class bitch’. The girl wore glasses and had bad skin but there was a good figure beneath the jeans and jumper. Her accent was Beijing, a croaky ‘r’ inflection at the end of words. She