City Of Shadows. M J Lee

       Chapter 1

      The girl lay beneath the covers listening to the sounds of the night.

      Off in the distance a dog barked. Somewhere closer a woman sang the opening bars of a song from The Peony Pavilion, but soon trailed off into humming the melody. Closer still, a bottle was kicked over in the dark, shattering against the wall of one of the houses in her row.

      The girl listened to the sounds of the Shanghai night as she had done every evening for the last six months.

      Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.

      The pale light of the moon streamed in through a small crack in the curtains where the maid had not closed them properly, reaching across the room to the far door. On the wall, a picture of Jesus, chosen by her birth mother, stared down at her, his hands framing a bright red heart.

      Next to the door, her wheelchair was pushed against the wall beside her crutches. Why hadn’t the maid left them closer to her bed?

      Since the onset of polio, the girl had been dependent on the kindness of strangers. The first week of fevers, headaches and weakness had been the most frightening. Then the paralysis had set in, just her legs at first, but slowly creeping up her body.

      The diagnosis, when it finally came, had been a relief to her father and both his wives. At least they now knew what they were dealing with. It was just a question of time, waiting for her muscles to recover their strength. But always, the fear lurking like a hyena that she would never recover. She would lie here in her bed for the rest of her life, paralysed.

      They had moved to this new house a month ago. A healthier area her birth mother had said, a more modern house. She didn’t miss the old neighbourhood, or the sly, insinuating words of her father’s first wife. Here, the sounds were more playful, happier, keeping her entertained each evening. The night soil collectors on their rounds. Her neighbour’s phonograph playing the latest jazz from America. Her brother running up and down the stairs, how she envied him. The rows between her birth mother and her father late in the night. Rows about money, always about money.

      It was as if the world was a series of sounds that only she could hear, created just for her.

      She knew she was supposed to get up every day to exercise her wasted muscles, but she preferred lying here in her bed. Twice a week, she had to go for hydrotherapy at the hospital on Bubbling Well Road.

      She resented the pitying looks of the people as the maid pushed her in the wheelchair. Pity edged with relief that it was her in the chair and not them.

      Even the nurses cut her with their words when she visited the hospital.

      ‘Here you are, Miss Lee. I’ll help you up.’

      Or: ‘Take my hand, you’ll need it if you want to get dressed.’

      And the worst: ‘You pee now. I’ll stand here and wait until you’ve finished.’

      She hated them all, but more than anything else, she hated her mothers, both of them.

      The one who had given birth to her, her father’s second wife, was the worst. She beat her on the legs and arms every day to get rid of the ghosts she said were infesting her body. At first, the blows were not too hard, a tap with a wooden paddle to the soft part of the calf. But as her illness worsened, so the blows became harder, until she screamed from the pain. Her mother constantly telling her she was only doing it for her own good.

      And the other, her father’s first wife, who kept insinuating in her sly way that this illness was a punishment from the gods. A punishment that, one day, would also take her brother. At least they had left her behind in the old house, to stew in her barren bitterness.

      God, she hated both of them. One day she would be up and walking again. No need for the wheelchair or the crutches. She would run up and down the stairs every day, just for the hell of it. And, when she was strong enough, she would run away from this house.

      She heard two sharp raps on the door of the courtyard. Who could be visiting them at this time of the night? She hadn’t heard anybody walk up the street.

      Her brother shouted something, but she couldn’t make it out. What had he said? She heard his feet running out to open the door. A few indistinct words were spoken, followed by the slow creak of hinges as the door opened.

      She would have to tell father that it needed oil.

      Another sound.

      She lifted her head from the pillow, straining to hear. There it was again. Fainter, this time, coming from the back of the house, where the kitchen was. A sharp tap, the crack of glass as it fell to the floor.

      She listened intently, straining her neck muscles to hold her head upright off the pillow.

      The window was opening, a scrape of something on the ledge. A soft bump on the tiled floor of the kitchen.

      Where was the maid? Why didn’t she ask who was there?

      More words in the courtyard. Her brother speaking. A man answering him. A stifled shout. Then, a sound she had never heard before like the gurgle of a frog, but cut off, strangled.

      Where was the maid?

      A startled cry from the hallway. It sounded like her mother shouting at her father during one of their arguments, but the voice was different. Too high. Too sharp. Too surprised. Then, the