When Dawn arrives, I show her the map Peter Dunne gave us and ask her where the bar is. She studies the map for a moment, then points. ‘Near here. This road is where we get off the bus so we walk this way.’ She traces the route. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick. ‘Or we can get a taxi,’ she says.
‘We’ll get the bus,’ Tom says, ‘be good to orient ourselves.’
‘And we’re going the other direction from Lori’s flat?’ I check.
‘That’s right. You’re in between here. It’s two stops either way.’
She guides us along the side streets past the park and to the junction where the ring road is. Tom asks about her job. She’s teaching at an English training school. ‘It’s for kids,’ she says, ‘they come after ordinary school or at the weekends. I asked for the day off today.’
‘What age are they?’ I say.
‘Four to twelve.’
‘Did you know that Lori’s visa was dodgy?’ Tom says.
Dawn stops walking. Her face flames and her fingers pinch her lower lip. ‘Kind of,’ she says. ‘She really wanted to stay and it was the only way she could do it.’
‘And the people who arranged it, did she have anything to do with them afterwards?’ Tom says.
‘No. That was it.’ Dawn signals to warn us about a scooter mounting the pavement and we hang back as the man, with a child on his lap, steers past us and parks outside a milk bar. Along this street, tree trunks, the pillars of a building and telegraph poles are all wrapped in a stretchy shiny gold material.
‘How did she find people to teach?’ I say.
‘They found her,’ Dawn says. ‘Everyone wants to speak English. We get asked all the time.’
‘And her other friends, the people we’re going to meet, are they all teachers?’ I say.
‘About half and half. Shona’s studying at the university, doing a master’s, Bradley does translation for a software company, Rosemary is a teaching assistant at a school like mine, and Oliver teaches at the petroleum university. Rosemary and Oliver are both Chinese.’
‘The petroleum university?’ I say.
‘There are loads of universities in Chengdu,’ Dawn says, ‘and some of them specialize in certain areas, like science or technology or finance.’
We wait at the lights to cross the road. There’s a marquee going up outside the shopping mall. The frame is built and the roof canopy on. I watch a man on top of a stepladder: he has a foot on either side, and he swings the ladders along underneath the tent, like a stilt walker.
Once we’ve reached the other side, there are steps up to the middle of the ring-road carriageway, where the bus runs. A woman is sweeping the bridge and a guard in a blue uniform, with a baton hanging from his belt, sits near to the ticket booth.
