A short story based on the real-life deportation of Chinese seafarers from the UK after the second world war has won this year’s 4thWrite prize.
Fleeting Marrow by Yan F Zhang spans eight decades, telling the life story of a woman named Joy as she builds a life while navigating the absence of her father and son.
The competition, run by publisher 4th Estate and the Guardian and now in its eighth year, is open to writers of colour living in the UK and Ireland. The winner receives £1,000, a publishing workshop at 4th Estate and publication of their story on the Guardian website.
Fleeting Marrow is an “ambitious and affecting story of family and history that is remarkable in what it achieves in so few pages”, said Kishani Widyaratna, publisher at 4th Estate.
It takes the “raw source material” of “historical tragedy and transforms it into something truly moving”, said journalist and judge Zing Tsjeng.
In 2022, the Home Office admitted that Chinese seafarers were coerced into boats leaving Liverpool after the war in a “racially inflected and prejudicial” secret government programme.
Also on the judging panel were authors Sheena Patel and Laline Paull, Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan and literary agent Emma Leong.
Yan’s story “is a distinctively fearsome and memorable performance”, said Leong. “This story holds an earnest understanding of innocence when left to a life of harrowing loss and political sorrow, whilst cleverly underscoring a vivacious and urgent sense of wonder, hope and possibility”.
Other writers shortlisted for this year’s prize were Anvi Prabhu, Marcella Marx, Priyanka Verma, Vee Matsumari and Isabella Peralta.
Matsumari received a special commendation for their story The Sound of Water. “‘A polished and confident stylist, with impressive control of their material and emotional depth,” said Jordan. “From the first line, you feel for the narrator and you want to know more. Every sentence is a pleasure to read.”
Last year’s winner was Tian Yi for her story The Good Son. Writers previously recognised through the award include Bolu Babalola, author of Love in Colour and Honey & Spice, and Guy Gunaratne, whose novel In Our Mad and Furious City won the Dylan Thomas and Jhalak prizes.
Fleeting Marrow by Yan F Zhang
0. Born in 1939, Joy always lived her life as if it would never end, as if she walked a fairground that could never shut. Like everybody else, despite wearing a watch and always having a sense of time, always keeping count, life tread past, furtive and soft. Some years bounded by in a blur; almost nothing stuck in her memory. Were they terrible years she had wished from her mind? Or just ones that didn’t weigh enough to warrant the brain space? Many years did stick, though.
2. Her older brother, Felix, two years ahead of her in life, was evacuated to Newtown, Wales, where everything was brand new with tags on from the shops, Joy imagined. At not quite two, Joy was too small for evacuation alone. Joy’s mother couldn’t bear to leave her husband so they stayed. When bangs whooshed overhead they all squeezed together, clasped to each other. Joy rested against her mother, nose touching her pearl necklace, feeling her heartbeat through her breast, as if they shared the same one. 3. Three years old was the first time Joy noticed how different she looked to Mama, and even more so from everybody else outside home.
5. The First Day of School. 1944, A new law enacted – free education for all aged 5-15 years old. The beginning was slow. She spoke little, made no friends. The teacher saw her at the playground’s corner, plucking petals off a wilting dandelion with thumb and forefinger. “Not sure the flower enjoys that, Joy.” Miss Hockeridge smiled, stretching out a hand. Joy shrugged, held her hand. The two of them strolled amongst the gaggle. “That one’s an elephant!” Joy cried, pointing skywards at the bulbous clouds. “Chasing a banana.” There was an eagle with claws aimed at prey, an upside down birthday cake with candles floating away.
6. Joy missed school for months when she caught whooping cough. Uncontrollable hacking fits invaded her. Returning to class, she had to learn to hold pencils again, her fingers like chicken claws around the impossibly slim wood. Everything was exhausting. She yawned too much and was noted as not-for-grammar-school. Whole days slowed then; dragging, dragging, dragging.
7. Joy learned to tell time from the neighbour, a girl babysitting for pocket money. “Hear that ticking?”
They both tilted their heads closer to the old clock a far-away uncle had gifted. “Now, this is important.” The long spindle moved forwards, never backwards. Once a second passed, it never came back again. The seconds added up to minutes, days, months, and years. Once a birthday was celebrated, the same number never returned. Ever. The certainty of these matters made Joy shudder, made her insides quiver, almost as much as the uncertainty did. The uncertainty with what to do with all the seconds.
8. Summer, 1947. Father was taken. Repatriated.
Mama took on sewing, late into the night, under candlelight to save electricity. Joy tried to help but kept sticking pins into her fingers, leaving little bloody spots on expensive fabric. “Oh my days! That’s not part of the pattern.” Her mother grabbed the material away. They never had enough soap to spare. “We need returning customers.”
They all dug hard at the allotment and lugged home juicy marrows. Mama made soup. The creamy vegetable core, steeped in broth, melted in their mouths, gone all too quick. 9. Mama brought Humphrey home and ordered, “You must call him Dad, from now on.” Joy made faces with her brother, who rolled his eyes.
“But he looks like a grandad, like a prune with grey hair.”
“Shhhh!”
“Why? He probably can’t hear us.”
Dad Humphrey moved them south away from Merseyside. Mama seemed peaceful, glad to wave a hand to the tittle-tattle, not knowing they’d never elude it.
10. They moved into a narrow, terraced house with a long back garden, full of jumbled nettles dotted with plump blackberries. Joy befriended next door’s Vivien, a fair-haired girl the same age. Vivien was in a drama club. She pulled Joy along, but others raised their eyebrows, tittered.
“Joy, why should you go?” Who could she play? Nobody looked like her on stage or screen.
“Why are you funny-looking?” Joy had never thought so. “Why don’t you look anything like your ma, or your dad?”
Vivien peered at her too, as if pondering this for the first time.
“Your ma has yellow hair. Yours is almost black.” Like her father’s had been. 11. A more wonderful discovery – the local library. Joy began spending all spare seconds with her head amongst the pages and bindings.
12. Elation – first employment in a local corner shop. Joy was still small, barely taller than the counter, and too slow, much too slow to notice the tall man, wild fingers pocketing jars from the shelves. Joy was smacked. She ran, tears flying from her cheeks as she fled, but she wiped them clean before reaching her doorstep.
13. Memories of Dad left too fast, faded too swift like a morning mist after sunrise. “Tell me again,” Joy implored in quiet moments before sleep.
“You know everything already.”
“Not everything.” Not even close.
Sometimes, Mama seemed like she wanted to forget.
“Your father was a seaman.” He joined the war effort in WWII. After the conflict, he became undesirable to Great Britain. They threw him on a ship back to China. He tried to hide with friends, their few allies. Cooped away, he didn’t see the sun for months, turned pale, but not pale enough. They found him and broke the locks, smashed through metal and oak as if they were made from china.
“We said goodbye–”
“No. There wasn’t time.”
15. Joy met the boy at a dance. Jack’s eyes followed her around the dim hall, then he snaked through the crowd, leant close to whisper, “I like your hair.” Long strands that floated almost to her waist. He brushed his fingers through them, right down to the tips. It made the top of her head tingle. They slipped outside, alone. Under the bright moonlight, he kissed her forehead, then fluttered his lips down until she could taste his beer on her tongue.
16. Her periods stopped. They were never regular; she didn’t notice for months, until it was too late.
17. The baby boy was taken, gifted to someone else, gone in no time at all. They hadn’t wanted her to hold him, but one nurse had been kind. Her baby had a light fluff of hair the colour of malt and smelled of summer. She counted only twenty-eight seconds with him, but her mother said she had clung on for hours; wailing, shaking, sobbing.
18. At eighteen Joy entered a secretarial college. She felt a new woman. Her mother was very proud; patched up her clothes into new ones, healing ripped holes.
Felix apprenticed to become a car mechanic. He came home smelling of petrol and grease. Felix wanted to marry a girl who’d taken her very grand car with a wonky tyre to see him. Her family damned the prospect immediately. He did not look the right sort. What would their children look like? They asked, again and again. That was all that mattered, in the end. Still, Felix dressed up to meet them, waited by the front gate. They never opened their door. After hours, he left the bunch of bluebells on the doorstep and looked up at the girl, sitting at the second-floor window, her palms on the hard, unwieldy glass pane.
Felix moped, not facing work for days. So fortunate his manager was understanding – the kind man was married for decades to his English wife whose family never spoke to either of them again after her decision to spend life with a non-white man.
19. Joy wondered about her son.
20. And dreamed about him. Each time she began to wake, felt him dissipating, she clamped her eyelids shut, beseeching: please, just a few more seconds, a few more seconds. 21. Joy completed her course. All too easy. She found work at a shipping company. All the men leered, jeering and whistling after her.
“Lass, where are you shipped from?”
She left after the second month.
There was more work right away; her lightning fingers on typewriters impressed. She learned specialist vocabulary, became medical secretary, this time for a consultant doctor at a London clinic. Joy took the train into the city first, then found her own room and moved away from home. Her mother couldn’t stem the tears as Joy packed and sealed her boxes.
At work, the other girls stared at first, but unlike school, they said nothing. That was neither worse nor better. After a few weeks of eating alone in the small third-floor kitchen, another secretary, Marilyn, sat down beside her at the little round table. Marilyn placed a spoon beside Joy, who’d been struggling to scoop yoghurt into her mouth with a fork. Cutlery was a dear expense. More than six decades later, Joy would rest next to the spoon, ready for mealtimes in her next lives. She always hoped that there would be yoghurt there, ones with copious gooey fruit.
22. The clinic staff liked her. Joy was promoted to assistant office manager. She belonged, for the first time. Though many days were hectic and time passed with less and less pain, she wondered about her son, the wonderings a constant murmuration that tailed her everywhere. 23. Marilyn cajoled her to see the new nightclub.
“Why so reluctant?”
“I’m tired.”
“It’s Saturday. You just told me you slept all day.”
“Not all day, it’s only three in the afternoon now.”
“Then that’s plenty time to get ready, isn’t it.”
“Fine,” Joy mumbled. “All right.”
There was another boy, but he didn’t stare. Timmy talked to her, asked her all sorts of questions, beyond ones about her face and hair.
“Can I see you again?” Timmy asked.
“I guess so.”
They went to more clubs and bars, sipped afternoon tea, ambled the canals holding hands, and even spent money at a movie theatre. They met each other’s mothers, who were polite. The two women shook hands. Joy saw his mother’s gaze toss from her to her mother, lingering too long on their hair and eyes. She took the pen from Joy’s mother to sign as witness to the marriage, staring at the pen too, as if not quite believing her eyeballs.
Joy and Timmy saved and saved. They bought a house. They slept pressed up into each other. She never told him that he was not her first touches.
24. Marilyn lived with a man too, someone five years younger than her and married, though not to Marilyn, which was all it took for them to release her from the clinic. “Well, fuck it, fuck it all,” Marilyn said on her last day.
Marilyn cut her hair into a bob with a sharp, straight fringe, and took Joy to get her locks lopped off too.
“It’s 1963! We’re the last to do it.”
Marilyn gave Joy a miniskirt and a belt to style. Joy liked the look of her legs and the feel of the warm sunshine on her bare skin.
Her husband did not like and accused her. Timmy imagined her flaunting her nakedness, lording her legs about, opening them for other men, having their babies. She thought about her son, but said nothing. He would no longer have been a baby at all. She smiled at the thought – a look misinterpreted as insolence. She didn’t see the hit coming, the sharp crack caught her left eye. She wore an eyepatch to work the next morning.
25. Joy slipped the key into the lock, turned gingerly, then nudged the door. The hinge squealed. Bloody ungrateful thing! It still whinged even though she’d wasted precious vegetable oil on soothing it.
A light flicked on. Too sudden and bright. She blinked.
“Do you know what time it is.”
Of course she did.
“Then what do you think you’re doing?” His low voice felt like a scream.
Fire flared through her all of a sudden. “I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
“Oh, yeah? That what you tell them all? Those wanker gits.” He grabbed her arms, lifted her and swung. “You fuck them how you want.” Her skull knocked back into the wall, the bong echoed in her head. She blinked away gold static. The neighbours whacked the walls. Purple and blue marks surfaced all over her body. Joy wore her miniskirt the next day and the next, not caring who saw. She trimmed her own hair in the bathroom mirror, tough strands falling to the floor like coils of black rope.
Timmy accused her every few days, convinced of her manifold liaisons. No one escaped the heat of his distorting magnifying glass: her office manager, her consultant, the other doctors, the new nurse, a much too cheerful neighbour far down the street. All his own fabrications. He ripped her skirts anyway. A push propelled her into the blocked up fireplace. A bump rose from her scalp as if she was attempting to grow another head.
26. She thought about her son. She’d been told his new family lived in the capital. That was all she knew. At least he’s closer now.
27. Joy packed whilst Timmy was out at his important office. Marilyn brought a laundry bag and helped her pick out her life from his, bustling around the crowded two rooms. How did they have so much crap? They were always trying to save. Joy heaved the mattress aside for her savings. Thank Gaia he hadn’t found them, tucked into a corner with her contraceptive pills. She’d not wanted another pregnancy. She loved her clinic too much and didn’t know if she’d be allowed back.
Joy slept like a new-born on Marilyn’s sagging, faded blue sofa.
Her marriage was thirty-six and a half months old when it stopped existing. 28. After months recuperating with Marilyn, Joy found her own room in Lambeth. Alone again, she discovered many things. The annual lecture at the Royal College of Physicians was a great treat. She chose a seat next to a smart woman who introduced herself as a doctor. Joy’s eyes widened.
“You could be too,” the doctor said.
Really? Maybe.
“Clever girl. I saw the book you were reading before. And you’re taking notes.” Maybe Joy could be like her. Marilyn believed it. The doctors at her clinic were encouraging. Her consultant convinced management to allow her to experience work as a care assistant, first part, then full-time. What a fantastic rush to be on her feet and not her bum all day. Her consultant went further, strode in one Wednesday, slapped the leaflets down. She startled, speechless at the writing: adult night classes.
Wasn’t it too late? One way to find out. She selected A-levels in sciences and mathematics. Everything was difficult, but not impossible – another comforting discovery.
32. The acceptance letter from St Guy’s medical school was succinct. She stuck it on her wall and later took it with her, along with the spoon.
35. Joy worked harder than she’d ever done – long hours, evenings and weekends. But somehow the ground was softer, gentler on her soles. She paced everywhere with a light bounce. She had no time for anything else, though she thought of her son often. Was he working or still studying, at a university too perhaps.
37. Her brother visited with his wife and their two children. They went to a history museum, wandered about, stared at old belongings dug up and dusted for display.
The older child, a girl, put her nose close to one case of old clothing and asked, “Will they dig up our things one day and put them in there too?”
“I do hope so,” Joy replied.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
39. A new blow-dry and extra high platform shoes for the day. Joy graduated, class of 1978 – one of the few women in her class, and by far the oldest. She started training and chose a specialism – internal medicine. On her first day the receptionist pointed her the wrong way, twice.
“Aren’t you Miss Cheung? Domestic services are expecting–”
“No. I’m a junior doctor. Doctor Owen.”
The receptionist’s mouth dropped open.
41. A doctor kept appearing at the same time as her in the canteen. Any tiredness lifted as soon as she heard his voice. She looked about at lunchtimes, lingering too long at the drinks counter, feigning lascivious interest in the juice carton selection. Too eager, she knew, but she couldn’t keep her eyes from snapping to him as soon as she clocked him nearing. She’d developed some kind of advanced human radar for him.
Derrick was seven years older and married to someone almost seven years younger than her.
42. Joy bought a house, just outside a London zone. She moved Mama and her stepfather to live near her. Joy hired a nurse, a friend from the hospital, to care for her stepfather through his last days.
Against the better grumblings of her gut, Joy invited Derrick to eat something traditional she had seen in a magazine and wanted to try out on the cooker she almost never turned on. She bought a wok and pretended it had been used before. Within minutes she set off the fire alarm. She stepped on a chair, fanned at it with an old journal. The doorbell rang. She hurried off. He cleared his throat and handed her the red wine bottle.
“It’s a highly sensitive device,” she joked, “a bit like its owner.” Shaky sounds, trembling laughter escaped her vocal chords.
“You can’t be an expert at everything,” he said, eyes crinkling at the edges. He stayed for the night.
They adopted a stray cat together. Or rather the feline adopted them, coming and going according to her own timetable. They named her Taiping, after a sassy princess Derrick had read about in a history magazine article about ancient Chinese dynasties.
43. The University of London approached her to teach part-time. She was extra elated to see girls studying. She prepared with three times the number of hours as the actual classes. All that time!
“Why all that effort? You could be doing your own research,” Derrick said. Because she loved them, she told him, they were all like her children. He asked whether she had ever wanted her own.
Why did she cry? She hadn’t realised. Then the tears flooded and dripped down her chin. Derrick unlocked a dam she’d held up so well on her own.
She told him about her son. He said she could look for him.
Her pulse quickened. She felt too hot.
Could she? Is she allowed?
Why not?
Times have changed, Derrick said, more assured of it than her.
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But records had not been well kept. Hours were lost to calling, ploughing old archives. All hopes hit dead-ends. He un-fisted her hands. She fisted them again, then pushed them up to her forehead. She should never have let others take charge, she should have asked more questions, demanded more time, to think, to believe, to plan the possibilities. “He had blue eyes,” she said, then remembered that all babies have blue eyes. Part-way through their search Joy discovered she was pregnant. A baby girl arrived early, eager for life – healthy, strong and curious. They called her Daisy.
44. Derrick’s wife found out. None of them had considered this outcome. “It’s been belly-up in the water for years,” Derrick had told Joy. “Every second with her is like treading water.”
The divorce was loud and acrid. Surprising. The woman had seemed unruffled at first, rather gracious and accepting. Joy had crossed paths with her before. They frequented the same supermarket, buying the complete opposite of groceries. One day Joy had seen her by the cucumbers, looking at a particularly floppy one. Joy froze, eyes widening. Then the tension scarpered somewhere. She had a soft moment, walked over and was about to point out the weird cucumber when the woman snatched it, whirled around and swung out at Joy’s head. Instinctively Joy snatched up a celery and hit back; their vegetables thwapped against each other, pieces broke off and bounced across the floor.
“Hey, ladies, hey there,” a shop assistant bellowed, marching over. “Hate to interrupt the fun, but I must inform you my manager says: you must pay for any broken produce.” Daisy, strapped in the trolley’s front seat, clapped her hands, burbled and giggled. At least someone had been amused.
Derrick moved in with Joy, her mother and the baby. He had so much stuff. So much stuff. More than even the baby. Joy gawped at strange things no one could possibly need. Like decorative plates and mug-warmers. Since when did mugs need jumpers? One even had sleeves, four of them. Bizarre.
She had to make room for him, and time. But he filled an empty pocket within her that she didn’t know existed, slotted in like a new organ she never thought she needed.
45. Her mother, at first shocked to be a grandmother again, took to it very well, cooed and doted on Daisy.
“Shall we get married then?” Derrick asked one Sunday morning, hands around a mug dressed in a colourful, striped wool outfit that day.
“What on earth for?”
“To make it official,” he replied. “For the world to see.”
“I think the world can see from her,” Joy retorted, nodding at Daisy. “Anyway, you don’t have signed divorce papers yet. We’d be committing bigamy, and that’s been illegal for ten years.”
Derrick never brought it up again. He took time away from the hospital, under the appalled looks of other consultants. Paternity leave was not fashionable yet. Derrick was a pioneering man, well ahead of his time. He’d missed the first days and years of his other children, who’d grown up too quick. He wanted to make the most of his time with Daisy, his last baby. Derrick had decided to get his wires snipped.
46. And an even greater gift to Joy – he looked for her son whilst she worked – an excavation project for the amateur historian.
He started with her mother’s name – Adeline Owen.
47. They argued about petty things. Who didn’t? Derrick moved out and back in, out and back again. Sometimes he took Daisy. That was the worst.
48. One afternoon her mother lost her way home from the newsagents a few streets away. Another day she drove the family car to the middle of the common and left it with the doors and boot open. Home hours later, she told them there was a car-boot sale but couldn’t say where. They found the car two weeks later with half a bird’s nest in the back seat. The magpie was very annoyed.
Joy took her to a GP, then a specialist, who advised on how to rearrange their lives better.
50. Joy finished work early and went home to a special birthday dinner. Daisy pulled the popper strings and cheered Joy’s half century.
At the dining table her mother uttered, wistful, “Ohhh-yang, what a beautiful lad.” Joy thought she was talking about the electrician who’d fixed the porch light the week before. But his name had been An-Kwang. Daisy was sure.
“Oohhh-yang. A good-looking lad. Fit. So fit. Gorgeous.” Her mother repeated the assertions several times a week, then with increasing frequency until he was almost a constant part of the home, like someone they knew and might appear at any moment.
Who was this person? Joy finally asked when her mother seemed clear enough and ready one day.
“Why, your father.”
Father.
Her father’s name was Ou-yang, anglicised to the name Owen that her mother used for life after her own family disowned her.
“What was your surname?”
Her mother did not remember. She had long ago stopped caring to.
52. Joy searched for him, for her mother, before she lost him forever. This was an even harder search. Who cared to keep records of those thrown out?
But an opportunity emerged. Joy was invited to a Beijing medical conference. Daisy joined and was the most excited. She listened, rapt, to her mother’s lectures, proud of her on stage. Even better, Daisy had dreamed of seeing pandas ever since school classes on endangered species.
They found nothing on Joy’s father and went home.
Her mother was not surprised. Joy sighed, lying down on the sofa, relenting to jet-lag and disappointment. Another search extinguished. Her mother stroked her hair; she never wanted any pain for her, just simple joy.
“Tell me, Mama.”
Joy’s father had been in a strike for fair wages, for all races, asking to be paid more than just a third of the Englishman’s salary. This made him a troublemaker, more than he had been already.
55. Joy was made Head of Department as well as visiting professor at a New York university. She took time to adjust.
56. Derrick moved out again without offering coherent reasons. Joy lit a bonfire with all his things. It was early November, after all. Daisy was distraught, though tried to hide it. Joy took her for a bicycle ride around the park to cheer her up. Daisy sped ahead then stopped next to a pond, gazing down. When Joy reached her she saw that Daisy was watching the fish swim. The fish were patterned with orange and black splotches like they’d been splattered with paint. They swayed in gentle curves around each other, their tails wavering. “Where do they swim to?”
“Nowhere, darling.”
“Not anywhere else, ever?”
“No, only in circles around their pond.”
“Forever? Aren’t they bored?”
“It’s their home.”
“So, they never leave their home. Their families.”
“No.”
“Those little ones.”
Joy looked where Daisy pointed.
“Their daddies never leave them.”
57. After some months Derrick emailed from somewhere in Scandinavia. He flew home. No more questions were asked. They married in Marilyn’s back garden.
60. Daisy gained acceptance to medical school – everyone was jubilant, beyond proud. Joy bought her a pair of stethoscopes, her first ones. Her husband cried. Daisy hugged him. “Daddy don’t ugly cry,” she said, laughing.
62. Joy thought of her father.
63. And her son. Did he have sons himself?
66. Daisy returned from university fizzing with excitement about new websites, ways to poke and thumbs up with 2D fingers, and type words on online walls. They should be quick, Daisy said, Grandma’s running out of time – she’s almost 86. They should find him, Ou-yang, before it was too late. Before time was all gone.
67. They wrote a message, made a video just thirty seconds long and posted it online with a few keywords: lost, family, wartime. People are nosy beings. Terrific thing! Within days the video had been shared a thousand times, racked up 100,000 views within the month. They went viral. A public health issue Joy never imagined she’d enjoy having.
In China again, Joy and her family were invited on television. Joy learned Chinese and tried some words out for the cameras. The audience clapped and she grinned, thrilled at this achievement. The presenter spoke almost perfect English and Joy relaxed, feeling like she was home. They returned to England and waited.
68. Daisy became pregnant, half unexpected. Joy told her – don’t rush – she had time and choices. Daisy gave birth to a boy. They taught him first words – Ah-Po and Ah-Gong – Chinese words for Grandma and Grandpa.
69. The television studio emailed – they had found someone. He had answered all the questions right, revealing facts nobody else could know.
They bought a plane ticket. Business class.
Joy’s mother insisted on going to the airport. She was ready before all of them, dressed in a blue and yellow tea dress with butterfly sleeves, a pink peony from the garden pinned in her hair, her lips daubed in red, her cheeks dusted with a rose blush. Her best pearl necklace rested on her collar and the ring he had given her on her finger again.
As soon as the crowd from the flight appeared in arrivals, her mother swooped up her arms like she was cheering an England goal at the world cup. She waved with such purpose, her eyes fixed steady, certain, on someone. But they had no idea who she was beckoning at.
The crowd meandered closer, dispersing at the edges. Before Joy could stop her, her mother bent down under the steel barrier and ran towards him, the hems of her tea dress flapping. They stared, incredulous. How was she so nimble? He was unsteady on his feet, leaning on the handles, shoving along a trolley piled high with navy-blue suitcases.
Joy’s mother threw her arms around him, they clung to one another, laughing and crying. When Joy walked to them, he turned to her and cupped his hands gently around her cheeks. A few strands of thin, grey hair were brushed over his head. His face was dotted with brown and beige sunspots like a scattering of beans. The lines on his cheeks deepened, lengthening when he laughed.
“My Ou-yang, as handsome as I first saw him,” her mother said over and over on the car ride back home, not letting go of his hands.
They spent many happy months together. Reinvigorated, Joy’s mother talked non-stop of wedding plans. Were they ever married before? No one knew. Records unkempt, again. Joy’s husband warned of the legal implications. Joy shushed him and his cynicisms. “What if he’s some old con?”
They made him spit in a tube; the results proved they’d wasted a hundred quid. They hired a lawyer for his new visa. Things took bonkers time, logged every six minutes. Why six? Better be good luck.
70. Joy drove everyone to Brighton beach. They collected pretty pebbles and shells that rested, sleeping on the sand after long journeys across oceans. Her mother and father skipped and wobbled to the shore holding hands.
They planned a wedding with friends from her mother’s sewing and book clubs. Organisation took longer than Joy’s own wedding had. They sent out announcements (not invites) to the family who were still alive and flabbergasted.
Joy was her mother’s maid of honour. Daisy carried her son, the ringbearer, and a basket of daisies. Felix drove down with his family. Taiping watched from her carrier. Joy thought about her son. He would be married to someone lovely. Maybe she had more grandchildren. What did he think of her? A shiver shot down her spine. Did he ever?
71. Joy’s father taught her more Chinese and how to make dumplings. Hers turned out like lumpy old pillows. She listened to language tapes at work. She had not retired yet and never wanted to.
Derrick moved out.
But there was a knock on Christmas eve. He had a guilty yet accomplished look in his eyes. Derrick said he’d uncovered new leads online, called and sent emails. Joy pushed away anger. She wanted to know before her own time ran out. And things were getting close, even though every year her expectations kept lengthening.
The letter-flap creaked. Christmas cards from friends and neighbours. One had nothing written on it except for a telephone number and address. Nearby. A familiar shiver careened through her and a cold sweat covered her back as she slid the card away into a bedside drawer.
72. Joy flipped through the patient’s chart. He might be one of her last. She was getting more tired these days after fewer hours.
“What’s that you see there, doctor?”
She could see he had little time left. The illness had reached his core.
“Tell me honestly.”
“I can’t say for certain, Mr…”
“What would you do, if you knew all along, of what was left?”
What if? What if you could see a life in a few pages of text. What then.
73. On her way home from hospital, she glimpsed a man loitering at the end of her street. She halted, pulse thumping her neck, feet industrial-glued to the pavement. The man turned as if looking her way, but was gone in seconds.
Joy’s father died in 2012, aged 93. He rested beneath a headstone, words carved in stone: Beloved Father, Husband, Ah-Gong, and Great Ah-Gong. Great seaman.
Joy’s mother died months later. She was buried next to her Ou-yang.
74. Joy visited a doctor, a woman who’d been her student. Joy mentioned fatigue, pains. They ran tests, found nothing.
But something told her.
Act.
Now.
It is time.
75. The dawn sun jolted Joy awake. She shot upright. This was the day. She’d been preparing for it. She found the card from her bedside and went alone. Her heart crashed in her chest, there was a ringing in her inner ear. She didn’t stop. She put her knuckles on the wood, so soft, did anyone hear? Someone did. Someone she recognised immediately, even through the haze of her tears.
A complete, full-grown man. Their mannerisms so similar. Their smiles were mirrors. “Who’s there?”
One by one, three children appeared behind him. They were a foot taller than her. For most of his life, her son had no idea. His adoptive mother explained with her last breaths. Joy was sad to have never met her, to have not thanked her. Her son’s father was alive. She thanked him.
76. Joy’s son called every evening, visited every weekend. He lived so near. They must have passed each other, they’d frequented the same restaurants and shops. They had the same favourite brand of chilli sauce. In the following years, they did everything they’d done already again, together.
77. She visited her parents, burned things to send to heaven. Flustered cemetery attendants told her to stop, so she went with paper items already burnt to ashes, scattered them, explaining what they’d been; usually money, but also other essentials like a microwave and the latest mobile phone models.
78. Joy’s colleagues comforted her. Her parents had both been exceptional, living way longer than the life expectancy of their birth year. Science increased time like something divine. Everyone had more time now. Joy worked on – new virtual consultations. She worked hard to give people the priceless, to increase their existences.
79. 1 August, 2018 Dear Dr Joy Ou-yang Owen,
You came regarding persistent pain in your lower abdominal area. As
discussed, I shall refer you for further testing at…
80. Lots of treatment, yet minimal improvement. Joy worked part-time, still teaching, still caring, still giving time.
Could someone magic more time for her?
81. She was most sorry to her son. Sorry for her years of fear. He’d had the least from her. She wondered if he’d really forgiven her; didn’t he blame her for all that was gone? “Mama,” he said. “Everything is good, turned out for the best.”
She could not work anymore and at last relented to retirement. With everyone locked down, Joy managed a complete family, the happiest bubble.
82. The doctor said she had months. The second doctor said, maybe a year and a half at most. The third, fourth and fifth opinions stated weeks. She did not seek a sixth. 83. Joy flipped through her own records – her history that had fleeted past.
84. She wished hard, wondering, how to endure, to go on. Like everybody else, despite wearing a watch, always keeping count, always knowing, she still wanted more. More words, more sentences, more stories.
“Should I have?”
“Everyone gets here their own way,” her nurse said.
She looked into her eyes, smiling, positive.
85. Joy’s children hold her hands. Her grandchildren and husband are there too, a miracle. Love surrounds her.
She does not fear her closing eyes.
She remembers how she has strived, fought to become everything she ever dreamed of: good daughter, mother, wife, teacher, and doctor who added joy-filled time to countless.