From the Agreement of Temporary Cooperation, Clause 8: "In the event that the arrangement is to be ended, whether during or after the Finale, the Parties shall agree upon a script in advance, and neither shall make a scene."

Wenxi tried to apologise to Tang Rui four times in one week, and each time the word later got there first.

The first time she carried a basket of sesame buns to the door of the tea house, and Tang Rui took one out with two fingers, as if it might be warm in a way she did not approve of, and shut the door. The second time she painted a card, two doves and a branch of plum, and sent it across by Zhaoyu, who came back with a slip of paper on which was written, in a small slanting hand, Received. The third time she waited at the foot of Liu Bridge for forty minutes, in plain view, with her hands empty, and Tang Rui came down the far steps, saw her, and walked with great composure along the other bank, past the heron post and the third flowerpot and out of sight, like a woman crossing a river by a different ford.

On the fourth day Wenxi decided that buns were the problem.

She had been bringing sugar to a woman who had not asked for it. She had been trying to sweeten a thing that was not sour but hurt, and no one in the history of the river country had ever been talked out of hurting by a pastry. So at three o'clock on a grey afternoon, when the lunch rush had drained out of the tea house like water from a basin, she put on a plain cotton blouse, washed her face, left her basket on the kitchen table at Su Ji, and walked down the bluestone with nothing in her hands at all.

The tea house was nearly empty. A retired postman was asleep over his newspaper in the corner. A fly walked up the window. Behind the long counter, among the brass kettles and the rows of unglazed cups, Tang Rui stood with her back to the room, polishing a teapot with a cloth.

She did not turn. But Wenxi saw her shoulders stop moving for the length of one breath, and begin again.

"I haven't brought anything," said Wenxi.

The cloth went round the teapot.

"I want you to know that I did that on purpose. I'm not here to give you a bun. I'm not going to say it was a small thing, or that I was in a state, or that you'd have done the same." She drew breath. "I lied to your face. You asked me a plain question and I gave you a smooth answer. I have never done that to you in my life, and I did it because I was frightened, and you deserved better than my being frightened. I'm sorry. That's all of it."

The teapot was set down on the shelf. It was set down very precisely, the spout turned a quarter inch to the left, as though its position were a matter of state.

Tang Rui turned round.

She had her fringe pushed back and a smudge of flour on her cheekbone, and there were faint violet shadows under her eyes, the kind that come from several nights of lying awake being right. She looked at Wenxi for a long while. It was not an angry look. It was the look of someone checking a coin to see whether it had been clipped.

"Is that the whole speech?" she said.

"I had a longer one."

"Did it have doves in it?"

"It had a lot of doves."

The corner of Tang Rui's mouth twitched, and was brought under control. She wiped her hands on the cloth. Then she bent, vanished behind the counter, and came up again with a twenty-kilo sack of flour in both arms, which she dropped on the wood between them with a thump that made the postman stir.

"The cook still has his cold," she said. "I have sixty rolls to make for the committee dinner tomorrow, and a hot kitchen, and no pair of hands I trust. You can apologise with those."

"Tang Rui, "

"Wash up," said Tang Rui. "The sink's at the back."

The kitchen of the tea house lay down three worn stone steps behind the counter, a long low room with a flagged floor and a window over the canal. It was hot and damp and smelled of tea leaves and steam. A scrubbed table ran down the middle, scarred with a century of knives. Copper pans hung from hooks. On a shelf above the stove stood a row of brown jars with labels in a faded hand, and a small shrine of red paper, and a calendar from a fertiliser company with the wrong month showing.

Wenxi had spent half her childhood in this room. She had sat on that very table, swinging her heels, while Tang Rui's mother shouted at the cook. She had learned to shell peas here. She had been taught, at the age of eleven, by a girl five years older who knew everything, how to tell a ripe melon by thumping it. It had not occurred to her until she came down the steps that afternoon how much of her was kept in this room.

She washed her hands. She rolled her sleeves. Tang Rui tipped half the flour into a great wooden trough, added water and a pinch of yeast and a spoon of sugar from a jar, and pushed the mixture toward her without a word.

They kneaded.

It was a silence of the hardest sort, the kind that is full of things not said. The dough was heavy and sticky and clung to the fingers. They stood on either side of the trough, shoulder to shoulder, and worked it with the heels of their hands, push, fold, turn. Tang Rui did it fast and hard, with a crack of the wrist at the end of every stroke. Wenxi matched her. She put her whole back into it. She slapped the mass down on the table, and pulled it up, and slapped it down, until her shoulders burned and a wet strand of hair stuck to her cheek, and the steam from the stove closed round the two of them like a hand.

They kept it up for a quarter of an hour.

"Stop," said Tang Rui.

Wenxi stopped.

"You're hitting it."

"I'm kneading it."

"You are hitting it," said Tang Rui, "and it's going to remember." She laid her own hands flat on the dough and kept them there, quite still. "I was twelve. I'd quarrelled with my mother. I came running into Su Ji with my face all red, and your grandmother took one look at me and put me at her table and gave me a lump of dough and said nothing. And I made it into a pancake." She smiled at the trough, not happily. "I beat it for an hour. I said every word I knew. And she stood at the stove with her back to me, stirring something, and when I'd finished she said, a dough that's hit will not rise for you. It will only remember."

"She said that to me last week."

"She says it to everyone. She thinks it's a recipe." Tang Rui lifted her hands. "It's not a recipe. It's the only piece of advice she's ever given."

She folded the dough over on itself in a smooth round ball, and tipped it into a bowl, and drew a damp cloth over the top. Then she dusted her palms together and looked at the clock above the door.

"Forty minutes," she said. "Then we shape."

"What do we do now?"

"We wait," said Tang Rui. "That's the part you're bad at."

* * *

They sat on the three stone steps with the door open to the canal.

It had begun, very faintly, to drizzle. The water outside was the colour of pewter, pocked all over with tiny rings, and the sound of it on the leaves of the plane tree was like a lot of people whispering behind their hands. Tang Rui had poured two cups of barley tea from the big pot and given one to Wenxi without comment. They held them in both hands. Neither of them drank.

"I'm going to tell you the true thing," said Wenxi.

"You don't have to."

"I do. I owe it." She looked at the ripples. "It was real. The kiss. It wasn't for the performance, and it wasn't for the scoring, and it wasn't because three thousand people were shouting. I lied because the true answer was so big I didn't know where to put it." She turned the cup. "I think I've loved him since I was seven years old. I don't think I knew what the word was. I think I only knew that when he wasn't there the day had a hole in it."

Tang Rui said nothing.

"There's more. I can't tell you the rest, because I gave my word on something, and it isn't only mine to take back. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I hate it. But I can tell you that part. I can tell you that I'm not pretending about that."

"I know," said Tang Rui.

"You know?"

"I stood on the quay, Xi. I'm not blind. I saw your hands." She was looking at the rain. Her voice was dry and quiet. "I didn't need you to tell me. I'd seen it, in the market, on the bridge, in a hundred stupid little moments that you two thought nobody noticed. I read your entry form the day it came in. Childhood neighbours. Lost touch. Found again. Do you know, it was the truest line in the whole pile? Nineteen couples had written pages of nonsense about soulmates and destiny. And there was yours, in your round silly uphill writing, and I thought, there's a person who is telling the truth and lying about everything else."

"Tang Rui, "

"I'm not asking about the rest. I decided that on the first day. Whatever you've promised, you've promised, and I'd think less of you if you broke it for me." She drew a breath. "I asked you on the doorstep because I wanted to hear which one you'd choose. The true thing or the clever thing. And you chose the clever thing. And that's what frightened me. Because you've never lied to me. Not about the sugar bowl, not about the boy at the fair, not about anything. So I thought, what in the world could be so bad that she'd do it?"

"I was scared."

"Of what?"

"Of how much," said Wenxi.

She heard it come out of her in a voice she did not recognise, small and flat and entirely without polish. The cup trembled in her hands. Tang Rui looked at her for the first time since they had sat down.

"I've been so afraid," Wenxi said, "for eight years, that if anyone looked underneath, there'd be nothing. And then he looked, and there was something, and it was so large I thought it would break me. I thought if I said it aloud it would be too late to put it back."

Tang Rui's face began to change.

It happened very slowly. The sharp little chin trembled once. The eyes, bright and shrewd and quick, grew suddenly wet. She put down her cup on the stone step, carefully, and pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth, and a great shuddering breath went through her.

"Oh, no," said Wenxi. "Oh, Tang Rui, don't, I didn't, "

"I'm not crying about that."

"You're crying."

"I'm crying," said Tang Rui furiously, through her fingers, "about the platform."

Wenxi sat very still.

"I held your hand," said Tang Rui. "I walked you to the jetty at half past five in the morning, with two cups of tea, and I held your hand. And I didn't say a word, because I could see you were holding something so heavy you'd drop it if anyone spoke. And you got on the boat, and you went. And I thought, she'll write. She'll write on Sunday." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and made it worse. "You sent a card at New Year. One card. Eight years, Xi. I used to go down to the jetty and make green tea in the little pot, the one you liked, in case you came on the evening boat. I did it for two years. I stopped. And then a year ago I started again, I don't know why, and I kept it up, and I told myself I was being foolish."

"I didn't know."

"I never told you."

"You sent me one text," whispered Wenxi. "At the station. I made a noise in the toilet of the carriage. I cried for ten minutes."

"You never said."

"I know. I don't say. It's the thing I'm worst at."

"It is," said Tang Rui, damply, and then, suddenly, she laughed. It came out as a hiccup, cracked down the middle. "You are the worst. You are the very worst person in the county. I have been in a sulk for a week because you told me a small lie about a kiss, and the real thing I've been furious about is a train, and the train was eight years ago."

"I'll make it up to you."

"You can't."

"I'll try."

"You'll try," said Tang Rui, and flung her arms round Wenxi's neck so hard that the cup went over and rolled down the steps and into the canal.

They held on to each other, there on the stone, in the soft rain, smelling of yeast and steam and barley tea. Wenxi felt Tang Rui's shoulders shake. She felt her own face go wet. For a long moment neither of them said anything at all, and it was the oldest kind of silence, the kind that two girls make on a pair of tall stools, with their feet hooked round the rungs.

"I knew by the third day, you know," said Tang Rui into her shoulder. "That it wasn't ordinary. Whatever it was. That it was going to be the death of one of you or the saving of both."

"That was quick."

"I'm very clever," said Tang Rui. "It's a curse."

* * *

The back door banged.

"Hinge," said a voice. "Sorry. The hinge. You said the kitchen door, Tang Rui, I've got the, "

Zhaoyu stood at the top of the steps with a battered wooden toolbox in one hand and a coil of copper wire over his shoulder. His hair was on end. He had a pencil behind each ear. He had evidently come at speed, and had arrived in the middle of something that was not at all what he had been told, because as he looked down the steps and saw Tang Rui, with her face wet and her arms round Wenxi's neck and her fringe in a state of ruin, his entire body stopped, and the toolbox slid out of his hand.

It landed on his foot.

"Ow," said Zhaoyu, in a tiny voice.

He hopped. He seized the doorframe. He said, "Ow," again, rather louder, and then he said, "No. Not at all. Fine. It's fine. I'm fine. You're crying," and the last word came out as a kind of squeak.

"I'm not," said Tang Rui, sitting up and wiping her face with both hands.

"You are. Your eyes are, there's water. I'll get something." He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which was an oily rag. He looked at it with horror. He stuffed it back. He plunged into the other pocket and brought out a sheet of paper, folded in eight, and held it out like a sword. "I've got a printout. It's a sort of a, it's a summary. It might cheer you up. It's got a chart. It's not about you. It's definitely not about you. Tab six is not about you."

"Tab six," said Tang Rui.

"I didn't say tab six."

"You said it twice."

"I meant tab five."

"What's on tab six, Zhaoyu?"

He opened his mouth. He shut it. The colour began at his collar and rose in a slow unstoppable tide to the roots of his hair. His eyes went to Wenxi, who was looking at the sky with an expression of the most scrupulous innocence, and back to Tang Rui, who was looking at him with her chin on her fist and her face shining and wet.

"The hinge," said Zhaoyu. "I'll do the hinge."

He did the hinge.

He did it in about ninety seconds, with his back to the room and his ears scarlet, tapping out the old pin and slipping in a new one and oiling it from a little can, humming under his breath something that was either a tune or a prayer. He closed the door. He opened it. It swung without a sound. He stood there with a screwdriver in his fist, looking at it as if it had said something deeply moving.

"Done," said Zhaoyu.

"Thank you," said Tang Rui, gravely.

"No trouble." He looked at the floor. "If you want to cry, I'm, I'd be, there's a lot of space out there. Outside. In the yard. Not that you need it. I mean, I'll be in the yard."

He went out. They heard him cross the cobbles, and stop, and begin to walk back, and stop again. There was a very long pause. Then the sound of retreating feet, rather faster, and a distant cry of "Ow!" as a man walked into the rain barrel.

Tang Rui put her face in her knees and shook.

"Don't," said Wenxi.

"I can't."

"He'll hear."

"He's a good boy," said Tang Rui, in a muffled voice. "He's a very good boy. He's twenty-four years old and he's afraid of a lady with a clipboard." She lifted her head. Her eyes were swimming, and she looked ten years younger. "He left his toolbox."

They both looked at it. It lay on the top step with its lid half open, a clutter of chisels and nails and, tucked in among them with the unmistakable air of a thing hidden in haste, a small brown notebook with a rubber band round it.

"He'll be back for that," said Wenxi.

"He will."

"Within the hour."

"I'll be making rolls," said Tang Rui, and she picked up the cloth, and her face was doing a number of things that her mouth was trying very hard not to confirm. "Come on. The dough's ready."

It had doubled.

Wenxi lifted the damp cloth, and there it was, round and white and gently breathing, risen up to the rim of the bowl with a faint sweet smell of beer and warm grain. She put her hand on it. It was soft and alive and resilient, a tiny sleeping animal. She had left it alone for the best part of an hour, and it had done exactly what it was supposed to do.

She looked up at the clock over the door. She had not looked at it once.

It was a small thing. She was standing in a hot kitchen in the rain with her sleeves rolled and a smear of flour up one arm, and a woman she loved was shaping rolls next to her, quick and neat, with a smile she was pretending not to have. There was no deadline, no clause, no ledger, no festival to feed. For an hour she had sat on a stone step, and listened, and been listened to, and done nothing at all, and the sky had not fallen.

It was so loud in my head, she thought. All the time. And it isn't now.

"What's that face?" said Tang Rui.

"I'm slowing down."

"Are you?"

"I think so." She smiled, and it was the crooked one, the one she did not know she was wearing. "It's very strange."

"It's called being happy," said Tang Rui. "Hold the tray."

Zhaoyu came back at ten to five, for the toolbox, with a plausible excuse about a spanner. Tang Rui handed it to him at the door without a word, but with her fringe tucked behind her ear. He took it. He stood there. He said that the weather was clearing, and she said that it was, and he said that the rolls smelled wonderful, and she said that he could have one. He ate it standing in the doorway, holding it in both hands, as though it were something that might be taken away.

Wenxi went home through the wet evening with a bag of warm rolls and a lighter heart than she had carried since June.

It did not last. She had known it would not. It broke, as most things did, on the doorstep, at the moment when she took out her phone to check the time.

There were two messages. Both were from Bai Ning.

The first had come at noon. It was a photograph, a screenshot, of the front page of the Yunxi Evening News, with its eleven-inch picture of a man in a wet white shirt and a woman in his arms. Bai Ning had circled the woman in red.

The second had come at four.

I saw you in the paper, it said. My mother sent it. She said, isn't that your flatmate. I said yes. I stared at it for ten minutes. You look so happy, Wenxi. I haven't seen you look like that in the seven years I've known you.

Wenxi stood on the step with the bag of rolls against her ribs.

The next message arrived while she was reading.

Are you okay? Properly? Don't say fine. I know fine. I helped you pack the box.

She stood there a long time. A cat watched her from the windowsill. The rain had thinned to a mist, and the light on the alley wall was going from grey to gold, and somewhere across the courtyard, behind a green door, a man was sawing a board in slow even strokes, and the sound of it came to her, warm and steady, through the damp.

She began to type.

I am, she wrote. And stopped. She looked at it. She deleted it, one letter at a time.

I think I might be. She looked at that, too. It was true, and it frightened her more than the lie. She deleted it.

She wrote, Can I ring you tomorrow? and sent it before she could change her mind. Then she put the phone in her pocket, face down, on top of the folded strip of red paper, and went in to put the rolls on the table, with her hands, she noticed, not quite steady, and her face turned toward the wall where the saw went on.