They shuffled past Phoebe as the lift neared the ground floor, their shoulders and arms jostling her. She watched the numbers light up on the counter, and as she did so she felt as though her life was also descending: 4, 3, 2, 1. Soon it would be zero. As the lift doors opened she saw that it was tiny and filled with cigarette smoke, so she decided to take the stairs instead. She only had a small bag with her – she had learnt to travel light. Even so, she was soon out of breath because the stairs were steep and the windows that lined the stairwell were open and let in the dust and pollution from outside. There were pipes everywhere, and some of them were leaky. Where they dripped onto the floor there were crusted brown patches that looked like mushrooms sprouting from the concrete.
As she climbed the stairs she could see a giant construction site taking shape right next to the apartment block. Huge steel columns jutted out from the hole being dug for the foundations. Beyond it was a shopping centre, painted in coral pink and blue. In the daytime its neon signboard looked like scaffolding, and it was hard to read what it said: Shanghai Liteful Fashion Shopping Market. The signboards that covered its entire length advertised cheap clothing brands that Phoebe had never heard of, the colours gold and bright green and yellow. Nothing matched. The streets below were dark with a mass of people waiting for buses or emerging from the shopping centre – it must have been a wholesale market where you could buy anything from skirts to electronic goods to dried food very cheaply. Even from where she was she could hear the thumping of music and the cries of advertisements from loudspeakers. She paused and looked at the scene – at the thick, wriggling river of bodies so dense and colourless that it was hard to make out each individual human being. She could be anywhere in China, she thought. In fact, she could be in any no-value town in Asia. She had known so many of them, and they all looked like this.
But maybe the apartment would be nice. Maybe her view would not be of this no-place city she was now staring at; maybe she would look out at the river instead, and wake up every day to views of Shanghai.
She reached the top floor. The corridor was long, and stretched into the gloom – she could not see the end of it. There were dozens of doors, each one a separate apartment. She walked down the corridor, counting down the numbers until she found the right one.
Why are you always so doubtful? Phoebe Chen Aiping, do not allow yourself to be dragged down by your childish fears.
The door was protected by a metal grille, just like all the others. Phoebe reached between the bars and knocked on it, but there was no answer. She knocked again and waited. Perhaps Yanyan had unexpectedly been called out to an important meeting, even though she had said it was her day off. It was often like this with busy people who had important jobs; they had to respond to unpredictable events at short notice and be flexible – they were successful because they were able to deal with stressful situations using their skill and talent. The door opposite opened and an old woman peered out, glaring at Phoebe and surveying her from head to foot. Phoebe wondered how she appeared to the old woman, whether she looked acceptable, a decent upstanding person paying a visit to a friend, or whether she looked like someone with shady intentions, a potential criminal. She reached into her handbag for her phone and rang Yanyan’s number. She heard a ringing on the other side of the door, and a few moments later she heard the locks being undone from the inside, three of them, heavily bolted.
‘Why didn’t you call out and say who you were?’ Yanyan mumbled as she opened the door. ‘I thought you were the man coming for the gas bill again.’ She seemed sleepy, her hair was a mess, as if she had just woken up, and she was dressed in pyjamas even though it was nearly midday. She let Phoebe in and went to sit on her bed. Phoebe thought, maybe she was very tired from working hard at her important job. Yanyan was wearing fluffy slippers in the shape of smiling puppies, and her pyjamas were printed with sunny flower-faces that grinned at Phoebe. There was only one single bed in the room, and a small chair piled with clothes.
‘I’m so tired,’ Yanyan said, kicking off her slippers and leaning back against the wall with her knees drawn in to her body. It was true, she looked very haggard.
‘You must be working very hard,’ Phoebe said. She did not know what to do, whether to sit on the bed or not, so she just stood in the middle of the tiny room. Looking around, she saw a cooker on one side of the door and a washroom cubicle on the other, so small that she was not sure there was enough space to stand and have a shower between the toilet and the wall. There was almost nothing in the main room apart from a small TV balanced on some shelves that held cooking utensils and a jar of pumpkin seeds. On the wall hung one of those calendars that fast-food chains give away free of charge at the end of the year if you are lucky and are there at the right time. The pages were open at June, four months ago.
Yanyan shook her head and laughed. ‘I got fired. That’s why I need someone to share the rent.’
Phoebe looked out of the window and saw the same view she had seen from the stairs, the deep hole of the construction site, the broad avenue cut by concrete bridges, the multicoloured Liteful shopping centre, the masses of people dragging heavy black bags full of cheap goods – a nowhere, could-be-anywhere place.
‘I know the room’s a bit small,’ Yanyan said, ‘but we can shift that chair and the TV and roll out the mattress.’ She reached underneath the bed and attempted to drag something out. Phoebe could see that it was a thin mattress rolled up and stuffed under the low bed.
‘It’s OK,’ Phoebe said. ‘We don’t have to do it now.’ She calculated that with the mattress rolled out, there would be about a handbag’s width between it and the bed. She wondered how long ago Yanyan had lost her job, how long she had spent her days waking up at midday, how long she had let her hair get greasy and go unwashed, but it did not seem the right time to ask such questions.
Imagine your new splendid life and it will soon come true!
Phoebe thought, it would be so easy to walk out of this tiny room. She could make up an excuse and say, I’m late for an appointment, but thank you for showing me the room, I’ll call you later once I’ve decided. But she remained standing in the middle of the room, still clutching her bag. She did not know where else to go.
‘Hey, are you hungry? It must be lunchtime now,’ Yanyan said, looking around at the walls as if hoping to find a clock, but there wasn’t one.
Phoebe shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, please don’t go to any trouble. I’ve just arrived, I don’t want to inconvenience you.’
‘I’m starving – let’s have a simple lunch!’ Yanyan insisted, and went to the cooking area. Phoebe wondered what kind of meal she would prepare. Just thinking about lunch made her realise she had not had breakfast, and suddenly she felt so hungry her stomach began to swell with an ache she had never experienced before. As she listened to the sounds of Yanyan busying herself by the stove – water from the tap drumming against the bottom of an empty kettle, the clang of steel against steel, the click-clack of chopsticks, Yanyan humming a little tune – Phoebe felt tired and in need of rest. She tried to think of the number of times someone had cooked a meal for her since she came to China, the number of times she had sat in someone’s home eating a meal – but not a single instance came to mind. She sat down on the bed and found the mattress thin but firm. The window was open and she could