White Tiger
the border. After an hour of driving we reached the riding club where Mr Chen kept his horse. Leo parked the car. Mr Chen grabbed a small rucksack from the floor of the car and went into the club.
‘Why are we stopping here?’ I asked Leo over the back of the seat.
‘Wait and see,’ Leo said.
Simone giggled.
My mobile rang and I managed to get to it in my bag before it stopped ringing. ‘Emma.’ ‘Hello, Emma, it’s Kitty.’ I sighed. ‘Hi, Miss Kwok.’
‘Kitty, please, Emma.’ Her voice was kind. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages, where have you been? You haven’t been to the last two charity functions I arranged. Have you been sick?’
‘No, no, I was there.’ Just avoiding her.
‘You must come and visit me, Emma. Come up to my house for lunch sometime. I’d love to see you. How about tomorrow?’
‘I’m sorry, Kitty, but I’m in China with Mr Chen, and it looks like we’ll be here for a while.’
Mr Chen returned to the car, but he looked completely different. He appeared to be in his mid-sixties, overweight and balding, and he’d changed out of his usual black clothes into a poorly fitting navy business suit. He opened the rear door. ‘Move over, Simone, I’ll sit in the back.’
Simone giggled and shifted over for him.
‘I have something I need to do, Kitty. Talk to you when I’m back in Hong Kong,’ I said, and hung up. Enough!
Mr Chen climbed clumsily into the car, pulled a ridiculous pair of plastic-rimmed glasses out of his jacket pocket and put them on.
‘You look absolutely adorable,’ I said.
‘He looks stupid ,’ Simone said.
‘Why did you change your appearance?’
‘My travel document says I’m sixty-four years old. Gold was in the process of arranging a new one, but he never made it in time. Who was that on the phone?’
I glared at my mobile. ‘Kitty Kwok. She keeps calling me to talk me into visiting her at her house.’
‘She must really like you.’
I shoved the phone back into my bag. ‘Well, I don’t like her.’
Leo drove out of the club to the border crossing. The car had both Hong Kong and Mainland licence plates; very common for people who often travelled across the border. When we reached the crossing we didn’t even need to get out of the car. The officials checked our exit documents at the first gate, then we drove a couple of hundred metres and the guards at the second gate checked our entry documents.
It was strange to be on the right side of the road after so long driving on the left in Hong Kong.
‘I’m letting my hair go, Leo,’ Mr Chen said. ‘I can’t hold it. Tell me if we approach a checkpoint.’
‘My Lord,’ Leo said.
Mr Chen grew his hair back out to its usual length with a sigh of relief, but nothing else about his appearance changed. His hair covered Simone’s face and she huffed and blew it out of the way.
‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he said and brushed his hair to one side. ‘How about that?’
‘That’s better,’ she said, and grinned.
The road was four lanes wide and planted with flowers on both sides; something not often seen in Hong Kong. After about forty minutes on the highway, Leo pulled off onto a narrower winding road that led into some hills. He slowed the car and carefully negotiated the turns.
We passed through a village of ugly brick and concrete houses. There were no sidewalks, only dirt and mud paths. Piles of rubbish and open drains lined the sides of the road. A few bored-looking young women in brightly coloured pants and jackets stood behind ramshackle stalls selling alcohol and cigarettes. We passed a butcher, huge cleaver in hand, with pieces of pig—lungs and intestines—hanging in the open air from the rails of his stall. A few grubby children emerged from one of the houses and ran beside the car for a while, then gave up.
Further up the hillside, past the village, the potholed bitumen changed to gravel that crunched under the wheels of the car. Leo slowed even more.
Close to the top of the hill we turned off the gravel onto a narrow dirt track that twisted through bamboo groves. Leo slowed the car to a crawl and we inched through the cool greenery.
As we approached the top of the hill the bamboo opened up. We passed through a Chinese-style gate topped with green tiles, adorned with complex calligraphy and flanked by a pair of stone lions. Leodrove slowly through and we came to a high red stone wall with similar green tiles on top. A groove of putty ran along the top of
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