White Tiger

would follow. That’s the way they learn in the park.’
    ‘The best way to learn is the one that works,’ he said. ‘Every student is different. Try again.’
    We performed the moves together again, and this time I had them reasonably right.
    ‘Good,’ he said, warm with quiet approval.
    I couldn’t stop the huge grin that spread over my face. This wasn’t just interesting, it was great fun.
    He continued the moves, each time adding a slightly more complicated manoeuvre.
    When we had done about five different moves in a row, he nodded and stepped back. ‘Do you think you can remember?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Try.’
    I turned to face the mirrors and took a deep breath to relax. I still felt nervous about performing the moves alone. I raised my hands and threw myself into it, much too fast, and did the moves completely wrong.
    He stepped forward and put his hand on my arm to stop me. ‘Wait, slower. Much too fast.’
    I froze. The warmth of his body pressed all the way down my back. He stiffened. But he didn’t move away.
    I looked up into the mirror. He gazed into my eyes.
    His hand rotated around my arm and dropped to my hand, but didn’t let it go. He shifted slightly to look down at me, still pressed into me.
    ‘Slow down, Emma,’ he said softly, his dark eyes glowing. ‘We have all the time in the world.’ His other hand moved to my back and my heart leapt to my throat. I shifted closer to him.
    He dropped his hands and moved away. ‘Try again. More slowly. Don’t hurry it, take your time.’
    I nodded, took a deep breath and turned back to the mirrors.
    I tried again, and had it.
    ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well done. A yin focus for you, to start off with.’
    I turned back so that I could see him. ‘Is that like yin-yang?’
    He nodded. ‘You have been learning. Yin is the moredark and soft, yang is the more bright and hard. That’s two in a row now.’
    ‘Two in a row of what?’
    ‘Leo was also more suited to a yin style at the beginning as well.’
    ‘I can’t see Leo as soft.’
    ‘We are not here to discuss Leo,’ he said, closing the topic. ‘Now we will learn a set of moves, one flowing into another. In Japanese it is called a kata.’
    ‘You know some Japanese martial arts?’
    ‘I know all martial arts,’ he said. ‘I invented most of them.’
    ‘You are extremely scary sometimes.’
    ‘Good,’ he said, perfectly serious. ‘I thought you were doing some research on me.’
    ‘I did,’ I said, ‘but I gave up. It’s all contradictory. The only thing that everybody agrees is that you’re some sort of turtle-snake thing. Are you?’
    I flushed. I hadn’t thought about what I’d said. Calling a Chinese man a ‘turtle’ to his face was incredibly insulting. Would he take it the wrong way?
    He held his hands out from his sides. ‘I am what you see.’
    I saw him. There was so much I wanted to say.
    I grinned. ‘“Ugliest creature in creation”.’
    He seemed shocked for a moment and opened his mouth to say something, then smiled. ‘Jade will find a uniform of a suitable size for you.’
    I felt a thrill of excitement. I would be learning from him.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    ‘ R oundhouse kick,’ Mr Chen said, watching me perform the kicks. ‘Front kick. Side. Good.’ He gestured. ‘Here, now.’
    We stood side by side in front of the mirrors.
    ‘There are twenty-three standard punches, but we’ll do some drills first.’ He rolled his fists over the top of each other for the punches. ‘Kicking out with the knuckles at the end of the punch.’ He stopped and gestured. ‘Try.’
    I rolled the punches and stopped.
    ‘Is there a problem?’
    I shook my head, confused. ‘We just started this. But it feels like I’ve been doing it all my life.’ I performed a three-punch set. ‘It’s like I already knew how to do this.’
    ‘How long have I been teaching you?’
    I worked it out. ‘We started when we came back from London, end of August. It’s late September now. Only about a month.’
    ‘That’s about usual for a student of mine,’ he said. ‘We did the tai chi for three weeks, then we started the harder stuff. So you already know it.’
    He demonstrated, performing a slow punch from the
    tai chi set. ‘It’s the same moves, we are just doing them faster.’
    ‘You’re right. It’s exactly the same moves.’ I performed the punches.
    ‘Slowly to start,’ he said. ‘Don’t attempt to be as fast as me.’
    I shook my head. ‘ Nobody’s