dug in Dr. MacFarlane’s grave than I heard Shin’s voice, deliberately loud to warn me of their approach. Frantically, I shoveled earth back into the hole and stepped away. As Shin and the caretaker’s mother came around the corner, I waved and joined them, tucking the spade back in the bag.
“Seen all you wanted?” asked the old lady.
Shin seized my hand in his. “Yes, we must get going.” We thanked her for her time, and let ourselves out of the churchyard as quickly as possible.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him under my breath, as he set a brisk pace. “Why are you holding my hand?”
In answer, he turned it over. It was streaked with red clay.
“Do you think she noticed?”
“Hope not. There’s some on your knees, too.”
I glanced down. All my excursions lately had ended in dirt and grime. From the cobwebs and dust in the pathology storeroom, to Ren’s bloodstains, and finally this. Earth from someone’s grave.
“Did you bury it?”
“All done,” I said softly.
Glowering clouds had hidden the sunset and gave the sky a hazy, bluish quality. A trembling dusk descended. I could taste the humidity in the back of my throat with every breath that I took.
“What time is it?” Absorbed as we’d been in the old lady’s tale, I’d forgotten to check the clock at the church.
Shin glanced at his wristwatch. “Twenty to eight.”
The late train to Ipoh left at eight o’clock, and we were still a mile away from the station. I glanced around anxiously, but the street was deserted with not a trishaw in sight.
Shin looked at the sky. “I think it’s going to—”
The heavens opened and the first fat raindrops splattered, like flattened tadpoles, on the dusty road.
“Run!”
* * *
I never could understand those English books in which people go on long damp walks over the heath (whatever that was) in the rain with only a deerstalker hat and an Inverness cape to protect them. Rain in the tropics is like a bathtub upended in the sky. The rain falls so hard and fast that in a few minutes you’re soaked to the skin. There’s no time to think, only the overwhelming need to run under shelter. And run we did.
The nearest cover was a distant stand of shophouses, and we raced to the covered five-foot walkway in front, gasping. Water poured in hissing sheets from the eaves, turning the dirt road into mud.
“What shall we do?” I said, after we’d waited a good five minutes. There was little chance of this downpour stopping, and meanwhile, the minutes were ticking off towards eight o’clock. How would we catch the train?
“We can run for it,” said Shin.
And so began our mad dash, zigzagging from one shelter to another like beetles scurrying out from under a flowerpot. There were intermittent blocks of shops and large rain trees, but it was no use. I knew it even as I fought down the panicky feeling of being late. That train would leave without us. My shoes were slick with water and twice I almost turned my ankle.
“You all right?” asked Shin.
I put my hand on the trunk of a tree to steady myself. “Yes,” I said, gritting my teeth. I’d never complained about things like this before and I wasn’t going to start now. If being a good sport was the best way for us to be together, then I’d keep playing along.
Shin kept his eyes firmly fixed on my forehead. “Just a little farther,” he said. “Over there.”
We still weren’t anywhere near the train station, and when I glanced at his wristwatch, the hands pointed at five to eight. It was impossible.
“Do you still have the ring I gave you the other day?”
I stared at him, wondering why he was suddenly bothered about it. I should have returned it to him earlier, and embarrassed, I unwrapped the handkerchief.
“Put it on,” he said.
“Why?”
He looked exasperated. “Just put it on and follow me.”
A few doors down, Shin stopped and glanced up at a signboard. Then he went in. It was a small hotel. I’d never stayed in a hotel before. When my mother and I had visited Taiping long ago, we’d stayed with one of her aunts, a fierce-looking woman who seemed to have inherited all the backbone that my mother lacked. I wondered if she still lived in this town and what she’d think if she saw me going into a hotel with a man. Even if he was my stepbrother.