road. That squat grey building is Senso-ji Hospital.’
‘I thought it was a prison. Are you only having green tea?’
‘Green tea is all that my meal plan allows until lunch.’
‘Oh – I forget again. Sorry.’
‘No need to be. Diabetes is a medical condition, not a sin.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Relax, relax; I know. Eat.’
A mighty river of drones flows below the window – civil servants rushing to get to their desks before their section chief is at his. ‘Once upon a time,’ says Ai, ‘people use to build Tokyo. But that changed somewhere down the line, and now Tokyo builds people.’
I let a squirt of shake dissolve on my tongue. ‘Back to your father: he said if you ignore him and go to Paris, you are never welcome in Niigata.’
‘So I said he can have it his way.’
‘So you won’t go to Paris?’
‘I am going to Paris. But I am never going back to Niigata.’
‘Does your father mean what he said?’
‘That was a thermonuclear threat aimed at my mother, not me. “If you want to be looked after by your own daughter in your old age, you make her stay.” In fact, he left shortly after to go and play pachinko. My mother broke down in gales of tears, just as he knew she would. I am thinking: what century is this? You know, there are mountain villages in Niigata that import Filipina wives wholesale in groups of twenty, because as soon as the local girls come of age they are on board the fastest shinkansen out of there. The men wonder why.’
‘So you won. You can go to Paris.’
‘In disgrace, but I am going.’
I light a JPS. ‘You are so tough, Ai.’ She shakes her head. ‘The gap between how other people see you and how you see yourself is . . . a mystery, for me. I think you are tough. I think I am as tough as your shake – which is nine parts pig lard, incidentally. I desperately want my parents to be proud of me. Real strength is not needing the approval of other people all the time.’ On a Roman balcony one slanting evening a girl puts sunflowers in a terracotta jar. She sees the cameraman, scowls, pouts, flicks her hair and vanishes. Ai dangles her teabag in and out of the hot water. ‘I honestly think they would have been happier if I had done a two year course in applying cosmetics at a women’s college, married the family dentist and spawned a hive of babies. Music. You eat it, but it eats you too.’ I swallow hashbrown-and-fries cud. ‘Still. Compared to the Miyakes, your family are the Von Tripps in The Sound of Music.’ Ai spins her teabag. ‘Von Trapps.’
A five-year-old comes up to our table from nowhere and looks at Ai. ‘Where do babies come from before they get into their mummies’ tummies?’
‘Storks bring them,’ says Ai.
The kid looks dubious. ‘Where do the storks get them, then?’
‘Paris,’ I tell her and get a smile out of Ai. The girl’s father appears at the top of the stairs carrying a tray of bright food and she runs off. He looks like a good dad.
Ai looks at me. I see her face as a very old woman, and also as a very little girl. I never looked into anyone’s eyes this long since my who-will-blink-first games with Anju. If this were a movie and not McDonald’s we would now kiss. Maybe this is more intimate. Loyalty, grief, good news, bad days. ‘Okay,’ I finally say, and Ai does not say ‘okay what?’ She rubs her thumbnail over a McTeriakiburger scratchcard. ‘Look. I won a baby robot turkey lunch box. Must be a good omen. Will you let me buy you a new baseball cap?’
‘This one was a present from Anju,’ I reply before I change my mind.
Ai frowns. ‘Who?’
‘My twin sister.’
Ai frowns more deeply. ‘You said you were an only child.’
No going back now. ‘I told you a lie. Only the one. I want to untell it. I have a whole load of other stuff to tell you too: my grandfather contacted me – thanks to the personal ad you suggested – and my stepmother and half-sister met me. More of an ambush than a meeting, actually. I also figured that trying to find someone who obviously doesn’t want to meet me, even if he is my father, will only make me miserable, so I quit . . . What is it?’ Ai is frying with