'With all this in our heads,' Kwan said to her husband, 'we won't need your TV.'

It was a busy week.

It was not only the six dresses. For some reason, there was much extra business.

On Wednesday, Mae had a discreet morning call to make on Tsang Muhammed. Mae liked Tsang. She looked like a peach that was overripe, round and soft to the touch and very slightly wrinkled. Everything about her was off-kilter. She was Chinese with a religious Karz husband, who was ten years her senior. He was a Muslim who allowed – or perhaps could not prevent – his Chinese wife keeping a Pig.

The family pig was in the front room being fattened: half the room was full of old shucks. The beast looked lordly and pleased with itself. Tsang's four-year-old son sat tamely beside it, feeding it the greener leaves, as if the animal could not find them for itself.

'Is it all right to talk?' Mae whispered, her eyes going sideways towards the boy.

'Who is it?' Mae mouthed.

Tsang simply waggled a finger.

So it was someone they knew. Mae suspected it was Kwan's oldest boy, Luk. Luk was sixteen, but he was kept in pressed white shirt and shorts like a baby. The shorts only showed he had hair on his football-player calves. His face was still round and soft and babylike but lately had been full of a new and different confusion.

'Tsang. Oh!' Mae gasped.

'Sssh,' giggled Tsang, who was red as a radish. As if either of them could be certain what the other one meant. 'I need a repair job!' So it was someone younger.

Almost certainly Kwan's handsome son.

'Well, they have to be taught by someone,' whispered Mae.

Tsang simply dissolved into giggles. She could hardly stop laughing.

'I can do nothing for you. You certainly don't need redder cheeks,' said Mae.

Tsang uttered a squawk of laughter.

'There is nothing like it for a woman's complexion.' Mae pretended to put away the tools of her trade. 'No, I can effect no improvement. Certainly I cannot compete with the effects of a certain young man.'