The boyfriend sent Miss Soo the patterns of dresses, photographs, magazines, or even whole catalogues. There was one particularly treasured thing; a showcase publication. The cover was like the lid of a box, and it showed in full colour the best of the nation's fashion design.

Models so rich and thin they looked like ghosts. They looked half asleep, as if the only place they carried the weight of their wealth was on their eyelids. It was like looking at Western or Japanese women, and yet these were their own people, so long-legged, so modern, so ethereal, as if they were made of air.

Mae hated the clothes. They looked like washing-up towels. Oatmeal or grey in one colour, and without a trace of adornment.

Mae sighed with lament. 'Why do these rich women go about in their underwear?'

The girl shuffled back with the dress, past piles of unsold oatmeal cloth. Miss Soo had a skinny face full of teeth, and she always looked like she was staring ahead in fear. 'If you are rich you have no need to try to look rich.' Her voice was soft. She made Mae feel like a peasant without meaning to. She made Mae yearn to escape herself, to be someone else, for the child was effortlessly talented, somehow effortlessly in touch with the outside world.

'Ah, yes,' Mae sighed. 'But my clients, you know, they live in the hills.' She shared a conspiratorial smile with the girl. 'Their taste! Speaking of which, let's have a look at my wedding cake of a dress.'

The dress was actually meant to look like a cake, all pink and white sugar icing, except that it kept moving all by itself. White wires with styrofoam bobbles on the ends were surrounded with clouds of white netting.