Free The Rice Paper Diaries by Francesca Rhydderch Page A

clucking and shushing and took her straight to the laundry room. The brass locks on the front door of our apartment were strong, and by the time the door had been kicked in I was crouched over in the empty clothes basket with Mari in my arms. I slotted the lid into place over our heads and hoped she wouldn’t wake after being lifted so suddenly from her cot. I heard the back door of the apartment being pulled to, and thought that Lam and Wang must have decided to risk going the back way down to the garage, to hide in the Bentley’s generous boot.
    The laundry basket was made of wicker, with tiny slats all the way round. I sat and waited. There were men inside the apartment now. There were shouts, and the sound of heavy boots along the passageway, I didn’t know how many pairs, maybe four or five. I heard someone kicking doors open in turn: the captain and Mrs Elsa’s bedroom, Lam’s tiny room. Mine. Wang’s. The laundry room.
    A pair of green canvas trousers came in, stopping next to the basket. I could smell sweat, men’s sweat, bodies that needed washing. Every time I breathed, the darkened inside of the basket jumped and shook around me, like a volcano about to explode. I thought of the worst thing they might do. I remembered Mother’s story about the Japanese soldier who liked to take the babies of his enemies, throw them in the air and watch them land on his raised sword, for fun. The victor’s pleasure.
    The green trousers were so close to me that I could see the bumps and shapes made by the textured khaki, craters and hollows forming and re - forming as he took each step towards the middle of the room. His view must have been obscured by some of the towels hung up to dry from a pulley; I heard him tut as he pushed them aside.
    Mari opened one of her small fists in her sleep. Her fingers stretched out one by one. She grabbed onto my plait and pulled it like a horse’s tail, her eyes still shut. I sank my teeth into my tongue to bury the pain.
    The soldier had turned around and was making his way out of the room, pushing towels aside as he went.
    They kicked the kitchen door open. I heard glass breaking, plates being thrown to the floor. Mari turned her head towards me in her sleep. I stroked her cheek with trembling fingers. She took a deep breath and settled back into her dreams again.
    They were walking around the living room now, the sound of their boots muffled by the rug. Springs creaked as they sat down in the easy chairs. There was a tinkle of glasses.
    I peeped out through the gaps in the laundry basket at the empty corridor. It looked as it always did. Framed photographs of the captain and Mrs Elsa hung on the wall, people dressed in winter coats standing on a beach next to a stormy sea, smiling at the camera. On the hall table was a black porcelain jug with inlaid flowers in gold lacquer. Next to it was an ornate clock.
    I closed my eyes and willed this to be a normal day. The kind of day when everything would turn out exactly as I had planned it; the laundry, Mari’s walk in the park, the pleasure of her nap - time before supper, when all I had to do was stay with her and let my thoughts wander. Mrs Elsa would be in the dressing room, while the captain sat out on the terrace enjoying a pink gin before dinner. I waited to hear the clink of ice cubes, the door to the sitting room opening and closing, and the silence of them kissing, before he served her a soda with lime, the way she has it every day when he comes home from work.
    But when the sitting room door was opened again, the heels that tramped their way back out were even heavier than before, and unsteady. I don’t know if it was the whisky that had reminded them what it was they were here to do, that time was not to be wasted. The dressing room door was kicked open. There was a click. A shot was fired.
    Mrs Elsa didn’t scream or shout. There were noises: cupboard doors being opened, or kicked in.
    Mari was awake now, her eyes unblinking,