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We stopped at a tea shop to buy a takeaway drink. I’d become addicted to their black tea. For a warm day, the hot tea refreshed me. Callum stuck to bottled water stating that tea was lame, and coffee was the only hot beverage he drank. He navigated us to the tailor’s shop with his phone as we were soon approaching a small shopping arcade. The low concrete ceiling had Callum stooping as we walked. Old posters littered the walls, years of adverts pasted over other adverts but had long faded. I thought no shops would be open at the end of the arcade, but as we turned a corner, a small shop with glass windows greeted us. A brown pinstripe tailored suit adorned one mannequin, and a navy tailored dress adorned the other. The shop looked like it had been stuck in a time warp from the 1960s. Glass topped cabinets lined the perimeter inside the shop and men with tape measures walked around the small floor space attending to their clients. One man who stood behind the till zoned in on Callum as soon as he noticed us. He beckoned us in and pulled out a chair for me to sit on.
“Please, have a drink, cool down by the fan,” he ushered me to the chair, separating me from Callum. His colleague measured Callum’s neck, and he tried to wave him away like an irritating fly.
“Thank you but we’re looking for Ming-Yue, do you know where he is?” I asked. Roland hadn’t removed all traces of his real name with his cover name.
“He should be at school, what do you want to see him about, I’m his father,” the man said. “My name is Chang Li.”
“My name is Callum, and this is my girlfriend, Adaline. He is selling us one of his comics, he asked us to meet him here. What time will he be home?”
“He made you come here from England? It must be a rare one. Come upstairs, my wife will look after you until he comes home. Come,” he beckoned.
The balding grey haired man helped me up by the elbow and guided me through to the back of the shop. He took the lead up the back stairs. The walls and stairs were painted baby blue, it reminded me of my old swimming baths, where Justine held me under the water at the deep end for one too many seconds. I shuddered as we trooped up the stairs. After six flights up, we reached a black door where on the other side, world war three was breaking out. Shouts and screams echoed along the narrow walkway that led up to another flight. He took a chain out from the neck of his navy shirt and opened the door.
He stepped inside, and a short petite woman with her salt and pepper hair tied up in a bun greeted us. She ushered us to her kitchen table and talked rapidly to her husband. Callum listened to what they were saying.
“He’s explaining that we need to stay here until Ming-Yue gets home, which should be in about half an hour. His wife doesn’t speak any English.”
“You understand Chinese?”
“Yes, don’t hate me,” Callum said.
“I don’t hate you, you fool, I’m in awe of your ability to pick up languages. I have to work so hard to reply in the foreign language, I’m too busy trying to work out what they’ve said.”
“I’ve worked in so many countries that I pick up the language from the boys that become my apprentices. Scottie is teaching me street talk after he was appalled at my use of the word dude. He says I’m too posh for street talk.”
“Well he’s right there, you are too posh for anything less than three syllables,” I said.
I motioned to Callum that Chang was about to talk to us.
“My wife will look after you until my son comes home. I have called him, and he will come straight back. He’s frequently browsing in old shops looking for his next big sale.”
I hoped that the phone call to tell him we were here didn’t scare him away. He had answered none of my emails in the last few days, and I was worried that he’d already sold it. Callum accepted a cup of tea from Ming-Yue’s mother, and I smiled at his politeness overriding any sense of what he liked. I was used to sitting in silence, it was my preferred state, but I could tell Callum was uncomfortable. His preference was to fill the silence. He usually babbled away when he cooked but knew I wasn’t paying attention. He mostly talked through a design problem, working it out while he cooked up a feast.
Ming-Yue burst through the door after our first cup of tea and spoke to his mum for a few minutes. He dumped his school bag on the sofa in the living room that joined the kitchenette and came back to talk to us. The flat they lived in was tiny. The kitchen and living room was one room, separated by a curtain of beads.
“Welcome to my home, I’m surprised to see you here,” he said. He looked nervously at us.
“You were difficult to find Roland, or is it Ming-Yue,” I said.
He looked at his mother and then back at me.
“Come with me,” he said.
We followed him through the living room and then into a bedroom. Squashed into the space was a double bed and a single bed. I assumed from the layout and that there were no other doors in the flat he shared a room with his parents.
“I’m sorry,” he began. My heart dropped to my feet, he would tell us there was no comic. “My internet privileges were taken away at school. I had no other way of contacting you.”
I relaxed, and so did Callum, his shoulders dropped, he must have been thinking the same thing as me. Ming-Yue’s English was flawless.
“Have you still got the comic?” I asked, whispering a quiet prayer.
“Yes, have you got the money, I asked for cash, American dollars,” he said urgently.
“I have the money,” I said and patted my backpack.
It was a hell of a lot of dollars to carry around, but it was worth it to get my hands on the comic. Ming-Yue lifted his mattress displaying two dozen comics in plastic sleeves. He didn’t give me a chance to take in all the covers, but one I saw was also worth a lot of money. For a kid in school, he knew what he was doing. I took the money out, the small denomination bills were in a brown envelope. I handed it over at the same time he passed me the comic. I jumped once as soon as it was in my hands.
“What will you do with the money, Roland?” Callum asked, he was amused by my excitement.
