Chapter Nine
The extra freedom that her family had given her satisfied Lek. She felt the trust that they were placing in her, and her innate sense of responsibility as the eldest child compelled her to honour it. Furthermore, as she proved herself time and time again, they allowed her a few extras - the Saturday curfew was extended to midnight, and she appreciated it. She no longer felt that she had been taken out of school just to be a slave on the farm. She was beginning to feel like a fully paid-up member of the team.
When she was about fifteen, her parents announced that they were buying ten more rai of land, which would double the size of their rice farming land. It was a huge investment, and it brought them firmly into the middle class of the village. Of the three hundred families
