Despairingly Azalea knew that if Kai Yin said she would kill herself, then that was what she would do. Life was always cheap to the Chinese and especially with regard to women. Girl babies were lucky to survive. There were even places, Azalea had heard, on the outskirts of towns in China where there were notices saying ‘Girls must not be drowned here’.
Too many girls in a family was a financial disaster, to avoid which the baby was left out in the sun to die or, more mercifully, smothered and buried hastily so that no one would notice the shame of having another daughter.
It seemed a horrifying thought that Kai Yin, who had lived only for seventeen years, should die by her own hand. Yet Azalea could not help wondering, as she thought of what lay ahead, whether it was not perhaps the wise
