Love Letters

Also By Julie Ma

Happy Families

Copyright © Julie Ma, 2024

The right of Julie Ma to be identified as the Author of

the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2024 by Mountain Leopard Press

An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

1

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

Cover design © Emily Courdelle

Cover image of dog © Toru-Sanogawa/iStock/Getty Images

Paperback ISBN 978-1-80279-227-0

Ebook ISBN 978-1-80279-228-7

Cover design © Emily Courdelle

Cover image of dog © Toru-Sanogawa/iStock/Getty Images

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Chapter One

‘You can come and visit him any time you like.’

That’s what Mr and Mrs Li told Asta. But whenever she took the detour on the way back from school and rang their doorbell, there was no answer. Then she’d lift the flap on the letterbox to see if the lead was on its hook by the front door. If it wasn’t, she’d know to wend her miserable way home, feet dragging with disappointment. But if the lead was there and the blue mac and khaki parka that normally hung next to it were missing, she would creep around to the back of the house where she would see Steve stretched out on the cool tiles of the conservatory floor. His eyes would be closed, his shaggy white tummy rising and falling in the peace of an afternoon nap. Then she’d tap on the glass until he lifted his head. As soon as he saw who it was, he’d leap up and run to her, paws scratching track lines into the condensation his barking made on the window.

But today, as Asta bends down to lift the flap of the letterbox, she sees someone else looking back at her through glasses so thick she can hardly see the eyes. She squeals and jumps backwards just as that someone flings open the door.

It is a small Chinese man in shirtsleeves and braces and wearing a flat cap indoors.

Asta doesn’t know why she thinks of the man as Chinese. After all, so is Asta Fung, as her name and face testify.

It’s like Chandler says in Friends. ‘Of course, in China, they just call it food.’

Although they’re not in China; they’re a mere six thousand miles away in the small, boring and rubbish Welsh town of Cawsmenyn.

‘Ney,’ says the man, pointing at her with a wrinkly, stubby finger that he turns upside down to beckon her inside.

Once they get past the porch and through another door into the hallway, there is the sound of paws skidding across laminate and Steve is flinging himself against her legs. It’s good to hear and feel the regular thump of his tail again. She kneels down so he can clean her face with his tongue like in the old days, only to jump back up when she spots a plump tabby of a cat saunter past and head into another room. She’d seen it curled up on one of the conservatory chairs loads of times and always thought it was a cushion. Well, it’s come to something – Stephen Fung living in peace and harmony with a cat!

Asta follows the old man, bypassing Steve’s dog bed that they’d handed over to give him comfort in his new home. It looks curiously unused. Once in the kitchen, the old man gestures at one of the chairs around the table so Asta sits down on it. He takes a seat himself and pours them both tea. It is proper Chinese tea like they serve whenever Asta gets taken to Chinatown and she always hates it and wants a Fanta instead. She takes a bitter sip and grimaces.

‘Ney,’ repeats the man.

You, thinks Asta, translating hopefully.

‘. . . nee gaw gau . . .’

No, that’s it, Asta is lost. No more Cantonese on her. She screws her eyes up and shakes her head to show she doesn’t understand.

The old man adopts the policy of 1970s English holidaymakers on the Costa del Sol. It’s not the different language that is the problem here. It is the lack of volume.

‘ . . . NEE GAW GAU . . .’

Steve whimpers, then disappears into the utility room, where the back door is opening and closing. He re-appears moments later, followed by a woman whose face has both Mr Li’s upturned nose and Mrs Li’s high forehead. She is carrying a sack of Burns dried dog food. It is the best dog food but dog food all the same. Steve used to eat burgers and sausages off her plate when he was Asta’s.

‘Oh, hello,’ the woman says, and noticing the way Steve is now sitting with his snout on Asta’s knee, eyes rolled up to his former mistress so a crescent edge of white is visible, adds, ‘you must be Asta. I’m Amy.’

The old man clears his throat and speaks to the new arrival. Asta recognises the lilting up and down of what he already said being repeated.

‘He’s saying, This dog used to belong to you and he still misses you but also he has made himself happy in his new home and made new friends,’ says Amy. ‘Basically, Tony Blair, that’s the cat, my mum and dad and him. He’s my grandfather, George.’

Asta turns and smiles at him gratefully. She is surprised by how much it means to her that Steve is happy rather than pining on a daily basis for her. Like she does for him.

‘Can you tell him thanks for looking after my dog?’ she asks.

‘You just did.’

Asta looks puzzled.

‘He understands English. It’s just since his stroke he can’t speak it.’

George nods eagerly and somewhat gummily.

‘No teeth today?’ says Amy.

The old man pats a pocket in his knitted waistcoat, where there is a crescent-shaped bulge, before speaking again. It’s like when Asta used to visit her grandparents on her mum’s side and a friendly auntie or cousin would helpfully translate. There had been none of that problem with the grandparents on her dad’s side. Like her, they were proper BBC – British-born Chinese – English was their mutual first language.

George: (in Cantonese) ‘So how’s business in the takeaway now your parents have taken over?’

Amy: (in English) ‘So how’s business in the takeaway now your parents have taken over?’

Asta doesn’t know where to look. At Amy who’s interpreting? Or at George? And if she is supposed to look at him, where? Normally you look around the eyes but she can hardly see them through the pebble-thick lenses of his glasses. She decides to address her answers to the top of Steve’s head and his soft ears, one black, one white.

Asta: ‘Okay, I guess.’

She blanks out while George replies. What’s the point of picking out the odd word here and there? She’s never going to need the language of her forebears in the real world; Mandarin is the preferred Chinese language. And anyway, that’s why Netflix has subtitles.

Amy: ‘He’s asking how you like living above the shop. He said to tell you’ (rolls eyes) ‘he was the one who bought it back in the 1950s and fitted it up as a takeaway.’

Asta: (shrugs) ‘It’s okay.’ (sniffs)

How can she tell them what she really feels? She misses her old home. It was a flat above a takeaway too but in Traeth, forty winding miles down the road. It was called Sun House and it was right on the seafront, sandwiched between a bucket-and-spade-sticks-of-rock seaside shop and a newsagent. You could watch the sun set from behind the counter and when she used to walk out the door with Steve, they would be on the beach in a minute, in the sea in two. Where there was a long thin strip of garden at the back so when the man from the dogs’ home came to check they could have young Steve, he said yes, as long as they secured the hole in the fence at the back. If he came to the crappy place they lived now, all he’d see is the service yard behind the shop that customers use as a car park, and potential squishing ground for a young pup. She misses her old school. It didn’t have the greatest sixth form – another one of the reasons her parents said they had to move away – but it would have been her sixth form with teachers she knew and other familiar students. She misses the Syrian guy who ran the corner shop and who always wore long sleeves even on the hottest of summer days. She misses the wild swimmers who took a daily dip without fail whatever the weather, the women in jewel-coloured bathers while the solitary man might just as well have been wearing one, his skin puce with cold. She even misses the scruffy tramp who hung out at the bus stop and said pointed things at her about being a guest in this country in an accent that was more Perth than Pembroke. The Australian one.

It’s gone quiet and she looks up to see both Amy and George looking at her, heads tilted to one side. George says something again.

‘He’s asking why don’t you take the dog for a walk while you’re here?’ says Amy. She pauses as he carries on talking, then, ‘Actually, why don’t you make a regular thing of it? Before or after school? My parents are away at the moment on one of their mini-breaks so we’ve all been taking a share of the walks.’

Asta looks at George suspiciously. There’s no way someone so old and wobbly could give Steve the quality of constitutional he needs.

‘Not him,’ says Amy, ‘the rest of the family. We like doing it, don’t get me wrong, but it would really help us out if you could do it sometimes as well?’

‘Yes please,’ says Asta, an unstoppable smile breaking out on her face. ‘I’d love to!’ And she dashes out to the porch, four paws and a shaggy tail skittering after her. A girl and her dog.

‘Look how happy you made her,’ says Amy. ‘She’s had a tough time these last few months. Moving house, changing school . . . everything else. I don’t know why Ah Mah and Ah Bah didn’t say she could walk the dog from the beginning.’

‘I thought they did,’ says George.

There is a ring at the doorbell.

‘Short walk,’ says Amy over her shoulder, as she goes to answer it.

Steve and Asta are standing winsomely on the doorstep. Amy feels like she should put fifty pence in the dog’s head.

‘I don’t have poop bags,’ says Asta. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any?’

Chapter Two

There is a note on the front door of the Yau Sum takeaway. Asta stops to read it as she bypasses the entrance to the shop to get into the kitchen at the back.

‘What renovation work are we having done?’ she asks as she waits for her mother, Mandy, to fry some chips for her. ‘It must be massive if we have to close the shop. I live here and it’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘We told you ages ago,’ says Tim, Asta’s father. He’s chopping onions with an enormous cleaver, cutting them into little squares before scooping them onto its shiny blade and depositing them into the Tupperware. ‘Before we do the flat out, we’re having the new stairs put in. You can’t run a food business with sawdust all over the shop. It’s only for a couple of days.’

‘I don’t know if there’s any point now,’ says Asta.

‘I don’t think Charlie would have wanted us to remember him by still having to get wet,’ says Mandy.

It’s one of the other things Asta hates about this stupid shop with its stupid incomprehensible Chinese name (Yau Sum) on the stupid junction in the middle of a stupid town (Cawsmenyn) - the only way you can get to the flat above the shop is by going outside to the side of the building and using the metal fire escape steps.

‘It seems a bit pointless now though, doesn’t it?’ says Asta. ‘Moving away so we could be closer to the big hospital in case Grandpa Charlie needed it.’

‘Well, he did need it. It’s just we hoped he hadn’t needed it so soon,’ says Mandy. ‘And for such a short amount of time.’

‘I wish we could move back to the Sun House,’ says Asta.

Their old takeaway even had a better name than this awful place.

‘Well, wishes don’t wash dishes,’ says Tim as he takes the chopping board over to the sink.

Asta goes over to get herself some gravy from the bain-marie, completely missing the significant stare Mandy is throwing across the kitchen at Tim.

‘What was the best thing that happened in school today?’ asks Mandy.

‘I got to leave it at three-thirty,’ says Asta, before remembering that today has been different. Then it’s hard to stop the outpouring of excitement as she describes her reunion with Steve. ‘And he still does the best poops. Nice and firm and easy to pick up,’ she concludes.

‘That was nice of Amy to say you could take Steve for walks,’ says Mandy. ‘Her parents suggested it right at the start but,’ she looks over at Tim, ‘some people said it would be much better for the two of you to have a clean break.’

‘I still think that was a good idea,’ says Tim, thumping the corner of the Tupperware to make sure it’s closed properly.

Asta opens her mouth to say something. Mandy can spot the signs even if Tim can’t. She deftly steps in to change the subject.

‘So you met old George then? He knew your grandfather well when they were younger. And they got really close towards the end. I’m glad they got to be friends again.’

Asta still fancies an argument.

‘How come I’ve never seen this George before, then, if they were so close?’ says Asta. ‘Why wasn’t he at the funeral?’

‘Well, I don’t think you took a lot of interest in your grandfather’s social diary all summer,’ says Mandy. ‘And he didn’t come because he’d just had a stroke.’

‘Oh,’ says Asta, shame-faced.

‘It’s nice you’ve met George anyway,’ says Mandy. ‘I think your grandfather would have liked it. I suppose you are sort of related to him?’

‘Not any more,’ says Tim.

Asta scrunches up another piece of A4 and throws it in the bin. It should not be this hard. All she wants to work out is how her family – the Fungs of Traeth – are related to the Li family of Cawsmenyn. She found a template for a family tree online, managed to make a pretty good copy of it with all of her rulers, stencils and felt-tip pens, but kept getting stuck when it came to filling in the names. She wants to be able to do it on her own but eventually has to give up and run downstairs to ask her parents. She chews her lip as she watches Mandy and Tim disagree, contradict and talk over each other while they try to find the simplest way of explaining.

‘So . . . it’s like how Brody Jenner isn’t related to Kim Kardashian any more after Caitlyn Jenner divorced Kris Jenner,’ says Mandy.

‘What?’ says Tim.

‘That doesn’t help me,’ says Asta.

‘Let me have a go,’ says Tim. ‘It’s probably better to say that George would be your step great-grandfather if he hadn’t divorced your great-grandmother.’

‘So somebody got divorced from somebody else and now we’re not related any more?’

‘No, not that,’ says Tim and then a second later, ‘Yes, that’s exactly it. A bit lacking in detail, though.’

He turns around to scan Asta’s failed attempts at a family tree.

‘Here, I’ll show you,’ he says.

He takes his hands out of the sink and dries them inexpertly on his apron. Asta’s glad she decided to use a Sharpie. The edges of the sheet of A4 dimple as his wrists, still damp with washing-up water, move down the page.

‘What do the dotted lines mean?’ Asta asks.

‘That’s an ex-relationship. The divorce I said about. George splitting from your great-grandmother? My granny? Your Grandpa Charlie’s mum?’

Asta frowns down at the piece of paper.

‘They’re all the same person, not three different women,’ says Tim.

‘Yes, I get that,’ says Asta. ‘Why did you put a dotted line between me and Steve?’

‘That’s because it’s an ex-relationship too. He’s Mr and Mrs Li’s dog now.’

Asta’s face crumples.

‘I thought you knew that,’ says Tim.

‘I did, but you don’t have to say it out loud like that. It’s like someone with a big mole on their face. They know it but they don’t like having it pointed out to them.’

‘Not even from their own dad?’ says Tim.

‘Especially not from their own father,’ says Mandy, before handing a Set Meal for Two to Asta. ‘Take that to the three hungry-looking students who are waiting for it, please. Then you can go back home and I’ll bring yours up to you.’

Asta flops in front of The One Show to eat her chips. After she finishes them, she quickly and pointlessly checks the room, before lifting the plate to her face and licking it clean of gravy. That used to be Steve’s treat and she always felt like a proud parent as she watched the shiny underside of his tongue squeegeeing the meaty juices into his mouth. It was the look she used to see on her grandfather’s face after he picked the cheek meat out of the fish’s head to give to her.

‘The best bits go to the best little ’uns,’ he used to say.

That was when she was more of a baby. Once she got older, she wouldn’t have been seen dead eating anything off a fish that wasn’t coated in breadcrumbs.

Seen dead.

She goes to her room, gets into the bed still in her school uniform, pulls the duvet up over her head and closes her eyes.

‘You should have this room,’ said Charlie on the day they moved in.

Asta and Charlie had been sent upstairs to wait for the removal men. After Charlie had wheezed his way up the fire escape steps, he was pleased to flop into his wheelchair.

‘We shoulda got the removal men to bring me up as well,’ he’d joked, before he got Asta to push him all around the flat and inspect each room.

There was hardly any difference between pushing her grandfather and pushing the empty chair but as the wheels clicked over the metallic transition strip between each room, Charlie would sigh with fond recollection.

‘You should have this room,’ he said when they got to a small oblong at the front of the property. They could see the pole of the streetlamp blocking part of the window.

‘Why?’ said Asta, ‘it’s the smallest room. Felix should get this one, he’s not even going to be living here properly when he goes to uni.’

‘’Cos this used to be my room when I lived here. I was only a bit older than you are now.’

‘What? You lived here before?’

‘You don’t listen to anything any more, do yer?’ he said. ‘This is where I lived when I first moved to Wales from Liverpool.’

‘I was listening. I thought you meant this town.’

‘No, it was in this shop. Honestly, it was the making of me, moving down here. I’d fallen in with the wrong crowd back up there. If it wasn’t for all this, I’d probably have been dead or in prison. Or both. I hated living here to begin with, it was so quiet and boring. Then I discovered the girls fancied someone who looked a bit different . . .’

‘Oh yuck. Am I going to want to hear about this?’

‘Anyways, this room was my room and it’s the best ’cos the heat rises up from the kitchen downstairs to warm you up just right in the winter and ’cos it faces north, it’s lovely and cool in the summer. And you won’t need your nightlight ’cos that lamp post is out there.’

Asta fidgeted uncomfortably. Everyone in the family knew about the nightlight but she didn’t like it being mentioned. Bit embarrassing still to be scared of the dark at sixteen.

‘You’ve sold it to me,’ she told her grandfather and when the removal men arrived, that’s where she directed them to put her bed and wardrobe set.

Even with her eyes closed, Asta can tell someone else has come into the room. There’s a familiar smell of chip fat and Nivea. She opens one eye just a millimetre to see the thin column of light from the hallway disappear as Mandy closes the door behind her. If it wasn’t for the council’s LED contribution, it would be completely dark in here.

‘She was still in her day clothes,’ she hears her mother say.

‘Well, wake her up to go to bed then,’ says Tim.

‘Don’t be dafter than usual.’

‘I don’t know why she’s taking it so badly,’ he says. ‘He was my dad and even I’m over it now.’

‘Of course you are,’ says Mandy, and their voices drift down towards the kitchen until Asta can’t hear them any more.