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      Min Dinning spent more than twenty years teaching English worldwide, travelling in Europe, South America, China, Papua New Guinea and Australia. She began writing fiction at the age of seven but lapsed for more than thirty years, only to begin again two years ago, inspired by a creative writing class. Until then she had written letters, diaries and academic papers and published some non-fiction. These days she teaches Business EFL and is trying to come to terms with domestic bliss in rural Cambridgeshire. She still has secret yearnings to run away to exotic lands.

       FIGURE OF EIGHT

      He tasted of sour pickle and rice porridge and stale tobacco. I had wanted this kiss for months and now I had it. Desire was injected uncomfortably into my bloodstream. His skin was hard and chapped as he pressed it into my face. I was shocked. It was not as I had expected. I was still unsure of why I wanted him. It may have been sex, but it wasn’t straightforward; he wasn’t attractive in a conventional way, like Martin. It may have been need and gratitude.

      He kissed as if he didn’t know what a kiss was. Or maybe he wasn’t kissing at all. It was me who was doing it. His mouth was stiff and immobile but betrayed a repressed emotion that I couldn’t define. It briefly occurred to me that it might be anger. I had caught him unawares, walked up to him from behind. But was it unawares? We both knew.

      He was wearing his best jacket, tailored too large in stiff blue cotton in what used to be an imitation of Mao, and smelling of mothballs as most Chinese clothes do when they are seldom worn. Why did I focus on that? It detracted from the moment. Smells and tastes tried to deflect me away from the strange reality of it.

      For a moment we remained in an awkward clinch, he with his eyes closed, me searching for reaction, wanting response. He took no initiative and then withdrew as I placed my tongue on his teeth.

      ‘No, no,’ he moaned.

      ‘But we must, we’ve been waiting so long. We can’t waste more time just thinking about it and doing nothing.’

      ‘Somebody will find out. We’ll be criticized.’

      ‘We’ll be discreet. Nobody will know. Anyway we haven’t done anything wrong.’

      ‘You don’t understand. We’re not in your country. In China this is impossible. I could go to gaol.’

      ‘Don’t be daft. Of course you couldn’t,’ I said, not sure. People certainly seemed to get into trouble for things that go unnoticed or are laughed off in the West.

      Anyway – what were we doing? Was this adultery? Infidelity? It certainly wasn’t fornication, nor was it likely to be.

      Before the momentum was lost I drew his wiry body towards me again. I sensed tension, reluctance.

      ‘If someone sees, it will be wrong.’

      ‘But if no one sees it will be right?’

      He relaxed a little and laughed.

      ‘Chinese logic!’ I said. The idea that a sin must be witnessed to be a sin struck me as peculiar but practical.

      ‘Honestly, Alison. You know what I’m saying.’

      Sometimes he sounded like a middle-class Englishman. These phrases, learned from World Service plays, tripped off the tongue like the rehearsed script of a thirties drama. He seemed more foreign at moments like that and a twinge of uncertainty unnerved me. Was I dealing with an inhabitant of another world? Were we as close as I thought or had I invented it out of want?

      He gently removed my arms and buttoned the top button of his jacket. He did up the hook and eye on the collar and took a step backwards.

      ‘I must go now.’ He looked out of the blurred curtainless window at the bleakness of the early spring campus beyond. Grey concrete blocks, brightened by the occasional piece of vivid underwear hung on a bamboo pole out of a window to dry in the dusty air.

      ‘Don’t come down,’ he said.

      ‘Shall I come to the studio tomorrow?’ I asked, suddenly unable to cope with the prospect of being alone in this chilly, dingy flat, not wanting him to leave.

      To my relief, he smiled. ‘Yes, come for your lesson as usual. The other guys will be there. We’ll paint together.’

      I heard his footsteps retreating down the concrete stairs fainter and fainter, then the click of his bicycle lock. I watched him as he pedalled silently down the path. I kept watching until he disappeared into the heavy stream of traffic on the main road beyond the gates of the campus.

      Yes, I thought, I’ve done it. I’ve changed things between us at last.

      I was trying to remember how it had been at the beginning. I cast my mind back to the day when I announced I was going to China.

      ‘You’ll never survive,’ Martin taunted me. ‘You’ll be back in two weeks.’

      I tried not to believe that he might be right. It had certainly been a rash decision for me, but he had this way of making me feel inadequate and I had to show him I could cope.

      ‘Of course I’ll survive. Anyway it’s only nine months. I’ll be back in the summer. You won’t even have time to miss me.’

      The thought of leaving Martin for so many months made me uneasy, but I told myself I had nothing to fear. He would be there when I got back and whatever happened in between would soon be over. He still hadn’t been keen. He had wanted us to get married but I wanted to get

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