Chapter 15

• I took a deep breath and sat up in bed in his arms after a while. The moon shines through the window and bathed Dragan in a mystical light. Bit by bit, I removed my glove until I had pulled it completely off my right hand. I held it out to him, scarred and swollen. He straightened up and scrutinised it, taking care not to touch it.
• "My father was Japanese, my mother British. He gave up his life in Japan out of love and came to the UK for her. It was still the aftermath of the Cold War and people saw Japanese and Chinese as one and the same. My mum worked two jobs to support me and dad while he was treated like a nobody by society... until she fell ill. She died when I was just 3... which is why I have no real memory of her. My father broke down and started drinking. My grandparents supported him financially in the hope that he would get back on his feet at some point, but that wasn't the case. When I was... about 4, he started hitting me whenever something bothered him or he'd had too much to drink... 30 years ago, when I was 6, we once again had no electricity and no heat in our flat. My father put up oil lamps, as he knew them from Japan. I tried to do my homework, but it bothered him that I was using the kitchen table to do it. He wanted to punish me, but I didn't want to, so I ran away from him and hid from him. He was looking for me and anger came out of his voice as he started knocking over furniture and screaming for me. I'm not quite sure what happened. He started rattling and coughing and then I heard a thud. I could feel myself getting hot and it was hard to breathe. I crawled out of my hiding place and saw my father. He was lying lifeless on the ground, asleep and everything around him was burning. I begged him to wake up, but he didn't. I had no way of leaving the room, so I crawled to a window with the last of my strength. I smashed it with my right hand and jumped out into the open. We lived on the third floor, the impact was painful... I heard the fire brigade and watched the people being rescued from the house as they all screamed to save and help everyone. But nobody cared about the little crying girl lying there in the grass."
• Tears ran down my cheeks again. It was even more painful to tell the truth than to experience it in nightmares.