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that I was going to leave town
.
    Uncle gave me a tight-lipped smile.
    I sighed. ‘Uncle, I need to go outside. I need some air.’
    ‘But you’re not well.’ Auntie twisted her fingers into a knot.
    ‘I’ll be OK,’ I said firmly. ‘Come on, Jabs.’ I turned to leave, thrusting my hands into my pockets.
    My hand closed around it again. Hard and flat and round. It was still warm.
    The wishing stone.

8
Andi
    I only went to the Philippines that one time with Mum and Dad when I was just three years old.
    And though I have a vague recollection of the heat and the itch of mosquito bites, the rest is a blur.
    What I do remember is the earthquake.
    It was the middle of the night and I was lying next to Mum. It must have been a small bed because we were cuddled up close together, sweat breaking out wherever skin touched. There was an electric fan. A pink nylon mosquito net hung from the ceiling, its edges tucked under our mattress. Dad had come with us to the Philippines but I couldn’t remember him being in the same bed. He must have slept elsewhere.
    I was wakeful, staring up at the pretty ripples that the electric fan blew into the mosquito net as it rotated. From the open window a street lamp bathed everything in a warm yellow glow.
    Suddenly the bed began to sway, like we were on a giant swing. The motion swung me easily over theside of the bed, where the mosquito netting caught me like a trapeze safety-net.
    I lay there and screamed.
    Dad suddenly appeared in the doorway yelling, ‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann! The baby!’
    Mum groped around the edge of the bed like she was searching for a lost remote control. I screamed until she found me.
    Then Dad grabbed me and we all stumbled outside in the middle of the night, in our pyjamas.
    Mum never took me to the Philippines again.
    Every two years or so she would go and visit Bernardo for a few weeks, and Dad and I would go off to Cornwall or somewhere like that.
    Mum said the money she saved not buying me plane tickets meant she could visit Bernardo more often. Fair enough. I guess.
    So that was the one time I met Bernardo in the flesh. He must have been six years old.
    But I don’t remember
him
.
    All I remember is the earthquake.

9
Bernardo
    T he first time I saw the wishing stone, I wasn’t actually looking at it.
    I was thirteen and in my first year at the Sacred Heart Academy. It was nestled between Gabriela’s breasts, which swelled boldly from her unbuttoned school blouse.
    ‘Don’t, idiot,’ Jabby had whispered. ‘She’s trouble. Stop staring.’
    ‘I’m not staring,’ I lied.
    Jabby was tall enough to pass for a senior but I was still small enough to be mistaken for a grader. Gabriela at sixteen was a full-grown woman in a tight school uniform. I couldn’t help just … looking.
    ‘Move it, Nardo.’ Jabby pushed me roughly in the back and I stumbled past Gabriela and her gang. She threw back her neck and laughed.
    I wasn’t sure what the joke was but I smiled at her.
    The Sacred Heart Academy was run by nuns from a German order, with a list of school rules andregulations that was long and precise. Boys had to have their hair cut around their ears. Girls with long hair had to tie their hair back in pony tails. Girls with short hair had to pin back their fringes. Shirts had to be buttoned up to the neck, despite the tropical heat. And the girls’ regulation navy skirts had to be one and a half inches above the middle of the knee. No jewellery was allowed.
    But Gabriela wore her dark hair down to her waist and never tied it back. She hitched her skirt all the way up to mid-thigh. And around her neck she wore the wishing stone on a chain.
    At the time of course I knew nothing about it, just like I knew nothing about Gabriela.
    So when she smiled at me, I thought it would be rude not to smile back.
    ‘Idiot!’ Jabby said again, between his teeth. He turned and walked away.
    Gabriela stroked the stone on her chest. ‘Do you know what this