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again.
    ‘I remember thinking I’d never get over him. That this was what having your heart broken was about. And then I met your dad.’
    And Mike was Federal Express to forgetting. He was so easy compared to Patrick. And much as I loved him for his guilelessness and his gentleness, it wasn’t a rip-me-open sort of love. But I’d already decided I didn’t want that ever again. ‘And obviously I fell in love with your dad...’
    Aimee falls silent for a moment or two, then says, ‘Do you wish you’d been married to Patrick rather than to Dad?’ Her voice sounds sleepy now, and I love her so much in this artless little second where her attention is slipping.
    ‘No. But you never forget your first love. That’s just the way life is. So when you meet yours one day, recognise him for what he is: someone you will probably think of many times, and wonder about, over the course of your life.’
    ‘Did you always want to set people up after that?’
    ‘Not consciously. But maybe my choices in life that came after were all secretly leading me to it. Who knows?’
    She seems to think about this. ‘Maybe I could go into the Love Market business with you when I grow up. I hardly think I’m going to have to know all about Peter the Great to know about a few men and a few women and whether they might like each other.’
    ‘Maybe,’ I tell her. She yawns and reaches to stroke Molly. I trace a finger over the part of her ear that’s curled in like a dry leaf.
    ‘Maybe you can tell me more about it tomorrow.’ She moves her head just slightly, to look at me. ‘Oh, and, erm, Rachel invited me to the party.’
    ‘Did she?’ I ask, a little surprised. ‘And you’re going to go?’
    ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
    When I walk out of her room, I go straight into mine, to my jewellery box. From underneath a tangle of beads and baubles, I pull out the folded piece of paper he sent me, and read.

Eight
     
     
    From the top of Ham Rong Mountain, a grey mist hovers over the village of Sa Pa, north Vietnam, like an exhalation of breath on a cold day. The red roofed settlements of hill tribe life sparkle through the mist like a handful of rubies beneath a transparent, floating scarf. Little stirs across the never-ending paddy fields from this great height, just a feeling in you, that you are somehow standing alone at the moment when a part of you grows up, something inside you changes forever.
    I don’t know why I’ve come here, or why I now feel a part of me will always be unable to leave. I don’t really believe in the concept of one true love. Or that there is one person in this world that is meant for us, and we either find them or we find something inferior. But I do believe that the more unusual the way you meet somebody the higher significance you’d give it.
    For the Red Dao tribe, easily identified by the red coin headdresses worn by the women, marriage is a commodity that can be bartered for in the price of a song. The Saturday night ritual of the Sa Pa Love Market isn’t what it used to be before it fascinated tour operators and travellers worldwide—bringing me there and bringing her there. And now hundreds are drawn here, to The Love Market. The Red Dao are private people. Few will accept your American dollars in exchange for your right to take their photograph. On Saturday nights, Red Dao hill tribe youths of both sexes gather in a weekly courting ritual. The males strut around doing a sort of tribal version of Harry Connick Jnr, in the hope of attracting a pretty young female. The songs are rarely romantic. What does any fifteen-year-old boy know about romance anyway? Mostly it’s a bragging rite chronicling the boy’s physical prowess, or their strong work ethic and ability to be head of a family. But it’s well known that the men can usually be found sleeping off opium in the shade of a lethargic water buffalo, while it is the women who do the work. But in the Red Dao culture,