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swayed menacingly in the light of the swinging lanterns. They brushed the cobwebs off some of the chests and started to open them up. Fujino pulled out kimonos in paper wrappers, boxes of porcelain, dolls and ancient books, lacquerware, scrolls and tea-ceremony utensils, shaking her head distractedly and groaning, ‘This won’t do. No, not this either.’ She was supposed to be planning Haru’s trousseau, but she seemed quite overwhelmed by the task.
    Okatsu, with her round face and pretty smile, was on her knees , putting things away as quickly as Fujino pulled them out. She was Taka’s special maid and had been ever since they’d come to Tokyo five years earlier. She was ten years older than her. When Taka’s brother’s friends came to visit they teased her relentlessly and Taka often had to rescue her as they chased her around the house, grabbing at her and trying to tickle her. Once one of them had knocked over a lamp while he was grappling with her and broken the paper shade and soaked the tatami mats with oil. She put up with it all with cheerful good humour. Good humour was her speciality. Whatever chaos might be going on around her, Okatsu could always be relied upon to sort it out.
    ‘Here’s the one I was looking for.’ There was a rustle of paper as Fujino folded back a wrapper and lifted out a kimono. Taka held her breath and stretched out her hand to touch it. In the dim light, wild chrysanthemums embroidered in gold, pink and indigo scrolled across the pale mauve silk of the sleeves, shoulders and hem.
    ‘And this one.’ Her mother held up an over-kimono with a thick quilted hem and a design of bamboo leaves woven into the pale ivory silk. It was embroidered with olive-green bamboo fronds, and a little green heron with an orange beak peeking from the foliage. The cuffs and shoulders and hem were a glowing shade of persimmon orange. ‘They’re heirlooms. I haven’t seen them for years.’
    Taka lifted the soft fabric reverently. It was smooth and heavy.
    ‘These were my mother’s too.’ Dabbing her eyes, Fujino reached into another chest and brought out ancient tea-ceremony bowls, tea caddies in woven silk bags and bamboo tea whisks and ladles. She took a tea bowl in her plump hands, feeling the weight of it, then passed it to the maids. ‘Your grandmother was the most famous geisha in all Kyoto. The imperial princes used to come down from the palace to be guests at her tea ceremonies and see her dance.’
    Taka and Haru nodded. Their mother had told them many times how one of the princes had fallen in love with their grandmother and wanted to take her as his concubine. But the palace authorities had forbidden it and to defy them would have meant exile and disgrace, maybe even death. Their grandmother had been in love with the prince too but as a good geisha she put his well-being before her own and forbade him ever to see her again. Later she had been the mistress of merchants and sumo wrestlers and then had had a long relationship with a famous kabuki actor, but she never forgot the prince. When the mistress of her geisha house died, she was given the keys and became the mistress herself, and so achieved what was every geisha’s dream in those days – financial independence.
    Taka had been terrified of her. She remembered her as a small, stern woman who had seemed very, very old. She held herself very straight and used to clamp her bony fingers around Taka’s arm and fix her with her piercing eyes whenever Taka did anything wrong. The skin of her wrists was so thin it was almost transparent. She ran the geisha house with a rod of iron but was kind to her grandchildren and used to tell them stories in a husky whisper.
    Haru was on her knees, her hands folded in her lap, her chignon perfectly oiled. She gestured at the pile of kimonos and pottery and lacquerware. ‘I don’t need these, Mother. I’m going to another house, they’ll be lost to ours. You keep them.’
    ‘ “Going to