The shophouses lean shoulder to shoulder along the harbour. Tin smoke hangs in the air. Hokkien, Malay, and Thai spill out of doorways and tangle in the street — and fourteen-year-old Mei understands every word.

Her father is a Hokkien merchant. Her mother is Malay-Thai. Mei belongs to both worlds and neither, and for most of her life that has simply been the shape of things.

Then a stranger appears at the back of the shop. A young Englishman arrives at the front, with a machine no one in Phuket has seen before. And suddenly the quiet walkway outside her home feels less like shelter and more like the edge of something.

Mei is about to discover that being the only person in the room who understands everyone is not a small thing.