Excerpt from But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'How was the flight?'

'It was great.' I tried to smile. Scholarships beget scholarships so this wasn't the first time I'd been given something. One thing I knew about being a scholarship girl is that it is important to simulate delight at everything you'd received. This is the exchange you make: your facial expressions for their funding. 

'Very good. Blessing can't make it yet; he's still stuck in Johannesburg. He'll join you in Arbroath. Jack had a terrible time, by the sounds of it. He got sick and vomited for all twenty-four hours of his flight from Wellington. We'll see him tomorrow hopefully. Here is your per diem,' he said, handing me an envelope of notes. 

I knew he had to give these to me at some point and it wasn't as if it was his money. But the timing (my gratitude contrasted with Jack's illness) obliquely confirmed to me what I had thought all along: that gratitude made me a good scholarship girl.

'Anyway, I can show you round tomorrow afternoon. I thought we'd go to the Tate Modern. Same spot at two?'

'Great.'

I woke up the next morning and went downstairs for breakfast. It was explained to me that cold breakfast items as well as toast and tea were free. But I would have to pay for anything hot. Apart from breakfast, I could go up to the Princess Maud room and have one meal with one drink a day on their tab. I had never ordered a drink at a restaurant before. My parents had only ever wanted to pay for solids and because of that I was the same. I took a tablespoon of every kind of cereal and muesli they had out and put it in a bowl with some milk and yoghurt. Then I ordered some toast and tea. The toast came with a rack of ten tiny jams in ten tiny jars which I stole after I was done. And then I put some fruit and rolls into my bag for lunch. After this, I had to decide what I wanted to do with my morning.

The clubhouse had a library and I was supposed to be sitting in it writing a postcolonial novel (at least that was what me and Leon had agreed I would do while I was here) or maybe keep going on my dissertation. I had ostensibly taken a year's leave of absence from my English PhD programme to write my novel. But no one who takes time off their PhD actually forgets about it – they keep working on their research secretly while pretending they are flittering around being on leave. That was what I was doing. 

And because I was always so full of guilt, in addition to the novel and the thesis, I was also writing a paper to present at a postcolonial conference that happened to run in London at the end of my time here. I felt guilt all the time in those days. I felt guilt when I worked on my PhD because I had been brought over to work on my novel. And I felt guilt when I worked on my novel because what was a pointless thing like a novel compared to a doctorate thesis? I felt guilt because whatever I worked on, I was taking the easy way out. Therapists were always saying guilt was not a useful emotion but I found it to be an extremely helpful one – guilt was the sticky, sweet, heavily carbonated energy drink that helped me power through each task, to keep going. I kept working and working – to what end, I didn't know. 

At least that was what it usually did for me. I moved my body from my bedroom to the library but once I got there my body swerved towards a staircase and ran downstairs of its own accord. It kept moving and moving until I ended up on Oxford Street. I spent all of the time and per diem they gave me there shopping for clothes. I loved clothes and London had a lot of them. I was a lot more frivolous than people realised and I frequently made the mistake of thinking changing my clothes could change my life. 

I had wanted very much to be a model when I was a teenager. I wanted to be discovered while I window shopped in my school uniform like Naomi Campbell or in an airport like Kate Moss. I had starved myself sometimes but it was no use. I was too short, and I had the wrong face anyway. 

Excerpted from But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu. Copyright © 2024 by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu. Excerpted by permission of The Unnamed Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.