‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No one would leave a will unless they meant it. Unless they never intended to come back.’ She looked across at him. ‘In the letter Ale said I should come and find you right away, that we should read what’s in there together.’ She nodded at the envelope in Sam’s hands, the one addressed to him.

He couldn’t believe it. Dazedly, he turned over the envelope and broke its seal. Inside were ten written pages, all in the same restless, dashing hand. He leafed through them, before turning back to the beginning, looking for a note, an explanation, anything.

‘“Shanghai”,’ he read, and glanced down the page. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Keep reading.’ Zahrah leaned closer to see the letter, her arm brushing against his.

He blinked hard, and cleared his throat.

Shanghai

Take two dashes of imported grenadine, one and a half tablespoons of lemon juice, half a tablespoon of anisette and a pony of Jamaica rum. Shake well, strain into a cocktail glass, and drink to what’s behind you.

The day before the party passed like a speeding automobile; even as I tried to seize on details, they were whisked away, leaving me with streaming eyes. The details I do recall are scattered. The smell of coffee in the kitchen, the quiet breakfast Hilde and Langham and I took together in the garden, my aching head, the purple bruise around the wrist of the tailor’s son, who would not meet my eyes. The beautiful new suit hiding a message from Cabrera and a forged telegram from ‘Colonel Mayer’, an old associate of Langham’s, begging his presence at an urgent meeting that night. I showed it to him in the safety of his study, and he had studied it hard, before burning it up in his ashtray, his hand on my shoulder.

Langham did not mention marriage again, though during the night he had asked me once more to go away with him. His manner all that day was odd, sometimes distant and formal, at other times fraught, passionate. He would send me away with an order, only to catch me and pull me to him in the shadow of the door. Finally, I agreed to accompany him, on the condition that it was not as a woman, not as his wife. He seemed so relieved, and held me, whispering about what we would do, how we would lay low in some quiet port town, drinking and listening to the wireless, until Hilde sent us the all-clear. I felt a rush of exhilaration at the knowledge I held some power over him: that he wanted me so.

Even so, I was far from easy. Why can’t I trust you? he’d whispered to me, that first night in the bathroom. And though it pained me to the pit of my stomach, I found myself thinking the same.