‘My father died,’ said Evangeline, ‘so my mother and I went to the jungle.’

‘Who killed your father?’ asked Jimmy.

‘Bad people,’ replied Evangeline, rolling her eyes at the machine squatting attentive in its maroon shagreen skin, its slow wheels turning,’ very bad people.’

‘Aha,’ said Jimmy happily, ‘communist bandits, wasn’t it, little girl? Say yes,’ he mouthed to Evangeline.

‘Yes,’ said Evangeline.

Jimmy looked pleased. ‘We’re getting on, she’s really quite wonderful,’ he whispered aside, and produced a memorandum sheet out of his pocket, upon which he had jotted the main points of the interview. He now ticked off point 1, ‘Parents’, and continued:

‘Now when you were in the jungle camp with the wicked bandits, did they beat you?’

‘No,’ said Evangeline.

‘Not even once?’

‘No … but once or twice my mother beat me. And the men they shouted at me.’ Warming up she added, ‘Especially when the food was not ready they cursed me, and tried to leave me behind when they moved.’

Point 2, ‘Ill treatment,’ checked Jimmy and continued:

‘Now what did you do in the jungle, little girl?’

‘I cooked, I washed clothes, I sang songs, and we walked and walked and sometimes we ran. And I helped to chop wood. And I threw stones to kill birds and lizards. And one day,’ her voice rose vibrant out of its artificial submission, ‘I saw a tiger. A real one.’

‘Weren’t you afraid?’ asked Jimmy, forgetting the recorder.

‘Oh, no,’ said Evangeline. ‘But we were afraid of the Gurkhas, because they are terrible people. They chop heads and hands. They are Kling devils,’ she said.

‘Cut,’ said Jimmy. ‘I think we’ll have to prepare her a bit more, to give some shape to the broadcast. Now,’ he resumed, ‘what happened to your mother?’

‘She was killed,’ said Evangeline. ‘She was killed when I was taken.’

But no tears fell, she said it stolidly and wriggled her red sandals on the floor, and looked at her duck and patted it.

‘Now we’ll take a photograph,’ said Jimmy. We walked downstairs and stood in the garden in front of the bungalow, Evangeline with her duck, and the camera man snapped her alone; then with Ah Mei; then with all of us round her, a gay company smiling strenuously and blinking our eyes in the harsh sun.

Three more times did Jimmy come to the house, until Evangeline was ready and then they recorded her. Each time Mrs Lo came with him, to watch Evangeline with a rapt tenderness, with love to stroke her hair, and to offer her little drives in the car, and to bring her handkerchiefs and oranges and a bright red plastic belt to match her sandals.

One day Jimmy asked Evangeline what songs she sang in the jungle, and she started:

Arise, ye who do not want to be slaves,
With flesh and blood 
We shall build our new Great Wall.