Guests continued to arrive through the heavy wooden doors. A pleasant draft of chilled air wafted over her every time a newcomer entered the Shah family’s huge entertainment space. Jules estimated that maybe twenty-five or thirty people were here now, half of them locals, judging by their accents, most of the others neighbourhood people or possibly business contacts. Shah had told her that the majority of his neighbours were Chinese and Javanese exiles, and she’d already spotted more than a few of them in attendance. The Javanese made her uneasy. She had never been back to Indonesia after a crooked general had run them off a few months before the Wave.

‘It’s quite noisy up here,’ said Downing, who had been hovering at the edge of the conversation without saying anything. ‘Perhaps you could show us this wine cellar you’re so proud of, old boy? I’d be very interested to see it. I’ve had some diabolical difficulties convincing the local yokels that serving pinot noir at room temperature doesn’t mean serving it up like a goblet of hot blood.’

‘But of course,’ replied Shah. ‘You must come also, Nick. Perhaps we can teach you to drink something more than beer, now that you are a sophisticated businessman who no longer sleeps in his boots.’

‘Doubt it,’ he scoffed. ‘But do your worst.’

As instructed by their host, Jules abandoned her champagne flute there at the buffet table, which was so heavily laden with food, she had trouble finding a spot for the glass. She was hungry, starving actually, and grabbed a couple of small fishcakes before their small group made to leave. They tasted beautiful, still warm and springy, and spiced in a way she’d never come across before. Jules didn’t imagine that fishcakes featured heavily in the national cuisine of mountainous Nepal, but perhaps Pasang Shah had picked up the recipe while they’d been stationed in somewhere like Singapore.

Their home was decorated throughout with objets d’art, photographs and mementoes from all over the world. Shah seemed to have travelled even more extensively than her, although the Englishwoman was sure that if she asked, she’d find that every piece told the story of a posting with the Royal Gurkha Regiment. Even the construction of the house looked like it had been undertaken as an exercise in storing memories within architecture. They passed an internal garden she recognised as a common feature of many Arabic dwellings, while the formal dining space reminded her of tribal long rooms she had seen in Borneo. Nothing so gauche as crossed spears or shields hung from the walls here. It appeared to Julianne that the Shahs had spent a lot of time discussing the significant moments of their shared life with a very expensive architect. A life that had been spent in the service of a regiment that had dispatched them from one end of the world to the other.