Her cousins Henry and Janet also lost their mother early, and she grew up very close to them. She’d drifted apart from Janet, who became more and more like her scary father, Stella’s Uncle Jason, as she moved into adulthood. Henry was still one of her best friends, one of the few people who understood why so many things about this place made her dissatisfied.

Like nine-tenths of the population, Stella grew up in a government-provided HDB flat. She went to a primary school within walking distance of her home, and did well enough at the age of twelve to win a place at Methodist Girls’ School. She was from a religious family, and later on there would be many pictures of her friends praying for her, saying they knew she was innocent, asking God to bring the truth to light.

She was only twenty-three at the time of her detention, not long out of university. Much as she admired her cousin Henry for winning his place at Oxford—indeed, she had just returned from visiting him in England when she was taken—she did not have the courage to uproot herself and move to a cold country of unfriendly people and bland food. Her father was a man of decided tastes, and she had grown up with the distinctively-spiced Eurasian curries that are so hard to find anywhere else.

So she ended up at NUS, the National University of Singapore (formerly Malaya, but a new name had to be found after Separation), doing something with history, and sociology. Afterwards, she found herself drifting towards teaching. Many of her classmates ended up there too—there were not many career paths open to those trained in the arts, especially those not overburdened with ambition.

It was easy for her to find a place at her old school, teaching keen Methodist girls the history found in their textbooks. She didn’t fully agree with the narrative of benevolent colonialism giving way to a thrusting, vibrant city state, but that was the syllabus, and it made a pretty story. It helped that her cousin Janet was teaching at the same school and was able to show her the ropes.

Stella herself was not a Methodist, but Catholic like her father. She enjoyed the ritual and order of Mass, which gave her a great sense of peace. It was as if things had been this way since the beginning of time, and even though she knew that at some point, men had devised these ceremonies, she persuaded herself they must be inspired by God, and in any case, anything that brings you closer to divinity can only be positive.