She was a shy girl, less than a decade older than her students, whom she found near-impossible to control, even these well-behaved Christian girls, and as a consequence felt herself constantly judged by her colleagues. More than once a fellow teacher had come to investigate a commotion, and found Stella cowering behind her desk, ineffectually raising her voice against a boisterous, hormone-driven racket. In the staffroom, she sat and ate her sandwiches in a corner on her own, unless Janet happened to be free.

It was in church that she made her friends. They were equal before God, she felt it exhilarating that a young person like her, so broken and unpractised in the faith, was considered worthy of saving. She joined the small groups, and did volunteer work. It felt good, like she was making a difference to the lives of others. She became aware they all lived on a small island, and it was necessary to pull together and help each other out, rather than competing all the time. She wished everyone in the world would learn this lesson.

She could remember pockets of poverty when she was growing up, homeless people one tried not to see on the way to school. Nowadays, so many people had government flats, great featureless blocks springing up all over the island. People had money now, there were shopping centres along Orchard Road and the MRT, which she found that terribly exciting, trains moving at great speeds beneath the feet of a city going about its business. That was one of her reasons for wanting to visit London, to see for herself the monstrous, wormlike tube network, the very one ridden by Mrs Dalloway.

But there were people left out of Singapore’s headlong rush towards prosperity. She saw them in the streets, lying on park benches like they’d been there all night. Thousands more came in from other countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, working in people’s homes for insultingly low wages. Her own family employed a domestic helper called Veronica, a devout Catholic girl. When she protested, her stepmother said: Do you want to do all the housework yourself? I’ve never seen you so much as lift a broom. Should we send Veronica back to Cebu? She was unemployed for almost a year before this.

Stella found it hard to meet Veronica’s eye. She tried to clean up after herself, but Veronica was always there first with her broom and dustpan, trying to make herself indispensable. She slept on a mattress in the kitchen floor. Stella asked her to come to church, but she said she preferred to spend her rare days off with her fellow countrywomen. When Gregory at church asked Stella to serve on the maid welfare committee, she answered yes immediately. It felt like the least she could do.

•