She said nothing. There was no point reacting, this was just one of the random jibes they would fling at her from time to time. The pointless cruelty of a bored child poking a caged animal.

“Stella, all your friends have confessed. They’ve all betrayed you. There’s no point denying it any more. You’re only making trouble for yourself. Who are you trying to protect? No one is protecting you.”

She felt, more than any other emotion, sheer exhaustion. “Which friends?”

“Jackson Cheng, your ringleader. Kevin de Souza. That girl from your church, Frances Ling.” And he went on, listing people she had heard of and people she hadn’t. So many people detained? She lost count after sixteen. “I don’t know most of them,” she said.

“Do you know where these people are now, Stella?” She shook her head. “Packing their things, ready to be released. Soon it will be only you left, Stella. I get paid to be here, I can go home in the evening to see my family. But you?

“Why do you keep saying you don’t know them? When we show them your picture, they said yes, she’s part of the conspiracy.”

“That’s not true.”

“How many times must I tell you, Stella? These people are so good at infiltrating that you can be working for them without knowing it. What was it that made you join the group?”

“I was concerned for the foreign workers. I could see that they weren’t being treated well. We had a maid at home. She had one day off a week, and that was considered quite generous of my family.”

“A lot of people have maids, Stella, and they don’t become Marxists. Who invited you to join the group?”

“I can’t remember exactly. I was talking to some people over coffee after service, and a couple of them volunteered.”

“Was Charlie Jay in the coffee shop?”

“He joined us sometimes. I can’t remember if he was there that day.”

“So isn’t it possible that he was the one who invited you
to join?”

“It’s possible. Why does it matter?”

“Stella, I thought schoolteachers were supposed to be clever. If Charlie Jay was the ringleader, then of course this is how he would recruit people. Do you think he would be so obvious, come up to you and say, hey, do you want to be a Communist? No, he is more subtle.” He pronounced it sub-tel. “He knows you have a kind heart, so he tells you society unjust this, society unfair that, and before you know it you have been radicalised by him.”

“I don’t think I’ve been radicalised.”

“But you always say, society treats these people badly, society neglects those people. That’s how Marxists talk. If you’re talking like this, then it must be because someone has infected you with left-wing sentiments.”

It was always like this, the circularity, the dead-end logic. She felt her brain rebel, refuse to think of another argument. What was the point? And perhaps placing her in this state was their goal. A further prison in the mind.