He refocused on her. “No, why?” She was silent. “What have you heard? I was in Perak at the time. It was the right thing to do, you know. Templer and his curfew. It looks harsh from the outside, but it worked. A fortnight’s curfew, twenty-two hours a day. It did the trick, enough of them talked that they were able to find out who the Communists were.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said neutrally.

“You’re not a sympathiser, are you?” He seemed suddenly suspicious. She could see him worrying that he’d said too much. “They were killing white men. We had to do something.”

“I’m just curious.” She kept her voice light, but brisk. “I’m writing a story.”

•

The next morning, Mr Leng phoned the hotel to say he was sending her to see one of the survivors in Seminyih, a new village outside KL. “I can’t take you myself,” he added. “I’ll send Lina.”

Lina turned out to be a Chinese woman a little older than Revathi. Her English was careful, correct. When Revathi complimented her, she flinched, as if this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “I grew up in Singapore.”

“Oh, my parents are from Singapore,” Revathi volunteered brightly. Lina nodded, uninterested.

The car was, unexpectedly, an Alfa Romeo, bright red and polished to a fierce sheen. “Not mine,” said Lina. “Mr Leng’s. I have to get it back to him by the end of the day. You must be very impressive, he doesn’t usually lend anyone his car.”

“How do you know him?”

“Lawyers always need people to help them. I’m good at helping.”

Traffic was ridiculous for the first half hour, then they got to the edges of the city and suddenly everything was wide and open, the sun glaring harshly against the road so it seemed to shimmer in the distance. Here and there along the dusty verge, ramshackle wooden stands were piled with fruit she dimly remembered, dusty but still fantastical-looking, bright yellow stars and furry red bulbs, such abundance and colour. British food had come a long way since the end of rationing, of course, but how insipid it suddenly seemed, all greys and browns.

“You want some?” smirked Lina, seeing her look.

She shook her head. “I think I remember the taste.”

“You’ve tasted durian? You talk with a potato in your mouth, I thought you must be completely ang moh.”

Revathi wasn’t sure what that meant, but it seemed intended as an insult. She nodded neutrally and settled back in her seat, looking out the window—they were passing by fields of occasional scrawny cows, sun so scorching it was a wonder anything grew at all, yet there was so much of it, such long, sharp blades of grass—“lalang,” something whispered in her mind—and weeds bursting through the asphalt of the road.