Yongli was looking around for the waitress from earlier, but she was nowhere to be seen. He seemed uncommonly agitated. “Where’s that damn girl gone?” He tutted with irritation. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“No hurry,” Lotus said. “I’m in good hands.” She did not take her eyes from Li. Yongli hurried away across the gallery towards the stairs. “You got a cigarette?” she asked. Li was aware of her strong Beijing accent, tongue curled back in the mouth to create the distinctive “R” sound that formed almost in the throat. He held a pack open for her. She took one and he lit it. She drew deeply on it, threw her head back and blew a jet of smoke towards the ceiling. Then she levelled her gaze again and said, “You don’t like me much, do you?”

Li was taken aback by her directness. He had only met her a couple of times previously. He had always been polite, keeping, he had thought, his disapproval to himself. Perhaps Yongli had spoken to her of his friend’s feelings, or maybe she simply knew, by instinct, how a policeman might regard her. There seemed little point in denying it. “No,” he said bluntly.

No sign of emotion rippled her exterior calm. She maintained a steady eye contact. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know what you do. And I know what you are. That’s enough.”

When Yongli met her she had been working the joint-venture tourist hotels, raking in a high dollar income from wealthy businessmen with a taste for Asian girls. She had been based at the Jingtan when he started there as a chef the previous year, and he fell for her immediately.

“What I was,” she said evenly. “What I did.”

“I see,” Li said coldly. “So what you earn here as a singer allows you to maintain the same income and lifestyle as before? That what you tell Ma Yongli, is it?”

She suddenly leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. “Don’t you dare judge me!” she snapped. “You know nothing about me. You don’t know what kind of life I’ve had, what kind of shit I’ve been through. I do what I have to do to survive. I don’t always like me. But Yongli does. He always has. And he’s never judged me. He treats me like no one’s ever treated me before. Like a princess. And there’s not many girls get to feel like that in their lives.” She leaned back in her chair, breathing deeply to regain her composure. Then she said, quietly, “So if you think I’m bad for him, or that I don’t love him, you’re wrong. I’ve never loved anyone so much in my life. And I’d never do anything to hurt him.”