Lotus looked very directly at Li. It seemed important to her that he believe her. “They said there was heroin in my bag. But I have never taken heroin in all my life, Li Yan. I swear to the sky.”

Li was uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. “Then, like Yongli said, they must have made a mistake. Maybe it was someone else’s bag.”

“What’s going on?” Margaret asked, disconcerted that the conversation had lapsed into Chinese. She sensed a tension in their words.

“It’s nothing important,” Li said. “History. We’re only looking forward now, not back.” His words were for Lotus and Yongli more than for Margaret.

A terrific crash from outside startled them all. Li sprang forward and immediately extinguished the candle. The darkness that engulfed them felt almost tangible, as if they could reach out and wrap it around them. All they could hear was the pounding of the rain on the roof and the tug, tug, tug of the wind at the wooden boards on the window. Margaret heard someone shuffle carefully across the floor and into the outer room. Lotus’s breathing was quick and close beside her. She reached out and found her hand and held it, and felt Lotus grasp her arm with her other hand, fingers squeezing tightly.

The faintest grey light gave form to the room around them as they heard the front door scrape open. Margaret saw Yongli cross the room to the inner door, where he stooped to pick up a length of wood and hold it like a club. Then the door banged shut and they were plunged again into a darkness that was frightening in its density. The rasp of a match on sandpaper, a tiny explosion and a flare of light burned into the black, and Li came back through shielding the flame from the draught of his movement. “Tiles off the roof,” he said, and stooped to relight the candle. None of them had realised, until then, just how stretched their nerves all were.

Yongli dropped the chunk of wood he had been clutching and squinted at his watch. “Anyway, it is time we were going,” he said.

III