After a while, I whispered, ‘That is what happened to Saffie. What I felt, she felt. She was placed under the ground…small and alone. It is what happened…’

‘Yes,’ Mohktar said. ‘It is what happened.’ He rubbed my arms as if to warm them. Then he held me away to look at me.

‘Nikki? Why did you keep shouting at Saffie, “Say, you don’t remember him. Say you don’t remember him.” What did you mean? That you did remember him? That you had seen him somewhere before?’

I clutched his arms. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’

Mohktar laid me gently back on the pillow and took my hands firmly between his own. ‘Nikki, you do know. You do know. Why do you think Saffie took you on her last journey? Not to punish you for not being with her, but to show you something. There is something she wants you to remember.’

I stared past him, willing myself somewhere a long way away. I lay without moving for what seemed a long time. I heard Mohktar swallow. I thought he too was conscious of the silent house and of Fleur somewhere beyond us, stilled and breathless, waiting.

‘The dress,’ I whispered. ‘It was the dress. I always wore the dress with pink roses and Saffie always wore the one with blue. She was wearing my dress, you see…’

I felt Mohktar freeze. The very air around us was alive with tension.

He didn’t want to rush me. He was trying to give me time to say the words that stuck in my throat. He was so still, James Mohktar, waiting. When I was silent, he said gently but firmly, ‘Nikki? You must tell me.’

‘She was wearing my dress that afternoon. It had a torn pocket. When he saw her he thought it was me…’

‘Who? Why did it matter which one of you it was? Where had you seen him before?’

How could a fleeting image lie etched forever on my heart when I did not even understand until now the implications of what I had seen?

I closed my eyes. ‘It was one afternoon…I was ill. Mum and Saffie had gone off somewhere in the car…I think to the dentist…I can’t remember. I was left with Ah Heng, although it was supposed to be her day off.

‘She always slept in the afternoons so she took me to her room, although Mum didn’t allow it when she was at home. I had a temperature and I was hot and Ah Heng’s small room was claustrophobic. She always closed her shutters and door when she was sleeping. I picked up the dress she had put on the chair for me, the one with the pink rosebuds, and I left her sleeping and I walked across the garden and up the steps which led to the kitchen.

‘I was going to my own bed when I heard a noise from Mum and Dad’s bedroom. I was so happy…I thought, Mummy’s back!