The smells as the doors were thrown open were as she remembered. Shimmering wet heat, petrol, and spices. No frangipani this time; the vague, pervading scent of blossom was missing.

Fleur sat in an airport bus as the rain sprayed out from the wheels, splashing cyclists. The luggage, balanced precariously at the front, wobbled and swung behind the driver. The heat was swallowed behind cloud and air-conditioning. The other passengers were as dazed and tired as Fleur, and the bus was oddly silent.

Fleur, looking out at a changed landscape, still felt she knew the basic geography of it. She had driven so often on this Changi Road, to the sailing club, to the military hospital, to see friends. She supposed all the buildings must still be there in a different guise. Was the prison still standing; the atmosphere around it heavy with despair and death; full of the ghosts of captured servicemen imprisoned there by the Japanese in the Second World War.

As they reached the outskirts of the city she recognised the long Bukit Timar Road and thought she remembered some of the older buildings hidden beneath and between vast skyscrapers. Land reclamation started so long ago had continued and the city had spread out into places once underwater. Spread out and out and up.

The bus weaved in and out of the fronts of hotels, dropping passengers and their spreading pools of luggage in front of ornate glass doors with tall turbaned Indian porters. Fleur and two couples were the last to be dropped off at the Hilton in Orchard Road. An old couple who looked on the point of collapse and a young, possibly honeymoon, couple. They all smiled wanly at each other, tiredness and jetlag making everything distant.

The young couple hauled their suitcases up the hotel steps before the porters had time to rush out with their trolleys and admonish them for even thinking of seeing to their own luggage. Fleur and the old couple stood waiting, knowing, unlike England, that their cases would be loaded carefully onto a trolley, and when they had checked in they would be seen efficiently into the lift and up to their rooms.

Once in her room the young Malaysian porter showed Fleur how everything worked and she dived into her bag to tip him, trying to find her Singapore dollars. The porter held his hand up. ‘Later, later, you tired, Mem.’

Fleur smiled gratefully and thanked him. ‘Terima kasih.’

He gave her a wide smile. ‘Sama-sama. Selamat tidur.’

‘Selamat tidur.’

Night was approaching. Fleur went to the window and looked down on Orchard Road, at the streams of traffic heading home or into the city to eat and shop. The pavements were full of people and the volume would increase as the night wore on. Singapore was a city for serious shoppers.

She had wanted to be in the centre of the city where she could walk to shop for presents for Nikki and Jack. Right here, in the centre where, even after all this time, much would be familiar. Fleur smiled, leaving the curtains open, and went to the fridge and took out water. Then she had a shower and lay on the bed, the hum of the air-conditioning masking the noise of anything outside the room.