‘No,’ Nikki said. ‘There’s just me.’

But James Mohktar thought he caught a flicker of something in the woman’s eyes. He saw also that she was growing paler and paler with tiredness. He said, ‘OK, lah. Enough for now. We will go to your mother’s hotel room and then I will let you rest.’

‘Are you OK?’ Jack asked Nikki anxiously as they got into the police car.

Nikki tried to smile. ‘I’m OK, just tired. The police are only doing their job. Actually, I’m surprised they are spending so much time on this. I thought a missing western woman wouldn’t be high on their list of priorities. I’m impressed.’

Jack didn’t say what had crossed his mind. That the policeman was sure this would turn out to be a murder inquiry.

Nikki stood looking at Fleur’s belongings sitting in the impersonal hotel room, just as she had left them. Cosmetics and washing things in the bathroom, case open but fully packed. A dress and a pair of trousers hanging in the wardrobe; a pair of comfortable shoes beneath, obviously ones she wore on the flight. A paracetamol packet on her bedside table next to a half-finished bottle of mineral water. The small clock she carried everywhere.

Her book and the vague whiff of Fleur’s scent. Nikki moved closer to the bed. Mourning Ruby, by Helen Dunmore. On the cover, a small girl in a red dress was running through autumn leaves. She had plump brown legs, small feet encased in plimsolls.

Mourning Ruby.

The pain was like being hit suddenly with a cricket bat. Fleur, like Nikki, still mourned. Each and every day of her life.

Mum. Mum.

Nikki crumpled on the floor and wept.

ELEVEN

Fleur’s only instinct was flight. Blind flight towards a place that had lain in her mind all these years. Distraught, fighting panic and finding herself back on Orchard Road in the noise of the traffic, with the crowds jostling and banging into her, she lifted her hand for a taxi. ‘The railway station, please.’

As they sat in traffic she felt as if she had been thrown suddenly into a bad dream. She wanted to wake up. She wanted to wake up and find Fergus beside her, gently nudging her awake, saying gently, Fleur, Fleur, you’re dreaming.

She stumbled out of the taxi and into the station. Hardly coherent, she asked if there was a train to Port Dickson.

‘Only to Seremban. Then you take taxi or bus to P.D. You go now, left, to the other side of station. Quick, train coming.’ The Chinese man in the ticket kiosk flapped his hand vaguely to her right and an incoming train.

Fleur ran for the nearest platform and waited for people to pour off, then she climbed in. The carriages were old and people pressed and pushed behind her to get on. She found a window seat and sat down. Too late she realised she had no water. Maybe someone would come round with drinks. She tried not to think about her dry mouth. The carriage was rapidly filling up with Malays and Tamils; all talking and laughing, bowed down with shopping and going home to their kampongs.