She staggered to the bathroom and was sick. She made herself get under a cool shower, then wrapped herself in the hotel bathrobe and switched up the air-conditioning. She went to the small fridge and got out a bottle of water, checking that the seal was intact. She had not eaten anything except toast so it had to be the water, possibly the Malay woman’s on the train.

Fleur knew there was nothing she could do until this passed. She swallowed two codeine tablets and got back into bed. For hours her stomach contracted painfully and she staggered to the bathroom and back until she was shaking with exhaustion. Finally, she fell into a deep sleep and slept all that day, only waking to sip water. She was aware of someone knocking to clean her room and then go away again.

Fleur slept through the next night and woke in the unfamiliar hotel room with a cry in the early hours of the morning. Her fever had gone and her stomach was merely empty. She remembered where she was with a start. It was cold and she turned the air-conditioning off. A picture of the twins kissing on a dry lawn with Ah Heng standing in the background against a great burst of bougainvillaea stayed painfully with her.

She showered, made tea and ate the packet of biscuits on the tray. In the mirror she saw a thin, pale and haggard woman and turned quickly away. Fleur dressed, gathered her things into the Malaysian bag and left it on the bed. She went downstairs where, even in the early hours of a new day, the hotel breathed and lived a life of its own. She ignored the glances of the Malay girl on duty and went outside and woke up a sleeping taxi driver and asked him to take her to Cape Rachado.

As they drove, the sun was edging up over the sea in a familiar blaze of beautiful bruised colour. Fleur ached to be at the place where her daughter had been pulled from the earth. She needed to see and touch and gather up Saffie’s remains, to keep them safe; to take her on her long journey home.

She did not stop to think that it might not be Saffie that the workmen had found, but someone else’s child. It never entered her head that the white bones found lying in that small grave were not her missing daughter.

SIXTEEN

James Mohktar stood looking down into the shallow grave. The ticker tape attached to metal rods surrounding this tiny piece of jungle blew gently, drooped and made the site look forlorn and forgotten. The colour of it jarred against the merging greens; a flash of white and red, signalling alarm.

Dawn was coming. In the distance, beyond the trees full of monkeys screeching noisily, lay the sea. Mohktar sat on a boulder and poured himself tea from a flask. It was like being a child again. He missed these familiar sounds living in the middle of a city. Cicadas you could hear everywhere, even in a town, but you could not listen to the distant sound of the jungle coming alive and stirring with vibrant morning life.