My grandmother’s words stayed with me, lodged just under the skin. I wasn’t able to comprehend the meaning fully then, but I saved those words, took them out and repeated them over and over to myself as I grew up.

I looked betray up in the dictionary: Deceive, delude, dazzle, beguile, play false, double-cross, distort, falsify, break faith. Break faith.

Then I looked up betrayed and one word jumped out: heartbroken.

We listened to the whispers, Saffie and I, while Ah Heng tried to divert us. Adult conversations sotto voce in the stilled and shuttered army quarter when the inquiry into my dad’s death was going on.

Was it the weather or had David made an error of judgement in flying home that night? Was pilot error contributory?

Heartbroken. My little private wound grew a healthy scab that I scratched often in the coming months and years. When Fergus and Fleur first got together I made it bleed.

My father was exonerated from any blame, but I remembered. I remembered creeping out of bed one night at one of my parents’ numerous parties and watching in the dark and shuttered corridor Fleur dancing with Fergus. Their eyes were shut and their heads were close together as they held each other tight.

TWENTY-FIVE

James Mohktar walked along the beach path towards the house where the two women were staying. As he climbed the wooden steps to the bungalow he could see Inspector Blythe inside talking to Mrs Campbell. The girl was not in the room. Mohktar turned and looked towards the sea. Although he could not see her in the fading light, he retreated back down the steps and walked towards the rocks and the forest path which led up to the lighthouse.

He had not passed her from the direction he had come but he thought she would most likely be at this end of the beach. As he drew near the rocks he saw her sitting very still looking out to sea. There was something alarming, a little unnatural in her stillness. In his experience few people managed to stay without fidgeting or moving their hands for long. This girl could.

He moved warily closer, deliberately advertising his approach so that he would not startle her. ‘Miss Montrose,’ he said. ‘Selamat malam. Good evening.’

She turned his way. In the dark he could not read her expression, but he felt sorrow emanating from her like something tangible he could reach out and touch.

‘How are you?’ he asked gently. ‘How are you?’

Her hands dropped to her lap as if she was relinquishing something precious. ‘I guess I’ve been conjuring ghosts. It’s being here, in Malaysia again. Heat and smell are evocative. They don’t change, do they?’

‘You had happy times here?’

‘Before my father was killed we came here often, the four of us and sometimes Ah Heng, our amah…’

The girl smiled suddenly, a sweet smile that changed her face. ‘I think when we were small sometimes we loved our amah almost more than our mother.’