“Everyone in Lunghua…” Mr. Hyashi began, as if addressing the assembled camp. He searched for a phrase, and then let the air leak from his lungs, visibly resigned that he would never master this strange language and its stranger people. Covered in blood, Mariner was lying across the table, but the Ralstons were still uncowed, ready to provoke the Japanese and force them to do their worst. I admired them for their courage, as much as I admired the Japanese. I never understood why the only brave Britishers were the ones I was never allowed to meet, while the officers my mother and her friends danced with at the country club had surrendered without a shot at Singapore.

Mr. Hyashi pointed to me and turned a wavering forefinger towards the door. Five minutes later I was back in the children’s hut, regaling Peggy and an astonished Mrs. Dwight with the saga of my attempted escape.

*   *   *

On the following day the first American daylight raid took place over Shanghai. From airfields near Chungking, Flying Fortress bombers attacked the dockyards at Yangtzepoo. At last the war was coming home to the Japanese. As they strengthened the antiaircraft defences of Lunghua airfield all concern for the escape attempt was forgotten. After a night in the guardhouse cells the three men returned to convalesce on their bunks in E Block. A shocked David Hunter, his face still bruised, watched me from the window of his parents’ room, refusing to wave back to me as I stood on the parade ground.

To my relief, no one learned of my attempt to break into the food store. The Japanese cemented the bricks into the wall, assuming that the escaping prisoners had tried to supply themselves with rations for their long cross-country walk to the Chinese lines four hundred miles away.

To anyone who would believe me, I pretended that I had joined the escape party at the last moment. Mrs. Dwight expected nothing less, but Peggy shook her head over my boasts in her kindly, sceptical way. She knew that I was too wedded to Lunghua to want to leave it, that my entire world had been shaped by the camp, and that I had found a special freedom which I had never known in Shanghai.

One day the war would end, but for the time being I was busy learning to cope with the stony couple whose room I shared. Around my bunk I constructed a small hutch, where I tried to re-create the peaceful interior of the food store. Sitting on the ash tip as Mr. Sangster tossed the evening’s coals at my feet, I waited for the American bombs to set fire to the sky and thought of the white dust and the cracking coffins in the Avenue Edward VII.