I tried to explain all this to Peggy, while she waited for her parents to sail from Tsingtao. I gave her the presents of clothes that I had bought at Sincere’s, the latest American lipsticks, nylon stockings, and a box of Swiss chocolates. I was happy to be with her again in the children’s hut, watching her try on her new makeup. Through the rouge and lipstick a vivid woman’s face appeared, more beautiful than all the prostitutes at the Park Hotel. I wanted to embrace her and thank her for everything she had done for me, but we knew each other too well. Already I felt that she had begun to free herself from the camp and that we would soon grow apart.

Casually, I described the death of the young Chinese. When I finished, hiding my feelings behind a liqueur chocolate, I realised that I had made him sound like myself.

“Jamie, you should never have gone.” Peggy settled a small child into its cot. “We did try to stop you.”

“I had to go back to Shanghai. You know, I was really looking for Sergeant Nagata…”

“Those soldiers might have killed you.”

“They didn’t need to—I wasn’t ready for them.”

“Jamie, they didn’t touch you! You walked away from them.”

“I suppose I did—I keep thinking I should have stayed. Peggy, they wouldn’t have hurt me.”

Already she could see that I was disappointed.

*   *   *

At the end of October, as I left the Cathay Hotel after lunch with my mother, I shared a taxi with two American navy pilots who were trying to find the Del Monte Casino. I guided the Chinese driver to the Avenue Haig, only to find that the casino had been ransacked by the Japanese in the last days of the war. As we left the taxi, looking at the shattered windows and the broken glass on the steps, I noticed David Hunter hailing the driver from the lobby of Imperial Mansions, a run-down apartment building across the street in which several brothels operated.