‘Okay.’ She seemed reassured, reaching to pat the cat. ‘Tomorrow I get to turn the pages when Miss Thomas reads our story.’

‘That’s wonderful. When you come home I’d love you to tell Nana and me all about it.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Daisy’s eyes closed and she snuggled down to sleep.

*

After the long day she’d had and the emotional afternoon with Daisy, Grace decided to have an early night. As she climbed into bed, she remembered the book Andy had given her. A bit of escapism was exactly what she needed, she thought, and after the good rap Steve had given it, Revolt in Paradise sounded like just the thing. Snuggling down under the covers, she opened K’tut’s memoir. The pages were thick and starting to yellow. She breathed in that old-paper smell, one she’d always loved. Flicking through to the first page, she began to read . . .

This is the story of a white woman who lived for fifteen years in Indonesia – living, not visiting – knowing the country and its people, from the highest to the lowest, and sharing their joys and their sorrows. This woman is myself. Which makes it more difficult for the telling because it is always difficult to be completely honest about oneself.

I spent the first fourteen years of my life on the Isle of Man, and then I went to school in Scotland. My stepfather was killed in the First World War. After his death my mother decided to go to the United States. We settled in Hollywood . . .

I myself was really an artist. It was largely through chance that I became successful in another field. I found myself writing interviews and articles about the film stars and the high moguls of Hollywood which were published abroad in British trade and film magazines. Yet I became increasingly restless. I was discontented. I was unhappy. I often wished that I was an archaeologist and would thus have a real excuse for going to far places. I thought the people I knew shallow and superficial. Their aims, their ambitions, were wholly apart from my own.

I must now come to the year 1932, which is another beginning for my story – perhaps the one that matters most. It was a rainy afternoon. I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard. I stopped before a small theater showing a foreign film and on the spur of the moment decided to go in. The film was entitled Goona Goona, The Last Paradise.

I became entranced. The picture was aglow with an agrarian pattern of peace, contentment, beauty and love. Yes, I had found my life. I recognized the place where I wished to be. My decision was sudden but it was irrevocable. It was as if fate had brushed my shoulder. I felt a compulsion, from which I had no desire to escape . . .