Selwyn-Clarke had convinced the new governor replacing Sakai, Governor Rensuke Isogai, not to put him in the civilian internment camp at Stanley for humanitarian reasons. True to his word, Selwyn-Clarke had avoided the underground resistance work of the partisan British Army Aid Group. Working with the compassionate Christian interpreter Kiyoshi “Uncle John” Watanabe, he’d smuggled anti-diphtheria serum into the POW camp at Sham Shui Po and brought it to the civilian POW camp at Stanley, along with food, bandages, vitamins, and medical instruments. He’d helped Isogai control the cholera outbreak in the city, so Isogai had grudgingly let him operate and turned a blind eye to the less legal parts of his operation.

Emily and I had both been working with him since February under the supervision my old friend, Dr Lai Po-Chuen, who had graduated a year ahead of me. We helped Selwyn-Clarke gather medicines from stashes hidden before the invasion, as well drugs provided by friendly Chinese chemists, and distributed the aid to patients throughout the city. The brave among our humanitarian group, including William Courchene, took them even to the gates of the internment camps at Stanley and Sham Shui Po and placed them in the hands of interned doctors and nurses to administer to the gaunt and ragged prisoners. Sometimes, too, we helped the refugees from mainland China who lived in the ditches and in squatter villages on the hillsides and were slowly dying of starvation, dysentery, cholera, and abuse. Their lives were wretched beyond my powers of description. I saw an old woman on the street once, tormented by Japanese soldiers. In front of her, they burned the meagre bundle of sticks she’d spent the whole day gathering. She berated them for it, and they beat her to death.

More than medicine, the people needed food. We did what we could. I tried to see the people beyond their numbers and their suffering, but my heart was not big enough. I moved through the streets and did my work. I would come back home, try to eat supper, and then vomit the few bites I’d been able to choke down. Kathy Duffy, also working for Selwyn-Clarke, told me I had to separate my feelings from my work or I would go mad, like Edward Kerrison, the health officer charged with disposing of all the bodies of the dead.

Emily, though she had no medical training, had proven an able nurse, even after her attack at St Stephen’s. Now, though, her pregnancy was so advanced that she couldn’t do much, and Selwyn-Clarke had told her numerous times to stay home.

“What would I do there, Doc?” she said, smiling past the lipstick she applied daily to keep her spirits up. “I’d be bored silly.”