I was sure Selwyn-Clarke had noticed the shifting cloud pattern of her bruises and knew what they signified, because he didn’t press her. He gave her ledgers to work on so she wouldn’t have to stand or move around.

Tonight, Emily wanted to sleep on the cot at medical HQ. “I’m so tired, I can’t walk back,” she told Lai Po-Chuen.

The young woman doctor gave me a helpless look.

I shrugged. “It’s safe enough here. I’ll stay with her. Old Mah is getting on my nerves anyway.” Himself distraught, he had begun sleeping at the Stable in my dead mother’s bed again. It seemed to comfort him. He talked to me too, more than he ever had in his entire life up ’til now. So, while Emily suffered from too much hate, I suffered from too much love, in a strange reversal of how things had been before the war. “There is no need for you to risk your life in the way you do, Violet. I didn’t work so hard for you to suffer in ditches and doorways with those dirty coolies!” he would say. And Amah would back him up. “Listen to your father, ViVi! You can play doctor when peace comes again! Why risk your life when there is no need?” War surely turns the order of things upside down.

Courchene, the soldier I had pulled from the horror at St Stephen’s, said he would stay and protect us. With his black hair and high cheekbones, he’d been passing as Eurasian these past several months, and continued to move through the city in civilian garb, making secret medical deliveries to his fellow Winnipeg Grenadiers interned at Sham Shui Po. He always knew exactly what was needed, and he never forgot a thing. I could see from the start that he was sweet on Emily, and remained so even as her pregnancy became obvious.

Dr Lai rolled her eyes. She could see it too. She also knew that I was a better shot than Courchene, because she’d seen us practising. If there was any protecting to be done, I would be the one doing it. Not that either Courchene or I stood much of a chance in the face of the Kempeitai’s numbers and organized ruthlessness. “Please yourself,” she said. “You know where to hide if the gendarmes show up.” We had built several hiding places: one under floorboards in the clinic, and one through the false back of an armoire, which led to a hiding place behind the wall. These would serve us far better than Courchene’s bravado or my shooting skill. “Violet, you have to pick up potassium permanganate at Chemist Chang’s in the morning, so don’t stay up too late.”