‘Humour me, Mrs Hatton,’ he said, arms folded now, antagonistic, the smile gone. ‘What about cracks in your marriage before this happened?’

I dared not look him in the eye.

I had thought I had everything: a beautiful house in Rangoon, a caring husband, my old childhood home in England, and a garden I had laboured over day after day. I knew nothing of cracks within our marriage, except for the one noticeably large one, but I was not about to admit an indiscretion to the policeman.

‘Mrs Hatton?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you love your husband?’

The silence went on a fraction too long.

The servants must have told him I’d been acting strangely since Elvira’s birth. It’s hard to remember clearly. All I know is I loved her so much I thought my heart might burst and yet … those bouts of crying I was unable to soothe. They tore me in two. No matter what I did, I could not comfort her, nor could I control myself. I wept continuously and felt so ashamed I would often go to the summer house to hide my face.

As for what happened to Elvira … I don’t know.

9.

Gloria hadn’t mentioned it was to be a moonlight party and Belle was thrown when she noticed the poster on the front gate also stated admission was by formal invitation only. She could hear the muted hum of conversation drifting, she guessed, from the other side of the building. As she pushed open the gate a Chinese woman stepped out from a gloomy office and held out her hand.

‘I haven’t got an invitation card,’ Belle said. ‘But I was invited.’

The woman shook her head. ‘Card only,’ she said in heavily accented English.

Belle wondered what to do. ‘Mrs de Clemente invited me. Could you maybe go round and look for her?’

The woman shrugged but didn’t move.

It had been an exceptionally long day and Belle was tired. She’d woken early and, although she had invited Rebecca to have coffee with her, the girl hadn’t turned up at the café. Later there’d been long rehearsals with the band and the dancers. Most nights the dancers performed their routines with the orchestra but on show nights they worked up a routine to go with the numbers Belle sang. She had to dance with them too and the rehearsal had been tough. They had been professional but distant and she’d experienced a few moments of panic when she’d thought they might deliberately wrong-foot her, but in the end the show had gone well and, glad it was over, Belle felt relieved.

But she’d expended a great deal of nervous energy and, as the Chinese woman had now turned away, she decided to cut her losses, return to her room and go straight to bed. It didn’t matter.