‘What are you talking about?’

‘The way you behaved to me on the way back from Bellavista. The way you talked to me this evening. I won’t have it.’ She could feel herself shaking.

‘I told you I was sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did.’

‘And I told you it wasn’t what you did, but what you said afterwards. How do you imagine it made me feel? To be told that it was the sight of another woman’s pregnancy that made you want to have relations with me. You made me feel like… I’m just a … just … a brood mare on a farm. I am not an animal. I am a human being.’ Tears of rage ran down her cheeks and she hauled herself up into a sitting position.

Douglas said nothing. He turned away from her and walked out of the room closing the door quietly behind him.

When he was gone, Evie hugged her arms around her. She couldn’t believe she’d just said all that. But it had to be said. If he decided to call a stop to their joke of a marriage, so be it. He could send her back to England. She’d be glad if he did. Anything would be better than feeling the way he made her feel. She thumped the pillow with her fist. How had she ever harboured the delusion that they could make this marriage work?

12

The following morning, Evie went to speak to Aunty Mimi about the menu for the dinner. It was immediately apparent that the Chinese woman already knew of Douglas’s plans and had decided with the cook what the menu would be. Evie left the house, feeling superfluous.

As tonight could well prove to be her swan song in Penang and in her brief marriage, she was determined to look her best. There wasn’t time to follow Veronica’s advice about using her local Indian tailor, so she decided to go to a dress shop that Mary Helston had mentioned, which sold ready-made garments.

She took the road along the coast to get there – about a fifteen-minute walk. Evie loved seeing the marine traffic on the busy strait that divided the island from Butterworth. Sampans with strange pleated sails were dotted about on the azure blue water, interspersed with the curved straw roofs of junks. Beyond, plumes of smoke rose from steamer funnels – the ferry to Butterworth and an array of small tramp steamers carrying goods around the Straits Settlements and Sumatra and on towards Java, Ceylon and India.

Lines of palm trees alternated with telegraph poles and bright bursts of orange from the flame-of-the-forest trees along Marine Drive. Bicycles, rickshaws, motorcars and small vans wove between each other and occasional ox carts with their palm-leaf canopies protecting sugar cane, coconuts, or vegetables, stacked in precarious towering piles. In between the various vehicles, people hurried along, on foot and on bicycles or in rickshaws, many wearing wide straw coolie hats tied under their chins. Evie noticed a Malay woman standing beside a water pump, trying to scrub the dirt off her small wriggling children. A grassy sward separated the road from the beach, where the golden sands were lapped by the whispering waves of a calm blue sea.