After they moved to the capital in the wake of Governor Kawashima, newly promoted to Superintendent-General of the Metropolitan Police, Shirakawa had become an important official at the Metropolitan Police Agency and was rumored to be living in high style on the taxes privately collected from the Yoshiwara gay quarters. Suga’s mother would flush with gratification at stories that showed Suga cherished as a daughter in the home of this government official now at the height of his influence, but tales such as that brought by the gardener would set her anxiously listing to herself the family members other than Shirakawa. His wife, his daughter, the maids, the houseboy – suddenly she would see them all as hostile to Suga, and would long to fold in her arms the daughter thus trapped amid the thorns.

Whatever would happen to Suga if a new concubine came and the master’s affections were diverted to her? At the time when she had first plunged her only daughter into such a situation, the mother had turned to Tomo as her only hope, beseeching her before she took her away to take a personal interest in the girl’s welfare.

‘If it should ever happen that the master’s affections strayed and he got tired of her … The very thought of what would happen to her keeps me awake at night.’

As she sat listening, so correct with her hands clasped in her lap and not a seam of her kimono out of place, Tomo felt a profound sympathy for this woman whose very self-preoccupation and forgetfulness of all but her maternal love struck forcefully to her heart. It was all part of the strange role she had undertaken in coming, at her husband’s command, to select a mistress for him that she should thus have encountered the devotion of a woman forced to sell her daughter and have thereby acquired another painful fetter on her heart.

‘Try not to worry. However my husband’s feelings may change I’ll see to it that Suga doesn’t go in need. How could I do otherwise when I’m taking home such a respectable girl? Come, now – you must have faith in me.’

At this, the mother’s last shreds of self-control had vanished and she had prostrated herself before Tomo. Hearing the clumsy, halting words with which she sobbed out her thanks, Tomo had had to fight back the bitter tears that came welling up.

Suga’s mother remembered all this now. She felt an urgent desire to meet Tomo and have her confirm once more what she had said then, but when it came to the test she had lost her nerve and come to see Kin instead.