Her guide handed her a pineapple with its top cut off and a wooden spoon with which to eat it. Soon enough her fingers were sticky with juice, but she didn’t dare dip them in the river to wash them because she’d been warned there were alligators in the water.

They were approaching the town of Kuching, and she strained her gaze down the river for her first glimpse of the town’s tiled houses. But a different sight met her eyes. Instead of the village, Half Moon House sprawled there on the riverbank, its windows gazing sadly down at her through the thickets of the mangrove swamp. It was unmistakeably her home, but not as she remembered it. The windows were choked with leaves and the roof was crawling with vines. Dark feathers and strange flowers clogged the chimney pots. The doors were covered with mushrooms and moss. It was being swallowed up by nature.

Beatrice jerked upright. ‘That house!’ she gasped, pointing it out to her guide. ‘Where did it come from?’

She frowned. How strange that she hadn’t stuttered once. There was a flurry of wings overhead and she looked up, expecting to see a Pacific golden plover or a Bornean wren kingfisher, but the blue dome of sky was empty of colourful plumage. Instead a lone raven circled like a vulture, croaking out its ugly cry. It was quickly joined by a second raven, then another and another, until the sky darkened with black feathers.

‘What house?’ a voice enquired.

But it wasn’t her guide who’d spoken; it was her father. Beatrice looked back to see him sprawled in the boat where the guide had been moments before. His long legs were stretched in front of him and he held a newspaper in his hands.

‘I am ashamed to call you my daughter today,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the paper. ‘Because of you, your mother left this earth broken-hearted. You are a wicked child …’

Beatrice closed her eyes. Her mother’s wasted face rose up in her mind. There had been a flickering light of pleasure in her expression when the bed curtain first parted to reveal her daughter, but Beatrice had extinguished it the moment she stepped back. Once again she saw her mother’s tired face crumple with raw hurt.

‘Oh, please …’

The hand reached towards her, seeking comfort that Beatrice had been too cowardly to give. She heard that cry once again as she turned her back on the person who had loved her most in the world, and ran from the room. If only she could do it once more, she would behave so differently. She would take her mother’s dear hand and hold it tight, and keep on holding it, right up until the very end. The weight of the regret felt like a great boulder that she must carry upon her shoulders for the rest of her life.