She thought it a pity they did not still have the rack. She could quite easily have stretched that girl until she told the truth. What made it all worse was that Li Min was back in the village, her family drawing wages from the company — George’s former company.

Blanche had seen the bitch and talked — crossed swords — with her several times, each time remembering what George had described as the look of triumph in the girl’s eyes. Blanche had seen that same gloating look and after several infuriatingly useless confrontations had said to her, ‘Your eyes tell the truth.’

The girl had sniggered. ‘Eyes do not talk,’ she replied in a low, malicious tone.

Blanche had stepped closer to the girl and said, ‘Just look into mine.’

The girl had raised her eyes, a supercilious expression of scorn on her face. A second later her mouth had dropped open and she had taken a step away from the Englishwoman. The moment had been satisfying, but had achieved nothing, Blanche reminded herself.

Then, as if conjured by her thoughts, she saw the girl walking towards the new young manager, Ira Coole, who swept off his hat as he saw her approaching. My God! You’ve got a lot to learn, she thought and, looking at the girl, promised, I’ll get you. If it takes all the time I have left, I’ll get you.

The girl was laughing like a coquette. She had reason to feel pleased; a smart cookie, making up to the new young manager. Having seen the last imprisoned, this one should be a pushover! Avoiding clichés did not seem so important these days, Blanche admitted to herself.

When Blanche and Liz had arrived for George’s possessions, the acned new recruit had made them feel like pariahs. He had spoken of how much George had cost the company and ‘now there is the matter of compensation for the girl and her family’. Liz had caught her mother’s arm as she seemed about to hurl herself at the young man’s throat. ‘I think you should go about your business,’ her daughter had advised the nervous bureaucrat.

She watched as the Chinese girl went off waving cheerily back to the raw young American, who then glanced nervously up the hill. Probably wondering what we’re taking and if he dares come and see. She felt certain that Bukit Kinta would not be attacked again; the girl’s presence plus the ease with which the new manager could be duped probably ensured that.

‘It feels as if it is what I am about.’ Liz seemed to lay the words on top of the clothes she was smoothing, layering them gently. As her mother looked at her questioningly after the long silence, she added, ‘Going back — being defeated.’

‘Not defeated,’ Blanche said firmly. ‘We’re never that until — ’

‘We’re dead,’ Liz supplied and sighed. ‘That’s what I mean: defeated, finished, extinguished … ’

‘Liz!’ her mother said sharply to stop the run of negatives, then softened her voice to add, ‘I wish you would stay on.’

She paused, ‘sick at heart’ were the words that came to mind when she studied her daughter. It tore her heart to see her daughter so stricken, so enervated. She tried to lighten the mood. ‘And it was you who wanted to come back!’

‘All my loves have gone now,’ Liz said.

Blanche wanted to say, ‘But not all those who love you’, but she knew exactly what her daughter meant. Her relationship with her father had been special for many reasons, probably because when he returned on leave he came as a cross between a hero and Father Christmas. During the war they had all lived from leave to leave rather than observing the normal calendar festivities. This new beginning in Malaya was supposed to have been permanent, a final settling.

And to this young man, Blanche could not forget him sitting, his rifle propped between his knees, on the back of the lorry coming from Ipoh station. Seeing him there had been like a kind of recognition. She remembered how Neville had haunted her after she had seen him for the first time at a friend’s house playing tennis, in white with a red striped scarf for a belt. She should have recognised the omens too; tropical whites on a hot summer’s day, the arty scarf, the sunny unbusinesslike nature.

‘I need you, you know.’ Blanche closed her full suitcase, ending her dreams, with a businesslike click of the locks.

‘You?’ Liz looked at her with surprise.

She nodded. ‘I really do. I’d feel very alone ... ’ She did not elaborate. It occurred to her that she ought to present a plan, as she had done in school holidays: today we’ll go to the park, tomorrow you can help hoe the onions — it was expected of mothers.

‘Your aunt Ivy has written to say she feels Wendy should be allowed to come out. She says Wendy should have the opportunity to come to Rinsey, to put flowers on her father’s grave, to mourn at the place. Ivy says the girl is ... all right though not quite herself. She thinks Wendy should be with us for a time at least.’

She paused but when Liz made no reply she went on. ‘I have decided that in spite of any danger she should come out for the Christmas holidays. She should see her father’s grave, Liz, don’t you think?’

Liz had picked up a handful of pens and pencils from George’s desk and tapped them into an orderly bundle. The mine’s books had been rather ostentatiously whisked away when they entered the bungalow. She reflected that she had kept the rubber accounts ever since work had restarted at Rinsey — but that could easily be taken over by one of the foremen.

She patted the points of the pencils into line. She had sketched nothing, nor wanted to, since Alan had been reported missing, presumed killed. Drawing had been part of her life for as long as she could remember. Her first memory of her father was sitting on his knee and being helped to draw a monkey hanging from their tree. There was no more sketching, no pleasure in her life any more. She was just amazed that they went on doing things like getting up, going to bed, dealing with the business, eating. ‘You’re asking me to stay until after Christmas,’ she stated.

‘And you don’t want to?’

Liz imagined that distance might ease her grief, that she might leave behind this tortured creature she had become. ‘You have Anna and her grandson,’ she said.

The remark cut but Blanche was still stifling the mind’s cry of hurt, balancing it against her daughter’s surprise that she should need her, or anyone. Doggedly she went on with the plan she was devising as they talked.

‘Ivy won’t, of course, leave your uncle Raymond on his own, particularly not at Christmas, so Wendy would have to travel alone. If you stayed until after her holiday you could go back together.’ She paused, wondering what she had to say to reach her daughter. ‘I do believe she has to come, to grieve here, perhaps to hit some kind of bottom — like us — before we can begin to go upwards again.’

‘I never shall,’ Liz stated.

‘Oh, Liz! Believe me.’ Her mother clenched both fists and pounded them silently on the closed case. ‘Believe me, you will! We both will in time.’

‘Thanks for not saying “you’re young”.’

‘Well, you may have stopped me just before I reached it.’

Blanche held out a hand and Liz suddenly came to her and took it, helping her mother to her feet, their grip tight with mutual need and tacit love.

‘Let’s leave Spotty down there to his fate,’ Blanche said, reaffirming her support in an extra squeeze. ‘Come and help me load up. We’re taking George’s fridge, by the way. We’ll put that on the back seat first, and we’ll use it when we get it back home.’

In the end Ira Coole helped them load the fridge. He came protesting up to the bungalow, until Blanche had told him in her most regal manner that it was her refrigerator which the previous manager had borrowed. She added that she hoped he did not expect her to leave it for his benefit.

‘Mother, you are a liar,’ Liz said as the car cleared the driveway of Bukit Kinta.