‘Lee would only have to call if she needed anyone or anything,’ Blanche reminded her daughter. She pulled Liz’s hand through her arm and stood shoulder to shoulder with her, facing the momentarily speechless officer.

Lee too came forward to reassure. ‘I’m quite rested, don’t worry.’

‘I’ll show you the way.’ Blanche passed her daughter’s hand into that of her amah.

Liz stood trembling as the three left the kitchen. Turning to Anna, she was shocked to see her hand over her mouth, her eyes creased above. ‘You’re laughing!’ Liz accused.

Anna shook her head in denial but kept her hand in place until she saw the anguish in her girl’s eyes. The laughter at the major’s discomfort vanished. ‘What you do? What you thinking?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘I’m thinking women are just helpless,’ Liz said darkly. Anna wagged a finger at her and said crossly, ‘I know you not thinking that!’

Blanche came back shortly. ‘He wants Lee to go to Ipoh tomorrow. The police have rounded up quite a few men who’ve materialised in the kampongs who they suspect are not locals, but the villagers are too frightened to identify them. He feels Lee may have seen some of them at the camp.’

Liz did not answer immediately. Her fears were quite different. She dreaded that the waiting Sakai might be frightened away; she fretted at the thought of delay. She remembered what Lee had said about Alan’s condition. Images of him kept coming back to her — as he had been and as he might be now. That was most heart-rending of all and she tried to repress it with many journeys in and out of the hall, past the study door, where the voices went on and on.

‘Lee will be exhausted again,’ she complained as she reached the kitchen once more.

‘As you will be,’ her mother said dryly. ‘Sit down.’ Her words were unheard as Liz again paced from kitchen to hall to bedroom.

At last they emerged. Lee looked pale, mentally bruised, Liz thought. As soon as she could she took her friend away to her bedroom, leaving Sturgess to explain that he was going to Bukit Kinta from Rinsey to interview more people there. She heard the rise in pitch of her mother’s voice as she related their experiences with the girl and the new manager.

She closed her bedroom door. ‘Lee?’ The one word held all the questions about what they were to do and whether Lee felt strong enough to take any more.

The girl look up, smiled ruefully and held her hands out in front of her, palms down. They shook uncontrollably. ‘That is talking about Heng Hou ... ’ she said.

‘And Josef is out there, too,’ Liz said, feeling she must remind her of all the hazards before she should decide.

‘I know.’

‘But Major Sturgess will be at Bukit Kinta.’

‘And I see you! What you do.’ Lee nodded knowingly. ‘Brandy and medicines in father’s old rucksack. And we have Sardin waiting for us.’

‘Oh, Lee!’ Liz knelt. ‘My best frister!’

They both gasped and embraced each other as the name they had invented as children for how they felt about each other, half friend, half sister, leaped from memory.

‘I’ll defend you with my life,’ Liz promised solemnly. ‘I’ve got a revolver for each of us and a rifle as well.’

They stared into each other’s eyes. ‘Whatever the outcome, Lee, I’ll never forget this, never.’

‘And what are you two plotting?’ Blanche asked, standing in the doorway. As neither replied, she shook her head, adding, ‘Come on, dinner! Let’s get a proper meal inside this child.’

Blanche was strangely quiet, they thought, through dinner and she pushed them all off to bed early, going to her own room soon after darkness had fallen. The fact that Liz made no comment, no enquiry, added to the little she had overhead, confirmed Blanche’s anxieties.

She spent a wakeful night and before dawn heard the two girls depart. She went to the kitchen door and listened as they made their way to the escape tunnel. In her mind she followed them to their meeting place with the Sakai at the rock. After that it was all guesswork, and heart-tearing anxiety.

Had she done the right thing, letting them go? Sturgess would be furious, but she was fast coming to the conclusion that in this campaign rules were for fools. Her brain said no, but her heart said yes, Liz had to go; she had seen it in the girl’s eyes.

Chapter Twenty

‘So where is the girl?’ Heng Hou’s voice was low and threatening, his temper shortened by exposure to a rainstorm which had all the blinding ferocity of the beginning of the annual monsoon. The daily ration of hill thunder and lightning had been increasing and Heng Hou, used to his creature comforts, was on edge.

Josef stood with his hands half raised in a pacifying gesture as Heng Hou’s bodyguards kept him covered. ‘I thought she’d make for Rinsey, but the journey was bad from the camp. She would never have made it, Heng Hou, the river was already too swollen and there was her mother — she would not have left her mother.’ At the back of his mind he momentarily remembered she was his mother, too — but this was serious trouble he was in.

He had seen that malcontented look on the communist leader’s face many times before he maimed or injured someone Malay, English, Chinese, Tamil — anyone who crossed him or even merely glanced his way at the wrong moment.

‘She must have gone to the Hammonds’ friends, the Wildons, they have the Kose estate. Yes! I should have thought of that before, it would be an easier journey,’ he gabbled on, desperate not to leave pause for any decision until he had presented a new course of action. ‘They may have been able to follow one of our routes out to the road near their estate. The main communication tracks … ’

Heng Hou narrowed his eyes, not listening any more, playing with the idea of just shooting the man there and then. He was in no mood for more amusing but time-consuming ways of despatching a man. On the other hand he was not quite sure whether he had wrung every last advantage out of this Eurasian. Certainly he had provided much in the way of arms and ammunition — until the planter Hammond had returned. Then they had lost a consignment from Rinsey and their store in the Malayan house Josef had sworn was safe. He growled gently to himself, musing whether to let the man live or die.

‘If they are at the Wildons’ bungalow, I know it well and they have many arms there, machine guns. This I do know.’

Heng Hou grunted, speculated. He needed guns; then he might kill this man.

Josef’s heart gave a thump of hope. ‘The girl and guns … ’ He repeated the prizes slowly.

‘Your sister?’ the terrorist queried. It amused him to see what this man would sacrifice for his skin.

Josef nodded energetically. ‘I know the layout of the plantation and the bungalow almost as well as I know Rinsey.’

Heng Hou grunted again and nodded his agreement to this last offer.

Josef turned to lead the way, lifting his head for a moment to allow the rain to flood over his face. Reprieved! Time brought opportunity.

*

The moment Aubrey set off for his morning rounds at Kose was always a moment of anxiety, and each morning Joan held him in her arms with a gentle, sad passion, so unlike their embraces at any other time, so unlike a husband going off to routine daily work.

In that final quiet embrace was the fear each had for the other: fear that Aubrey might be attacked on his inspection of the plantation and his tappers; fear that the bungalow might be attacked while he was away. They had made a rule never to agonise about risks; they parted with a smile and the mutually spoken slogan, ‘Chin up!’

Joan as always watched him go off in the car they called ‘the warrior’ since armour-plating it with sheets cut from the Japanese tank still stuck in their riverbed.