You know I was more enamoured of you than in love with you, Neville — all through. I was enamoured of your gaiety, your special capacity for enjoying life — you were a bit like the social grasshopper, and totally unbusinesslike. I suppose I was enamoured too with Pearling the house, the history. But if I married you for Pearling it got its own back — it became the millstone I had to carry around my neck all through the war on my own, with the girls.

About the girls ... If you hadn’t been killed, this new thing would never have happened. It certainly would not have occurred to me, and I’m sure George would never had spoken out. But Liz is all you — well, nearly all, occasionally I hear myself in her words, but the artistic bit — that girl worships you, always will. Wendy’s more like me. She’ll be a good businesswoman. She’s coming out to Rinsey.

God, that gives me pause. We can’t let Wendy come out for another funeral. Blanche broke off the internal monologue to pull her rifle nearer. I must do what I told George Harfield in prison this morning, I must stop assing about.

I find I love the man. She paused, then restated it plainly in her mind. I love George Harfield. He’s everything I might have said I disliked ten years ago; bluff, blunt, earthy? Not sure about that last — more down-to-earth — whatever, the chemistry works between us. So that’s it, really. I’ll be staying at Rinsey. I was a bit surprised you’d left Rinsey and Pearling to me outright, no strings.

You were my springtime love, Neville, and it was a real crush, as that love should be. Perhaps the war ended that feeling. It was a kind of innocence, you know. But now I’ve found a man I love in a way I’ve never loved before — with all my mature heart. A love to sustain me in this bloody awful time. You’re not missing much, my old love.

She sighed and looked up to see Anna standing a little way off, head bowed, hands clasped as if in prayer. The trouble is, Neville, now I’ve admitted to myself that I love him I want him out of that bloody prison even more.

They ate together early that evening, the three of them. Datuk was irrepressible, full of talk about a pet mongoose a boy had brought to school, which had found and killed a snake in the playground. ‘It was poisonous, but it killed it!’ He grabbed his own throat, nearly knocking himself off his chair, demonstrating how the mongoose had lunged at the reptile.

‘Useful to have around, a mongoose,’ Blanche commented as Anna looked about to censor the boy.

‘Wish I’d got one!’

‘Your grandmother and I will think about it,’ She told him, thinking he deserved some reward for bringing a touch of normality into their lives.

‘Wow!’ he said, eyes wide.

‘Thank you,’ Anna corrected.

‘Oh! Thank you, Mrs Hammond. Thank you!’

‘I seem to remember a boy who used to have his mongoose, on a lead around the house, with a proper pen for it at nights. Does that sound a good idea?’

‘Wow!’ He caught his grandmother’s eye. ‘Yes, thank you Mrs Hammond. Wow!’

Anna raised her eyes and sent him off to do his homework.

‘I’ll just have a walk round to check on the guards,’ Blanche said when he had gone. ‘Don’t want any slackness tonight. Then early bed, I think, I feel exhausted. Emotionally torn to shreds.’

She had noticed that when she sat near Neville’s grave the guards tactfully moved away. She wanted now to be sure the patrol of the perimeter wire was being properly covered.

Thoughts of Wendy arriving made her determined to be much more assiduous about the defence of the plantation, and with two police guards coming soon it was perhaps just tonight that was the biggest danger time.

Starting at the back of the property she walked slowly around to the side, then to the front gates, where she spoke to Chemor. He reported that two of the men were just having their meal, but every post would be covered before nightfall. She walked on until she came to the spot where it was still possible to see the old path to the Guisans’ bungalow, severed now and made a no-man’s-land by the triple barbed wire. She could visualise the children running up and down, Lee always by Liz’s side. She remembered Neville expressing a wish to see his grandchildren playing there — ‘green freedom’, he had called it. Now she just prayed their daughter was safe — grandchildren seemed a dim and distant prospect.

Moving on, she passed the hut which contained the entrance to their escape route. Near the wire she walked circumspectly, anxious not to be seen by any of the Malay families, who would certainly press her to eat again with them, and it was considered very discourteous to refuse.

The guards at the back acknowledged her from a distance and, seeing her going back towards the area of Mr Hammond’s grave, tactfully gave her space. She stood and watched as the falling sun gathered power and glory until it reached an intensity of brilliance only seen in the tropics. The evening sounds from the jungle were beginning, the crickets always first, then the others would follow.

Her hearing was acute and she found herself listening more intently as there came a different sound from the undergrowth. The wind lifted and let fall the foliage in a soughing sweep, but this was quite a different rhythm. She held her breath. This was the sound of something or someone pushing through the beluka. She looked both ways along the wire. The guards were out of her sight. She was about to move away when a soft voice spoke her name.

‘No, don’t move, Mrs Hammond, I have you covered. Don’t make me shoot. Please stay and talk to me, Mrs Hammond. Listen to what I have to say.’

The voice sent a shiver of ice along her spine, echoed a boy’s voice from ten or fifteen years ago. The same words. ‘Mrs Hammond. Mrs Hammond. Please listen. I did not do it. I am not responsible.’

‘I am all alone, Mrs Hammond.’

She heard him move nearer but still could not see him. She wanted to ask if Neville had been all alone when he shot him. She lifted her rifle to hold it in both hands.

‘Don’t do anything rash, Mrs Hammond. You’ve nothing to fear from me, Mrs Hammond.’

It had grated on her nerves even when he was a child, a deceitful, spiteful child, the way he repeated her name as if it was some special charm against punishment.

‘You say you are alone. Let me see you.’

‘You never did take just my word, did you?’

‘And wasn’t I wise?’

‘Most times.’ He laughed and she saw him emerge from just beyond the cleared jungle and steadily approach the wire. He held his rifle sighted on her, while she held hers loosely in front of herself.

She wanted him nearer.

‘Josef Guisan,’ she said as if she had sought him a long time. ‘So why should I trust you now?’ She repeated the question and waited for the repeated pleas of innocence just the same as when he was a boy. Guilty as hell but prepared to argue that black guilt was white innocence until the last trump.

‘Mrs Hammond, believe me, I mean you no harm — ’

‘You look threatening, Josef, your gun pointing straight at me.’

‘Oh, it’s habit,’ he said and lifted the rifle in one hand, but she could see that his finger was still curled in the trigger. She just had this one chance ...

‘Bad habits die hard, Josef,’ she said as she lifted her rifle a little and compressed the trigger on the upwards swing in one smooth, slick movement, and shot him in the heart, ‘... like rogue dogs.’

The force of the impact knocked him backwards as if struck by a Titan’s hammer blow. For a split second she saw his face registering surprise and fury, then as he fell he all but disappeared back into the undergrowth. He was undoubtedly dead and the smell of fresh blood was in the warm breeze.

The sound of the shot reverberated through the jungle and the hills and for a moment there was peace. She expelled the spent cartridge case while searching her soul for any sense of guilt. She looked up to where the sun emblazed the sky a deep blood red. ‘I feel better for that, Joan darling,’ she breathed, ‘much, much better.’