‘Lydia,’ Antoine repeated more urgently.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you think she will forgive me?’

‘Oh Antoine, I don’t know. You know what she’s like.’

He uttered a faint groan, and she became frightened he might crash the car in a wild Gallic gesture of despair, so she hurried on, ‘But I expect she’ll get over it quickly. Just give her a few days.’

The grand Town Hall with its pillars and Union Jack shot past in a blur, then Victoria Park with a smattering of prams and nannies. Lydia felt her cheeks gripped by the wind as Antoine put his foot down.

‘I love her, you know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her. I should never have mentioned the baby.’

‘Yes, maybe that was a mistake.’

‘Does she love me?’

‘Yes, of course she does.’

‘Really, chérie?’

‘Really.’

The glorious smile he gave her was worth the lie. It sent a tingle all down her spine, right to her fingertips, and it was then that an idea occurred to her.

‘Antoine, do you know what I think might help?’

‘What?’ He stuck out an arm and swung left up Wordsworth Avenue, the car’s motorbike engine growling as it launched itself at the incline.

‘If you gave Mama a present she really wanted, I think it might win her over.’

His dark eyes darted a look of alarm at her. ‘I’m not rich, you know. I cannot bestow her with jewels and perfumes like she deserves. And when I did once offer her a little money, you know, just to help, she refused it.’

Lydia looked at him in surprise. ‘But why?’

‘She shouted at me, threw a book at my head. Said she was not a whore to be bought.’

Lydia sighed. Oh Mama. Such pride came at a price.

At the top of the hill in the British Quarter the houses were large and elegant, built of pale stone and surrounded by well-tended lawns and neat hedges. The school was coming into sight. She must hurry.

‘No, I don’t mean anything expensive. I was thinking of something… to comfort her when you’re not there.’ She glanced at him warily. ‘When you’re with your wife.’

He frowned. ‘Like what do you mean?’

She swallowed and said it quickly. ‘A rabbit.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, a white rabbit with lovely long ears and sweet pink eyes.’

‘Un lapin?’

‘That’s right. She owned one when she was a little girl in St Petersburg and has always longed for another.’

He looked at her closely. ‘You surprise me.’

‘It’s true.’

‘I’ll ask her.’

‘No, no, don’t do that. You’ll spoil the surprise.’ She smiled at his profile encouragingly and thought what a beautiful Roman nose he had. ‘She’ll be reminded of you every time she runs her fingers through its soft white fur.’

She could see he was thinking about it. The corners of his mouth curled up and he shrugged in his eloquent French way that said so much more than English shrugs.

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘c’est possible.’

‘A red ribbon would be nice too. On the rabbit, I mean.’

But she wasn’t sure he heard straight. He was manoeuvring around a large black Humber out of which three girls in Willoughby Academy uniforms were tumbling and staring at Lydia with envy. Clutching the bouquet of roses in her arms, she kissed her handsome companion’s cheek in full view of them and sauntered into school. The day was starting well.

It was only later, when dreaming out of the window in class, that she allowed herself to think about the lithe young figure she’d noticed half hidden in the shadow of the rickshaws across the road, of the pair of black Chinese eyes watching her as she entered the school gates.

5

The Ulysses Club was as pretentious as its name. Theo hated it. It stood for everything he despised about colonial arrogance. Self-important and disdainful. The building was at the heart of the British Quarter, set back from the road, as if disassociating itself from the noise and bustle of the town behind a dense barrier of rhododendron bushes and a sweep of manicured lawn. It boasted a grand white façade with towering columns, pediment, and portico, all carved to the glory of the conqueror.

As he took the great wide steps that led up to the entrance, they made him think of a shrine, and to some extent that’s exactly what the place was. A shrine. To the god of conservatism. To preserving the status quo. And it went without saying that any yellow-skinned person, of that unholy tribe who lied to your face and sold their children, was not invited through its hallowed portals, except via the back door and clad in a servant’s uniform.

Theo loathed it. But Li Mei was right. Between kisses that set his loins on fire and soft words that reshuffled his brain, she taught him to see it as a game. A game he had to play. Had to win.

‘Willoughby, old boy, glad you could make it.’

Christopher Mason was striding toward him across the marble floor of the reception hall with his hand outstretched, his smile as affable as a snake’s. He was in his midforties, kept his figure trim by horse riding, and carried himself like an army officer, though Theo knew for a fact he’d never seen a parade ground in his life. Mason had at an early age opted for a desk career in government and sought a post in China only when he heard of the fortunes to be made out there if you knew what you were doing. His eyes were round and shrewd, his dark brown hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak, and though he was several inches shorter than Theo, he made up for it by talking loudly as they headed across the hall.

‘Heard the news? Heart-stopping stuff. Damned premature, if you ask me.’

‘What news is that?’ Theo was wary.

He knew that in the busy, claustrophobic hive in which they all lived, news could mean that Binky Fenton had stormed out of a croquet match over accusations of cheating, or that General Chiang Kai-shek was drawing up radical legislation to sweep the foreigners off his land and into the sea. Both would be news. Both would be heart-stopping. But accusations of cheating would be seriously bad form, whereas nobody expected the Chinese to stick to their promises in the first place. Theo waited to hear what it was that was turning Mason’s cheeks the colour of chopped liver.

‘It’s our troops. The Second Battalion of Scots Guards. Going home from China on the City of Marseilles in the New Year. Bloody cheek of it. Leaving us undefended in this benighted country. Don’t they know the Nationalist Kuomintang Army is running riot in an orgy of murder and plunder over in Peking? Good God, man, we need more troops, not less. After all, we’re the ones earning the trade profits that keep Baldwin and his blasted government in funds back home. Have you seen what state the financial market is in?’

‘We’ll have to learn to stand on our own two feet then, won’t we?’ Theo said with a shrug calculated to annoy. ‘Why keep an army in place if we claim we want to remain at peace with the Chinese?’

Mason stopped in his tracks.

‘What we need,’ Theo continued, ‘is a treaty we can all stick to for once, one that is reasonable, not punitive. We have to give concessions or we’ll have another Taiping Rebellion on our hands.’

Mason stared hard at him, then muttered, ‘Bloody Chink lover,’ and strode off toward the bar, indifferent to the gentlemanly elegance of the hall’s fluted pillars and Venetian chandeliers. Native servants drifted past silently, neat and docile in their white tunics buttoned high at the neck, silver trays in hand, polite expressions frozen on their faces. Yet Theo knew that each one of them was worth no more than yesterday’s newspaper to the members of the Ulysses Club, probably less. From the long veranda at the rear of the building a sharp high laugh barked out. Lady Caroline was at the pink gin.