‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘A cup of tea perhaps?’

‘Oh. Right. I’ll go and make one.’

‘Ask the cook to do it, dear. I know you’ve dispensed with your houseboy, though for the life of me I can’t understand why.’

‘I won’t be long.’

She headed quickly for the kitchen, made a hurried pot of tea, carried it on a tray back into the drawing room, and froze.

‘Where’s Polly?’

‘Oh, I think she popped upstairs to take a peek at your bedroom, dear. You don’t mind, do you?’

Lydia dumped the tray and ran.

She was too late. Polly was standing in the bedroom. Her cheeks were scorched red and she was absolutely rigid, staring at Chang An Lo. He lay in the bed and was clutching the carving knife in his hand.

‘Oh, bloody hell, Polly, you should have waited.’ Lydia seized her friend’s shoulder and swung her around to face her. ‘Listen to me. You must say nothing. Do you hear? Nothing to anyone. Not even your mother.’

Polly’s eyes strayed back to Chang and regarded him in the same way she would a tiger in Lydia’s bed. ‘Who is he?’

‘A friend.’

Polly’s eyes widened. ‘Not the one from the alleyway? The Communist?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s he doing here?’

‘He’s injured. Polly, if you tell anyone, it will be dangerous for him. You must keep quiet or he could be caught and killed.’

Polly gasped and ran a nervous hand through her bangs, unintentionally flipping them up in a jerky gesture that revealed an ugly bruise on her forehead. The sight of it made Lydia angry.

‘And don’t ever tell your father about Chang An Lo either, will you? Promise me.’ Lydia put her arms around Polly. ‘It’s all right, don’t get in a flap about it. We’ve done nothing wrong.’

Polly stared at her in disbelief. ‘Don’t you think keeping a Chinese man in your bed while your mother is away is wrong?’

‘No, I’m just nursing him, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong in it. Anyway, he’ll be gone as soon as he’s well enough, I swear.’ Lydia looked hard into Polly’s eyes and saw something there that made her stomach drop.

‘I still don’t think it’s right,’ Polly said quietly.

‘Please, Polly.’

‘But if I told my mother…’

‘No, don’t tell anyone. You must remain silent about this.’ She held on to her friend’s wrist and gave it a little squeeze. ‘For my sake.’ Suddenly she kissed Polly’s cheek and murmured, ‘Please, Polly. Do it for me.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Lydia said quietly as she limped Chang An Lo up and down the room. ‘I’ve worked out what to do on Saturday.’

Chang was sweating. The effort was killing him but he wouldn’t stop.

‘Saturday I leave.’

Her throat tightened. It was the first time he’d said it. ‘No, that’s my point. You can stay.’

He turned his head and looked at her with a slow smile. ‘Ah yes, your mother and new father will be happy to welcome me as their guest.’

‘I want you to stay.’

His arm around her shoulders pulled her closer but he didn’t cease his shuffle.

‘You see, I’ve worked out that you can stay in the shed, the one Sun Yat-sen is in. I’ve put a padlock on it, so no one will be able to open it except me. They’ll never know you’re in there. Alfred and my mother will be too busy with each other to notice and I’ve put all the gardener’s things in the back of the garage, so…’

He chuckled. A rich mischievous sound that was so full of life it made her pulse thud with delight.

‘I love you, Lydia Ivanova,’ he laughed. ‘Not even the gods can stop you.’

He hadn’t said no. That was the main thing. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. She held on to that.

By the evening he was exhausted and seemed to fall into a deep troubled sleep. He moaned and muttered in his dreams, but it was in Mandarin. They had both been severely rattled by Polly’s intrusion, but Lydia had assured Chang that her friend would say nothing. She was pleased her own voice sounded so confident and wished she could be certain of it herself. Polly had been shocked. No telling how she’d react when she’d had time to think about it.

‘Polly,’ she murmured to herself, ‘don’t let me down.’

As the night rolled in, she gazed out the window before she closed the curtains and, considering the precarious position she was in, she felt extraordinarily safe. She knew it was absurd. So absurd it made her laugh out loud. A known Communist in her bed, her mother about to return and a prickly new stepfather coming to turn her world upside down, yet… still. She felt good.

She watched a bedraggled pheasant pick its way over the snow on the back lawn, scratching for grubs, and for the first time in her life it dawned on her what it was like to be on the inside. No longer a hungry creature out in the snow. She turned her head away from the cold wintry scene outside and studied her room. It was warm. It was softly lit by the green lamp. There was food on a tray and a white nightdress waiting on a chair. This is how people were supposed to live. But she knew it wasn’t the nightdress or the tray that was making her feel so good.

It was having Chang An Lo in her bed.

He woke her in the night.

She was lying on the bed. Like the night before, under the eiderdown but on top of the blanket. She had cleaned her teeth, put on the pretty nightdress, and taken up her position beside him in the bed while he was asleep. The lamp was off and in the silent mix of shadows in the room her senses slowly grew more alert. She could hear his breathing and smell the male scent of his skin. She did not hurry to fall asleep.

‘Lydia.’ His hand was on her arm, the grip strong.

Instantly she was awake. ‘What is it? Is the pain worse?’

He was shaking. She could hear his teeth. She sat up.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Just the pain of the dreams.’

She lay on her side and wrapped an arm over his chest, holding him tight to her. Even through the blanket she could feel the pounding of his heart. He rested his damp cheek against her forehead, drew a deep breath, and released it slowly. For a long time they lay like that.

‘You never asked,’ he said at last into the darkness of the room.

‘Asked what?’

‘What happened?’

‘I thought if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.’

He nodded.

‘But maybe if you tell me now, it will be released and leave your dreams in peace.’

He breathed deeply again and when he spoke his voice was flat and hard. ‘There is not much to tell. It was simple. They stripped me and put me in a metal crate. I survived. Three months, perhaps more. I’m no longer clear. A box with air holes. An arm’s length square, the same high. They fed me when they felt like it, so most of the time they didn’t. They only took me out of the box for amusement. Finger cutting. Chest branding. Other things. I don’t want your ears to hear.’

Lydia lifted a hand and stroked his cheek, his throat, long slow strokes. But she didn’t speak.

‘One day they grew careless. They left knives too close while they played their games with me. They believed I was a dead rag. No threat to them. But they were wrong. My hand still knew how to sink a blade into a well-fed stomach.’

His words stopped. The shaking had passed. She could feel the anger in him, like a coat of steel under his skin.

‘I escaped. But I could go to no one who was known to be my friend. It was too dangerous.’

‘So you went to Tan Wah.’

‘Yes. Nobody knew of him. The hovels are used by opium addicts. No one goes there. I thought he was safe.’ He let out a low-throated groan. ‘I was mistaken.’

‘No, Chang An Lo, no. You were right. He died only because of me. Because of my stupid coat and somebody else’s greed. I’m sorry.’

‘We are both sorry, Tan Wah,’ he whispered.

The silence in the room was short-lived because Lydia’s own anger was swirling up in her.