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‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I had to do something. Don’t you see? I’m not here for much longer, I don’t have much time.’

‘And do you imagine that I too do not yearn for my grandmother to hold those chinthes once again in her hands?’ Ramon spoke quietly but his eyes glittered. ‘Did I not tell you that I had a plan?’

‘But you refuse to tell me what it is!’ The man was so infuriating. Not that she even believed him. He would hardly hatch a plan to steal the chinthe back from a man he was about to make his business partner. Unless … Eva thought about it. Was that why he was shipping out their crates, not to make money but to try and get closer to them?

‘Eva.’ Ramon turned to her. He lifted her chin so that she was looking straight at him, at his green eyes, at the dark hair that flopped over his forehead, at the curve of his mouth. ‘Can you not simply trust me?’ he said.

If only. For a moment they stared at one another, eyes locked. But she couldn’t do it, couldn’t say it. Not after what Klaus had told her, and not after what she’d seen this afternoon with her own eyes.

He took his hand away from her face at last. ‘I see that you cannot,’ he said coldly.

‘Well, what do you expect?’ Eva was still close to tears, but she rounded on him. ‘Aren’t you about to make Khan Li your business partner? For heaven’s sake! Is that likely to make me trust you? How could you? They’re one of the unscrupulous
companies who have got you into trouble in the first place. You know exactly what they are.’

‘What?’ He looked truly baffled. ‘Khan Li? Are you mad? Why do you think such a thing?’

‘Well, because …’ But her words tailed off. She wasn’t going to tell him what she’d seen in the blue truck, at least not yet.

He sighed. ‘What happened there, Eva?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘So you will not tell me?’

She looked down. Twisted the daisy ring on her little finger. How could she tell him anything? How could she trust him with anything?

‘Khan Li is the last person I would ask to be my business partner, Eva,’ he said. ‘The man who is to be my partner is a man I have worked with for many years. A man who has money, yes. But a man I respect.’

Before Eva could respond, Ramon’s mobile rang and he answered it, speaking swiftly and softly in Burmese. ‘We must go in,’ he said to Eva. ‘My grandmother is waiting.’

‘Of course.’ Could she believe him? He sounded convincing. But nevertheless, Eva reminded herself, there was no doubt that he was working with them in some capacity. Something else was going on.

She followed him as he strode through the door held open by a waiter, his tall figure giving off some of the tension that Eva too was feeling inside. He was wearing the traditional male
longyi
again tonight – she supposed his grandmother
preferred it – with a crisp leaf-green shirt. But there was a hardness about him, a kind of suppressed strength that was scaring her. She shivered.

Ramon looked around, waved and then led the way towards the far corner of the restaurant where Maya was sitting. The place was traditional Burmese in layout and decor, with lots of bamboo and wood, the chairs and table a burnished chestnut laid with gleaming cutlery and linen napkins.

‘Grandmother. Auntie.’ He gave a polite little bow.

Maya and another woman were seated at a table set for four. Maya rose to her feet. She looked as serene and elegant as ever in a lilac silk
longyi
with a matching embroidered blouse. Her white hair was coiled on her head and she wore a necklace of jade. It was almost … Eva thought back to what she’d seen at the Royal Palace … a ceremonial costume. The woman beside her, now also standing, looked vaguely familiar. Had they met before? Eva wasn’t sure, perhaps she had been at Maya’s house in Pyin Oo Lwin? She’d slightly lost track of the relatives. Eva smiled at her and the woman smiled back.

Maya embraced Eva, looking into her face in that direct way she had. ‘Eva, my child,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming.’ She turned to the woman beside her.

She was, Eva supposed, in her late sixties, her hair still dark but greying and smoothed away from her face. She possessed the same look of serenity as Maya and there was definitely a resemblance between them; she must be another relative.

‘I told you I had something to show you,’ Maya said,
almost impishly, her old face wreathed in smiles, her dark eyes bright.

‘You did, yes.’ Eva smiled back.

‘But it is not a “something” to be exact,’ said Maya. ‘It is a “someone”.’ She indicated the woman beside her. ‘This is Cho Suu Kyi.’

‘Oh.’ Eva looked from one to the other of them in confusion. ‘You have almost the same name as …’ Maya’s grandmother. The loyal maid-servant to the Queen who had first been given the pair of chinthes by Supayalat.

Maya nodded. ‘We do not always use family names here in Myanmar,’ she said. ‘But we often name our children after our ancestors, as well as according to the day on which they were born. It is auspicious.’ Once again, she smiled.

Eva’s mind was racing. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she said to Cho Suu Kyi.

‘Suu is my daughter,’ Maya said proudly.

Another daughter? Ramon had called her ‘Auntie’. So was this …?

‘Yes.’ Maya took Eva’s hand and then Suu’s hand and joined them, one to the other, so that Eva’s hand was clasped in Cho Suu Kyi’s. ‘Suu is my first daughter, Eva,’ she said. ‘Cho Suu Kyi was named after my grandmother who left me the legacy of the teak chinthes. I gave your grandfather one of those precious chinthes. And this is the child your grandfather gave me.’

Maya said goodnight to Cho Suu Kyi and went to her room. The evening had, in the main, been a successful one. There was a problem between her grandson and Eva, she could see that, of course. Something, or someone, had come between them and they were not the friends she had hoped they would be. She was old. Perhaps she was growing fanciful. But somewhere inside had been a small spark of hope …

She had agonised long over whether to tell Eva about her first daughter, the daughter she shared with Lawrence, but had never shared with Lawrence. Telling Eva would be to tell him, and that would be hard. But the girl had come all this way to Myanmar. Not only that, but she had brought back the chinthe, which told Maya that Lawrence had never forgotten her. It gave her such joy – a joy she had thought she would never feel in her life again.

And then … Cho Suu Kyi had wanted to meet Eva too, and why not, for she was family? And so the decision had been made. She must give Lawrence the gift of knowledge of his daughter, a gift that might also bring some pain, she guessed. But so often in this world, happiness and pain combine.

Upper Burma, 1943

It was exhausting work and sometimes Maya felt almost too weak to stand. But the matron and her two other assistants worked tirelessly day and night and Maya did the same. Matron Annie taught her how to carry out simple medical procedures and she had always been practical and capable. She learned fast because she had to.

The Military Hospital nearby had lost almost all of its staff and so they took on most of the patients, transporting them by a couple of bullock carts, which had somehow been overlooked in the mass evacuation from the town. Refugees, the hospital saw more than its fair share. Thousands of them lined the roads to India, often dying by the roadside from malnutrition, malaria, dysentery or cholera, if not from their wounds. The hospital was full to overflowing. Mattresses were put out on the verandahs and makeshift beds in the storerooms.

Maya often attended to the soldiers who had been brought in. She would chat to them and ask them, if it were not too traumatic, to talk about their experiences. She always hoped she might, by some wonderful coincidence, hear something of Lawrence. And she wondered too, one day, would it be Lawrence who came here to the hospital? Or would he be cared for by another woman such as she? Silently, she thanked that imaginary woman from the bottom of her heart.

One morning, she had to rush to the sink when she was in the middle of dressing a soldier’s particularly nasty wound. It had become infected. Matron Annie had already carried out
one emergency amputation, though she was hardly qualified to do so. Perhaps she would have to do another.

When she returned, Matron Annie was standing by the bedside looking serious. ‘I see how it is,’ she said gravely.

‘Matron?’

‘Soon, you will not be helping any longer, is that not so?’

‘I do not understand.’ Though of course she did.

They completed the work on the soldier’s injury and then moved away. The matron took Maya to one side. ‘You are pregnant?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I am.’ She held her head high. She had known it, a few weeks after he had first left. She had known it when the town was bombed. And she was glad. She was proud to be carrying Lawrence’s child. She would always be proud.

‘What do you want to do?’

Maya knew what she was asking. Did Maya want to get rid of it? Did she really want to bring a child into this world and at this time in this place? It was madness, was it not? ‘I will have the child,’ she said softly. ‘But until that day and after that day I will work as much as I can, here at the hospital. I will not need much time off, Matron.’

Gently, the matron touched her arm. ‘I should tell you that you are a fool,’ she said. ‘And you know all the reasons why.’

Maya bowed her head.

‘But I cannot help but admire you for your courage.’

If she only knew, Maya thought. It was not courage. It was just that she might lose him and so desperately she wanted to keep a small part of him. And she could not kill what they
had created together in love. It was not possible. She could not live with that.

‘And it is good to think of the possibility of new life,’ said the matron. ‘When this …’ And she gestured to the ward full of injured and dying men, ‘is all around us.’

*

Maya’s daughter was born in the middle of the night on a Tuesday. It was a warm night and a long labour and she was attended by Matron Annie herself, who held her hand and boiled the water, examined her, comforted her and encouraged her to push when it was the right time.

When Matron Annie finally handed her the baby girl wrapped in a thin cotton sheet, Maya touched the screwed-up wrinkly little face and she wanted to cry. After all this pain and all this bloodshed all around her, it was down to this. Death and new life, and she held that new life in her arms.

By the following day, Maya was on her feet again and working. Wards must be cleaned, medicine administered and wounds dressed. She had a baby girl strapped to her chest. Apart from that, nothing had changed.

*

One day, a colonel turned up at the hospital and spoke to Matron Annie and Maya. They were more or less running the hospital between them now; everyone else had left. He was in command of a special unit trained in bridge demolition and this unit had been detailed to carry out an extensive programme of bridge blowing which would, he said, affect everyone remaining in the town. The Japanese were close and
the unit must delay their advance in order to buy time. The unit had also been ordered to take possession of funds from the nearby Government House to keep the Shan riches out of the hands of the enemy. Silver, rare jewels, bullion, the place was full of the wealth of the Shan princes, much of it deriving from the profitable opium trade, as Maya was only too aware.

She thought of her own Shan grandmother, Suu Kyi, and the pair of rare and decorative jewelled chinthes she had given her. Like so many families she knew, Maya had buried her treasure in that safe place where she knew she could retrieve it when the war was over. Her aunt had even sewn jewels into her clothes, hidden in the knot of her
longyi
. It wouldn’t be the first time the Burmese had used their family jewels to barter and survive. And Lawrence’s treasure …? She could only hope that somehow the little chinthe brought him back to her safe and well when the war was over.

After the demolition, the unit would be pulling out and who knew what would happen to their town. ‘You are British,’ the colonel reminded Matron Annie. ‘They may not spare you. And you …’ He looked at Maya who was walking now with the baby tied to her back like a papoose. ‘The child is very pale,’ he said.

Maya felt a tremor of fear. She understood his meaning. The light skin of her daughter gave her parentage away. She would be an innocent victim, but her mother would be viewed as a traitor.

‘You could both be raped or killed without further
thought,’ the colonel told the two women. ‘The Japs don’t take any prisoners. Or at least they do, but they won’t give you that dubious privilege.’

But would they be any safer upcountry or on the road to India? Maya and Annie exchanged a look. Maya had heard how many of the refugees were dying from disease and starvation. And there were so many bandit gangs on the loose. People were desperate. At least here there was kindness, there was shelter and there was food. Their hospital store was meagre, but they had condensed milk, which was vital for a mother with a young baby, there was vegetable soup, there were eggs, rice and flour and there were occasional hens and ducks donated by villagers and refugees. And here Maya could continue to work and nurse – she would feel she was doing something to help the war effort, to help her people and the injured soldiers too.

‘I cannot leave my patients,’ said Matron Annie.

‘And I can make her skin darker,’ said Maya. With mud if need be. Fortunately, the baby had inherited her mother’s dark eyes and Burmese nose, she did not look like a European child, although Maya would swear already that she had Lawrence’s smile. And Maya and Annie had become close; they had already been through so much. If anything happened to Maya, she was sure that Matron Annie would look after her baby.

‘So?’ said the colonel.

‘I will stay here at the hospital,’ said Maya.

‘We both will,’ said Annie.

*

Maya told Eva some of this story over dinner. Ramon and Suu had heard it before, of course. And the girl listened, clearly enthralled, looking from one to the other of them as if she could hardly believe it.