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daughter!’ Mama holds up her hands. ‘I know my Kate’s mixing with all sorts of people in this place, but she wouldn’t steal.’
    I slip out of the room, pretending that I’m leaving. But I hide behind the door instead, peer through a crack, and listen.
    ‘Perhaps it wasn’t her. The lipstick went missing yesterday. Not the first thing that’s been taken,’ Jessica says, the colour rising in her cheeks.
    Jessica Chambers has red hair. Not auburn, but deep red. Bob’s hair is distinctly carroty by comparison. Jessica is probably only in her mid-twenties, no more than a decade older than me, yet in spite of the months of living in close proximity, Jessica hasn’t spoken a word to me until this morning, which makes her fair game. Jessica left the lipstick in the kitchen, so what did she expect? She should have looked after it. I turn around and march out of the flat.
    On my way down the stairs, guilt ties my stomach up in knots. Maybe Mama is right and Stanley is changing me? I wouldn’t have dreamt of stealing anything when I lived on the Peak. I put my hand into the pocket of the shorts I stitched together from an old rice sack, and clasp the tube. I’d wanted to make myself look pretty for Charles. Now I’ll have to bury the lipstick on the hillside behind the cemetery, so no one will discover I took it.
    I reach the village green and stop dead. Derek Higgins is bent double, surrounded by a circle of European men, his white buttocks bared and receiving six of the best from a thin bamboo cane.
    The cane comes down with a thwack, and I wince. Thwack, thwack, thwack. I screw my eyes shut. Poor Derek!
    Finally, the men leave and Derek comes up to me. ‘Why were you watching? I suppose it seemed funny to you.’
    ‘Not it didn’t. Not at all. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right. Who were they and why were they beating you?’
    ‘From the camp tribunal. They caught me with some cans of bully beef I took from the canteen a few weeks ago. I only took them because my dad is sick.’
    ‘Gosh! I wouldn’t like that to happen to me. Do you think they’d beat girls as well?’
    ‘More than likely. Better than the Japanese Gendarmerie, I suppose. Well, I’d better get back to my parents. Dad’s ill with beriberi because he’s not getting enough vitamins. That’s why I took the cans.’
    ‘Oh. I’m sorry. Did you know the Red Cross are sending comfort parcels? Hopefully they’ll arrive soon and we’ll have some extra food.’
    I wave Derek off and go up to the cemetery. Burying the lipstick, I promise myself I won’t take anything that belongs to someone else ever again. What was I thinking of?
     
    ***
     
    Three weeks before my sixteenth birthday, in early September, Papa rushes into the flat and exclaims with a wide grin, ‘The parcels are here. Come on, we’re to line up at the canteen.’
    We wait for an hour in the queue, Mama complaining all the while that she has things to do. What these things might be, I can’t imagine. After all, I’m the one doing all the washing and cleaning . . .
    ‘Flora, my dear, you don’t want to be shut up indoors on such a lovely morning,’ Papa says, laughing. ‘It’ll do you good to get some fresh air.’
    I look up at the sky, so blue and cloudless it seems to go on forever. For once, the high hills separating Stanley from the other side of the island are clearly visible, not hidden by warm mist.
    Finally the Red Cross representative hands us two packages each. Back in the Indian Quarters, Mama says we don’t have enough storage containers so we can indulge in an instant feast. I open my parcel. Chocolate tablets, biscuits and packets of sugar! I tear the wrapping off a Dairy Milk bar and stuff every morsel into my mouth, savouring the sticky sweetness. A sensation of fullness settles in my belly, which lasts the rest of the day. For the first time in months I go to bed without feeling hungry.
    The sound of screaming wakes me, and I blink in the