Though it was summer break, Romy had spent the whole morning at the kitchen table studying chemistry and physics and completing mock exams. She sipped pomegranate juice and took comfort in the clatter of Amah’s pans and the smell of star anise, garlic and ginseng wafting across from the pot of master stock permanently simmering on the cooktop.

It had been seven months since the Pacific War had started with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. America had well and truly joined the war against Japan—and Germany.

Papa was working at the hospital all hours and one look at her parents’ stooped shoulders and tired eyes told Romy there were simply not enough hands to help. She intended to study medicine at Aurora University when she matriculated in the autumn. This would be her tzedakah. She wondered what Nina was planning to do once she matriculated. Nina had topped her exams in English, Hebrew, German and Geography.

When Amah had finished mixing the cold noodles for lunch, she piled them into silver tins with a ladle. ‘Enough study. Your eyes will fall out of your head.’ She squeezed Romy’s shoulders. ‘Time for swim. Take your mother with you. Chop-chop.’

Romy closed her books, stood up and stretched. As she grabbed the tins to take with her, she gave Amah a peck on the cheek. ‘Thank you. I never say it enough. I don’t know what we’d do without you. Mutti—’

Amah’s lips were pulled tight, but her cheeks were rosy and her eyes moist. ‘Go, child,’ she said, shooing Romy away with her bamboo lid.

The air outside was like warm treacle. Romy’s yellow sundress stuck to her legs as she, Mutti, Wilma, Dr Ho, Li and Jian cycled to the YWCA pool for a dip. Mutti and Wilma had decided to hold one of their theatre group meetings poolside that afternoon. To any outsider, the women draped nonchalantly around the pool in their bathing costumes would have looked like a group of bored, mostly Shanghainese women, smoking and chattering as a cluster of amahs splashed and cooed over the younger children in the paddling pool.

Jian and Romy swam laps in the far lane, while Li stretched out like a cat on a towel nearby, reading Mutti’s French Vogues and humming to herself.

Romy enjoyed the cool water running through her fingers and across her back. She was a strong swimmer, though she preferred lakes. She was reminded of Daniel and Benjamin throwing her off the pontoon in Gänsehäufel with a big splash each July. She concentrated on her breathing, forcing herself to count and breathe so she didn’t cry.

Today, Jian easily overtook her. As he swam past, she longed to reach out and touch the muscles rippling down his torso. Instead she stuck to the far side of the lane.

After the swim, Dr Ho, Li, Jian and Romy walked along the footpath, thankful for the shade of the plane trees as they made their way to meet Dr Ho’s friends at Puyuan, the grand villa owned by the local bookseller.

After fifteen minutes listening to Li hum and skip her way through leafy Frenchtown, they eventually reached the villa. Romy eyed the brick archways smothered with jasmine stars and inhaled sweet sticky air as they clambered up the broad front steps and Dr Ho knocked to gain entrance.

‘Come, let’s get inside out of this heat,’ he said as the heavy wooden door swung open.

Romy adored Puyuan—the dark walls, deep silk-covered sofas, vases filled with lilies, peonies or branches of rose blossoms. Candles flickered on a dark sideboard, warming the marble bust of Sappho that was rumoured to have been rescued from a pile of volcanic rubble in Pompeii. The scent of cloves and incense lingered in every room. Piles of the peeling leather-bound works of Baudelaire and slim volumes of Chinese poetry were stacked neatly on tables and on the floor.

In the corner was a grand piano—a Steinway. It made Romy think of her piano lessons with Herr Bloch and Saturday afternoon teas with Mutti. What she would give to have those music lessons back. To be teased by Daniel and Benjamin for her poor posture while she practised her scales.

Luckily Jian would always be ready to distract her, laughing and playing the opening bars of Brahms, Mozart and Mahler, or music she didn’t recognise from a pile of musical scores bound in red snakeskin.

Sometimes he would ask Romy to sit on the stool beside him to turn the pages. As he played, Romy could feel the heat through his cotton shirt and the strength in his forearms as they stiffened and softened with the music. As he leaned towards the score at the end of each page, his fringe would fall across his eyebrows, casting a shadow across his cheekbones. How she longed to brush that fringe from his eyes. Instead, she concentrated on the closing bars of each page. Occasionally Li would sing, bringing the chatter of the room to a halt and momentarily calming the anxious faces in the room.

Jian, Romy and Li sat in the back library reading and staying cool under bamboo fans. Dr Ho had bought them each a paperback copy of Les Misérables. Li was soon bored and took to scribbling tiny cartoon figures in the margins and writing secret messages between the lines then silently passing her copy of the book to Romy. Sitting at a pair of sofas in the opposite corner, Dr Ho and his friends sipped chrysanthemum tea and discussed Victor Hugo and Leconte De Lisle.

Help! I’m bored.

Can I unplait your hair outside? It looks so pretty when you show your curls.

What song should I sing?

Can you please help me finish my French assignment? (I already told Aba I’d done it so I could go to an extra singing lesson.)

Occasionally, Romy would look over the top of the book and wonder at Jian’s intense expression: he was totally lost in Hugo’s words. There was something so calm and self-assured about him. But she kept these thoughts to herself, turning to gaze at the penjing on the small table in front of her—a tiny pine tree, no taller than a metre, that had been clipped and shaped for over two centuries.

Dr Ho walked across the room to join her. ‘We distil nature, Romy, to find its essence.’ Dr Ho brushed his hand over the pine needles, releasing the sharp scent of the oil. ‘It seems like this tree has grown into this shape purely by chance. But—’ he raised his eyebrows ‘—Confucius taught us to seek order and duty. Taoism seeks simplicity and restraint. This very place—Puyuan—means garden of simplicity.’

Romy studied the penjing tree. How would she prune and clip her own life? She did arrive in Shanghai purely by chance. And yet she had a duty to the place—Papa had told her so. She needed to do more than survive. Tzedakah. She rolled the Hebrew words around on her tongue, as if they were sticky dates.

There was a thud as Li dropped her book on the floor and joined their conversation. ‘Papa,’ asked Li now as she lolled her head to one side. ‘Why do you bring us to these meetings?’

‘Are you bored, little one?’ He poked a dimple. ‘To starve to death is a very small matter, to lose one’s integrity is a grave matter,’ said Dr Ho. ‘We must stay loyal to Chinese customs, to speak the truth—even when the Japanese occupiers close our print houses and newspapers, or threaten imprisonment to any citizen who speaks out. Our country’s rightful leaders have been exiled to Chungking.’

Dr Ho made eye contact with Jian, before turning to face the girls as his voice grew sad. ‘Wang Jingwei and his puppet government even want to stop the Chinese way of practising medicine and focus on Western medicine. But we need both types. I like to look at the cause, the body, and the Yin and Yang, not just the treatment. There is plenty of room for both,’ he said softly, as if trying to convince himself. ‘You see, for every action we take in life with our body, what we consume, there are consequences…’

Jian noticed Romy’s concern. ‘I don’t think we should tell anyone at school we come to Puyuan.’ His voice dropped. ‘It’s not safe. The Japanese military police are everywhere in Shanghai now.’

Li and Romy looked shocked. ‘What? Why?’ they asked in unison.

Jian shrugged and Dr Ho shot him a warning look as he said, ‘Enough. It’s time I delivered Romy home to her parents. Gather your things while I finish my tea.’

Li groaned as they packed up their books and Jian stuffed his sheet music into his satchel. Li looked over her shoulder, ‘This means I’ll have to finish my French assignment all by myself,’ she lamented. Dr Ho politely chatted to a trio of gentlemen in the corner while they finished a pot of steaming tea.

As the last drops of tea were consumed, they bade polite farewells to everyone at the salon and wandered home to Grosvenor House, dodging rickshaws and peddlers kneeling on blankets selling shoes, gold necklaces and peonies, as the dusk threw a golden hue across Shanghai.

Romy thought again of the tiny pine tree. She wondered what shape her life would take from here.