Something was afoot in Hongkew.

The ghetto was almost silent. People were pouring from their tiny lilongs onto the streets, faces creased with anxiety. The Japanese soldiers were nowhere to be seen.

Romy pulled her coat collar close around her neck. The sky was charcoal and a few dirty brown leaves were stuck to the sidewalk. Refuse choked the gutters. Her stomach churned and she put her hand to her mouth to stop herself from throwing up. She’d had black tea this morning, not daring to take the extra minutes to go downstairs and outside into the frost to prepare congee. Even the smell of soy sauce and noodles made her retch.

It had been seven painful weeks since the Lams’ lilong had been bombed—since Wilhelm, and then Jian, had disappeared. The thud of bombs and gunfire had been constant in that time.

Romy spent her days just putting one foot in front of the other. Working at the hospital, tending to the surviving Lam children along with all the others injured in the July bombings. Jian had left for Chungking but there was no news, of course.

Bereft, Romy had run to her childhood friend and fallen into her arms. Nina had insisted Romy move into her room. Romy wanted to pay for everything and take care of Nina so she wouldn’t have to go out at night, but Nina wouldn’t have it.

‘You have no idea how much I eat, young lady.’ She’d winked, pushed up her ample breasts and poked Romy’s hips. ‘I’ll bring you some cheese and smallgoods.’

The two girls shared a mattress but each had their own blanket. Nina was out most nights and Romy worked all day, so they slept in shifts in the bed. On the nights they were both home, they curled together like two kittens, each soothed by the other’s company. Nina kept her word—there was always a tin of hard white cheese and delicious salamis. Occasionally she brought home smoked duck. Romy felt guilty eating it, but Nina insisted.

‘Would you like to sit and watch me eat, sturer Bock?’

Romy had to laugh at being called a stubborn goat.

She immersed herself in the rhythm of her days, rising at dawn to boil them both a bowl of thin congee, working at the hospital cleaning and nursing, then tossing and turning through the night on their musty straw mattress, trying to flee from her ghosts.

Sometimes she’d awake drenched in sweat, dreaming she’d been in Jian and Wilhelm’s arms. Their bodies and faces merged with alarming regularity.

Romy filled her days with hard, meaningful work so at night she could collapse into bed exhausted. Yet her mind wouldn’t rest. She’d bury her head in a pillow to block the scent of petrol and blood. In these dreams, she cut her feet and knees as she crawled over glass.

Sometimes, Benjamin or Daniel would step forwards from the mist, their hollow faces covered in blood. Mutti and Papa stood behind her brothers, arms linked with the Hos. Desperate. Always, there was Wilhelm and Jian, one’s broad shoulders merging with the other’s slim hips and delicate wrists, a jumble of melting figures tearing at her clothes and haunting her until she woke…

When she wasn’t working at the hospital or helping Delma at the soup kitchen, she’d hide under the stairwell at Nina’s with her textbooks and a few pumpkin seeds—sometimes with a ginger cat warming her feet for company.

Coolies sat on cartons, playing cards and rolling dice while their rickshaws sat idle nearby. As Romy walked past a narrow lane, a handful of Chinese and Jewish children jostled each other with their elbows and shins as they played a game of soccer. The ball shot out in front of her.

‘Sorry, missee,’ said a round-faced Chinese child, his face streaked with dirt.

Romy smiled, took a run-up and kicked the ball back to him, just like Daniel had taught her.

She quickened her pace—careful to avoid footpaths pitted with the rough dugouts the Chinese locals had been forced to dig as bomb shelters. Not that they did much good, she thought bitterly. In the weeks since Jian had disappeared, she’d worked through the night at Ward Road Hospital, resetting legs, arms and collarbones for men, women and children who’d accidentally stumbled into the bunkers in the dark.

There was such a limited amount of ether that she’d taken Jian’s medicine kit to work. For the past two days she had been treating a girl’s torn knee ligament with needles around her elbow to get the blood circulating. She’d used the same acupuncture technique for a Polish man whose ankles were so swollen they had completely disappeared. And a young woman labouring with twins insisted the two curled needles in each earlobe helped ease the intensity of her contractions.

For the wards filled with malaria patients, Romy had boiled up a decoction of sweet wormwood for them to sip. She also kept tall pots of boiling water in each room for the patients writhing with cholera and dysentery. Fluids were all she could offer.

The Japanese were struggling to hold their position. The Americans had cut off all the main trade routes to China. Eggs and bread could cost the best part of a day’s wages. There was no fuel, so cars lay abandoned wherever they stopped. Reports of a new type of bomb used by the Americans in Japan had been in the newspapers for weeks. She and Delma had discussed the bombs at length as the reported injuries were horrific.

‘The Japanese are calling it pikadon. Giant bombs exploded in the air like lightning.’ Delma had leaned in over her coffee in their corner booth at Café Louis as she spoke in a low voice. ‘One in Hiroshima. Another in Nagasaki.’

Romy prayed Shanghai would not be next. Everyone did.

Delma shifted in her seat and smoothed her already neat hair back into her bun. Then she picked up her spoon and stirred her coffee—even though she had not been able to afford sugar for months. The ting-ting of the tap of her spoon against the lip of the cup rang between them. She put the spoon down, leaned back in the chair and let out an exhausted sigh.

Romy picked up her coffee and drained the cup of lukewarm grit. She spluttered and puckered her mouth.

‘Sorry,’ said Delma. ‘We have to make the grounds last the whole week.’

‘I think we’ll have the tea next time,’ Romy murmured.

‘I have news of the liberation in Poland and Germany.’ Delma’s sombre tone suggested it was anything but good. ‘I’ve still heard nothing of my brothers in Auschwitz—’

Romy reached for her friend’s hand.

‘What about Wilhelm?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t heard anything. Did he—?’

‘Wilhelm crossed into India,’ Delma replied. ‘He was shot, but he’s fine. Scraped his shin. More lives than a cat, that one.’ She shook her head with a half-laugh. ‘He may travel from there to England or Australia in a special envoy military plane.’

‘And Jian?’

A pause. ‘We haven’t heard anything, Romy. I’m sorry.’

People were starting to shout and gather in the streets, knocking her shoulders as they ran past or jumped for joy on the spot. Above the nervous chatter she heard a woman shout: ‘Ceasefire!’ A hunched old rabbi scratched his beard and straightened his jacket as he shot Romy a bewildered look.

‘Are we…free?’

Romy caught her breath and replied, ‘I’m not sure.’

The crowd of soccer players scooted past on the footpath, almost bowling her over as they ran screaming into the courtyard apartments where their parents squatted over boiling pots of stock and rice. ‘Mama, Papa have you heard—’

Romy pulled her bag close to her hip, protecting her body from stray knocks. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘The xiayi have gone! The war is over!’ shouted a young boy in rags and bare feet as his much larger friend shimmied up a wooden telegraph pole and tore down the sign reading: STATELESS REFUGEES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PASS.

Before he jumped down, the larger boy glanced around to check he wasn’t going to get a beating, then the two boys scurried off into the jubilant crowd.

People were pouring out doors and alleyways now, hugging, dancing and crying. Chinese mothers jiggled babies on their hips and hugged their Jewish neighbours. A piano accordion and a mandolin started to play at the far end of the street.

‘Hey, there’s no-one at the police station!’ yelled a man above the crowd.

‘They’re really gone!’ whooped another.

Romy allowed herself to be swept up in the jubilation, dancing a few steps to a violin waltz before stopping.

Where was she going? After all this time, her luck had held and she had made it through the war.

Her stomach fluttered and churned with loss and sadness as people cheered and stomped and clapped each other on the back. Hats were tossed into the air.

A stunning woman emerged from a side doorway, head down and coiffed red hair spilling over her face as she tied a white silk kimono around her body. She stepped into the street in little silk slippers and glanced around in surprise as if she’d just woken up and couldn’t believe the Japanese had left.

Then she flipped her hair off her face and her brown eyes met Romy’s. Her lips curled into a smile.

‘It’s over!’ Romy cried as she took Nina’s hand and they danced around as they had all those years ago at the Cathay.

‘The war is over?’ Nina’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her head.

‘Come. We need to find Delma. We need to celebrate. Besides,’ she added, ‘I have some news of my own.’