This was the first time she had broken Papa’s rules. Romy’s throat tightened as she fingered the refugee pass in her jacket pocket and stepped closer to the ghetto’s checkpoint. Her pass was to study at the university in Frenchtown, yet it was well past suppertime. She intended to make an infectious diseases evening class as an excuse and her textbook hung heavy in her satchel, the strap digging into her shoulder.

Romy held her breath as she stood before an expressionless Japanese soldier. She started to pull the textbook from her bag, but the young soldier sighed as he swatted a mosquito and nodded her through—he looked every bit as sweaty, tired and bony as she did.

‘Back before curfew,’ he barked. ‘Otherwise…’ he sliced his finger across his neck.

Romy nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Too scared to look back and too penniless to hail one of the pedicabs or rickshaws weaving between trolley buses, she raced towards the Garden Bridge. The bag with the textbook thudded against her thigh. Romy wiped the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her mother’s jacket and tried to push all thoughts of her parents aside. They would have forbidden her from leaving the ghetto. The risk of being caught was too great, and after everything—

As she stepped onto the iron framework of Garden Bridge, smells from the sampans crowding Soochow Creek floated up. The warm air was thick with the scent of sewage and frying fish mingled with cardamom, cinnamon and star anise. Families on tiny boats shouted and giggled. Rows of washing strung across beams flapped in the evening breeze and the clang of spoons hitting woks and pots rang deep into the evening.

As Romy reached the far end of the bridge, a hawker pulling dough into noodles gave her a toothless smile and asked, ‘You buy, missee?’

She shook her head. Romy’s stomach ached—she’d had nothing except a watery bowl of congee that morning.

To avoid all thoughts of food, she spent the ten-minute walk trying to work out how to sneak into Shanghai’s grandest hotel. Soon enough, she turned a corner and the Bund shimmered beside the black Whangpoo River. Romanesque-style banks and Renaissance-inspired office buildings leered over the pavement with Rising Sun flags dotted on their rooftops. She walked towards the Art-Deco hotel lit up with an apple-green pyramid on the roof: The Cathay. Outside the revolving doors, Japanese soldiers laughed and lit cigarettes for lanky Russian whores with translucent skin, red lips and silk dresses.

Romy inched past with her head down, careful not to make eye contact. She was thankful for her mother’s dowdy brown suit. She was so close now…

Romy walked nervously into the Cathay’s soaring atrium, making sure her heels didn’t clatter on the mosaic tiles. The foyer was filled with staff in white-pressed linen carrying magnums of Champagne and silver trays of whisky. Japanese soldiers mingled with German, French and Chinese couples, the men in white dinner jackets and the women with pastel feather boas threaded over their arms, diamond necklaces at their throats. These couples chatted to elegant Chinese ladies buttoned into cheongsams and low-backed lamé ballgowns. The women preened and smoothed their dresses as Romy overheard a waiter say in English, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll follow me, the show is about to start. I’ll escort you to your tables.’

Romy’s eyes watered a little from the sting of smoke and cloying perfumes as she gazed at the room full of silky decadence. She felt dizzy and frightened. But she was too close to back out now. The person she was so desperate to find—had risked her life for—was in that bar.

Romy was only a few steps away. A band started to play the opening chords of George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’. Romy took a deep breath to calm her racing heart and followed the scent of smoke and whisky through the wooden door into the jazz bar.

No-one must ever find out. They would both be killed.