The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

‘My mother died,’ Lisa said simply. ‘Wouldn’t you have done the same?’

Grace gave a tiny dismissive shrug. ‘It never occurred to me.’

Lisa frowned, unbalanced by this unexpected response. She had thought her question hypothetical. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘My father was a Frenchman in the diplomatic corps. I was the result of a brief liaison with my mother. His name was Jacques. Beyond that I know nothing of him.’

‘But weren’t you ever curious? I mean, didn’t you want to know who he was?’

Grace shook her head. ‘No. He had no interest in me. Why should I care about him?’

‘That’s very sad.’

‘I don’t think so. I was educated in Paris, you see. My mother thought a great deal of the French, but I never liked them much. I am a Cambodian. Always have been, always will be.’

‘Oh.’ Lisa realized that she was wrong in yet another assumption. ‘I thought you were Thai.’

Grace smiled indulgently. ‘In Vietnam,’ she said, ‘all white men were once French. Then they were American. Now they are Russian. But to the Vietnamese they are all just white. As all the peoples of Indochina were just jaunes once to the French. I have long since ceased to be insulted by it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lisa stuttered, wondering how it was that Grace always seemed to make her feel so clumsy.

‘Ignorance is hardly a sin, my dear.’ Grace paused for a moment to squeeze more lime on her papaya. ‘Than tells me you believed your father was dead.’

‘It’s what my mother told me,’ Lisa said.

‘Why?’

‘Because he’d disgraced her. Us. Or so she thought.’ Lisa drew in a deep breath. ‘He was court-martialled and sent to prison for a massacre of civilians in Aden.’ A slightly raised eyebrow was the only betrayal of Grace’s surprise. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

‘No.’ The faintest hint of a smile played about Grace’s mouth. ‘But, then, that’s hardly surprising.’

‘Why? Because you think he’d have been ashamed to?’

Grace evaded the question. ‘Are you ashamed of him?’

Lisa felt a flush rise on her cheeks. It was something she’d wondered herself many times. How could she answer Grace when she’d never found an answer for herself? ‘I don’t know,’ she said at length. ‘Maybe that’s why I’m here. To find out.’

Grace’s smile faded, and Lisa wondered if it was a flicker of pity she saw cross her eyes. ‘He does not give much away, your father,’ Grace said.

Lisa gazed at her speculatively along the length of the hang yao and wondered if she had ever seen such beauty. A beauty that could in one moment seem warm and enticing, and in another cold and dangerous. ‘What exactly is your relationship with my father?’ she asked.

Grace seemed to consider her answer carefully for some moments. Then, ‘We were lovers,’ she said simply.

Lisa felt the shock in her heart sting her face pink. Intimate. That was the word Grace had used in the car. She had not known him well, but intimately. Lovers. Of course. They had been lovers. This woman, a complete stranger to her, knew her father in ways that she never could. It seemed to explain all the ambiguities. And for a moment Lisa was almost jealous.

Grace sat up suddenly, pushing her tray aside. ‘A little coffee, I think. Then we should get you some clothes.’

*

Sweat glistened on the firm brown bodies in the steamy heat of the dyeing room. The dark-haired boys wore only gloves and sandals, and the flimsiest of shorts, as they worked with dexterous ease, apparently impervious to the heat, dipping the heavy skeins of silk into vats of hot dye. In the glow of the fires, the smoke and steam that permeated the claustrophobic darkness stung Lisa’s eyes and caught in her throat. Grace, standing at her side, gently holding her a little above the elbow, seemed oblivious. Lisa glanced at her and saw the gleam that lit her eyes as she ran them across the taut young muscles of the bare-chested boys.

‘How can they work in this atmosphere?’ Lisa said, almost choking as she spoke.

Grace replied distantly. ‘They’re used to it.’ Then she turned to Lisa and smiled. ‘You can get used to almost anything. Come. It’s time to choose.’ And she guided her back out into the comparative cool of the factory where women moved vast screens back and forth along three-hundred-metre lengths of undyed silk, printing repeated patterns of exotic jungle scenes. Earlier, Lisa and Grace had passed through large rooms resounding to the clatter of dozens of flying shuttle looms weaving great lengths of raw silk. Their guide had explained to Lisa that Thailand’s silk larvae spun unusually soft, thick fibres, and that the resultant fabric accepted dyes more readily than silk made elsewhere in the world. He was waiting for them as they climbed the steps to the factory showroom, where huge rolls of printed and dyed silks were stacked one upon the other.

A shrunken man with a bald, brown pate, he bowed and smiled. ‘Your friend enjoyed her tour, La Mère Grace?’

‘Did you?’ Grace turned to Lisa.

‘Very much,’ Lisa said. She laughed. ‘I feel like a child in Santa’s grotto.’

‘Then let me be your Father, or should I say Mother Christmas – although we are a week or so late.’ Grace’s smile seemed to conceal a greater amusement at the idea. She waved a hand expansively around the room. ‘You choose. But something fine, I think, and self-coloured, and dark to contrast the whiteness of your skin.’

Lisa finally chose a deep, lustrous crimson in a very fine fabric. Grace seemed pleased with her choice, running the material sensuously through her fingers. ‘Red for passion,’ she said. ‘Are you a passionate creature, Lisa?’

Their guide smiled.

Lisa flushed deeply. ‘I really don’t know,’ she stammered. ‘Red has always suited me.’

‘We’ll take five metres,’ Grace told their guide. ‘On my account, of course.’

‘Of course, La Mère Grace.’

In the car Lisa asked, ‘Why did he call you La Mère Grace?’

‘It is how I am known,’ Grace said. ‘My business