I mishandled my meeting this morning with MacDonald at the British consulate, and recalling it tonight only fills me with frustration. The fact is, he had prepared himself well and I had not. Time and again, I allowed him to lead me down false avenues, to waste my energy arguing over things he had decided to concede to me from the start. If anything, I was further forward with him four weeks ago, that evening at the ballroom of the Palace Hotel, when I first put to him this notion of an interview with the Yellow Snake. I had caught MacDonald unawares then, and had at least got him to admit, in so many words, his true role here in Shanghai. This morning, however, I had not obliged him even to relinquish his charade of being simply an official charged with protocol matters.

I suppose I underestimated him. I had thought it simply a matter of going in and reprimanding him for his slow progress in arranging what I had requested. Only now do I see how he laid his traps, realising that once I became annoyed, he would easily get the better of me. It was foolish to show my irritation in the way I did; but these continuous days of intense work have left me tired. And of course, there was the unexpected encounter with Grayson, the Municipal Council man, as I was going up to MacDonald's office. In fact, I would say it was this more than anything else which threw me off balance this morning, to the extent that for much of my subsequent discussion with MacDonald, my mind was actually elsewhere.

I had been kept waiting for several minutes in the little lounge on the second floor of the consulate building. The secretary finally came to inform me MacDonald was ready, and I had crossed the marbled landing and was standing before the lift doors when Grayson came hurrying down the staircase, calling to me.

‘Good morning, Mr Banks! I'm so sorry, perhaps this isn't the best time.’

‘Good morning, Mr Grayson. As a matter of fact, it isn't ideal. I was just on my way up to see our friend Mr MacDonald.’

‘Oh well then, I won't keep you. It's just that here I was in the building and I heard you were here too.’ His cheerful laugh echoed around the walls.

‘It's splendid to see you again, Mr Grayson. But just now …’

‘I won't keep you a second, sir. But if I may, you see, you've been a little difficult to track down recently.’

‘Well, Mr Grayson, if it can be dealt with very briefly.’

‘Oh very briefly. You see, sir, I realise this may seem like jumping ahead, but a certain amount of forward planning is required in these matters. If things aren't up to scratch at such an important event, if things look even a little shoddy or amateurish …’

‘Mr Grayson …’

‘I'm so sorry. I just wished to have your thoughts on a few details concerning the welcome reception. We've now settled on Jessfield Park as the venue. We shall erect a marquee with a stage and public address system … I'm so sorry, I'll come to the point. Mr Banks, I really wished to discuss with you your own role in the proceedings. Our feeling is that the ceremony should be kept simple. What I had in mind was that perhaps you would say a few words concerning how you went about solving the case. Which vital clues finally led you to your parents, that sort of thing. Just a few words, the crowd would be so delighted. And then at the end of your speech, I thought they might care to come out on to the stage.’

‘They, Mr Grayson?’

‘Your parents, sir. My idea was that they might come on to the platform, wave, acknowledge the cheers, then withdraw. But of course, this is no more than an idea. I'm sure you'll have some other excellent suggestions …’

‘No, no, Mr Grayson’ – I suddenly felt a great weariness coming over me – ‘it all sounds splendid, splendid. Now, if that's all. I really must …’

‘Just one other thing, sir. A small matter, but one that might lend a most effective touch if pulled off just so. My idea was that at the moment your parents come out on to the platform, the brass band should strike up. Perhaps something like “Land of Hope and Glory”. Some of my colleagues are less keen on this idea, but to my mind …’

‘Mr Grayson, your idea sounds a marvellous one. What's more, I'm exceedingly flattered by your utter confidence in my ability to solve this case. But now, please, I'm keeping Mr MacDonald waiting.’

‘Of course. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.’

I pressed the button for the lift, and while I stood waiting, Grayson continued to hover. I had actually turned away from him to face the doors, when I heard him say:

‘The only other thing I wondered about, Mr Banks. Have you any idea where your parents will be staying on the day of the ceremony? You see, we shall need to ensure they're conveyed to and from the park with minimum bother from the crowds.’

I cannot remember what I said to him in reply. Perhaps the lift doors opened at that moment, and I was able to take my leave of him with nothing more than a cursory response. But it was this last question which hung in my mind throughout my meeting with MacDonald, and which, as I say, probably did more than anything else to prevent me thinking clearly about the matter in hand. And tonight, again, now that the demands of the day are behind me, I find this same question returning to my mind.

It is not that I have given no thought at all to the matter of where my parents should eventually be accommodated. It is just that it has always seemed to me premature – perhaps even ‘tempting fate’ – to contemplate such questions while the great complexities of the case have still to be unravelled. I suppose the only occasion over these past weeks when I gave the matter any real thought was on that evening I met up with my old schoolfriend, Anthony Morgan.

It was not long after my arrival here – my third or fourth night. I had known for some time that Morgan was living in Shanghai, but since we had never been especially friendly at St Dunstan's – despite our being in the same class throughout – I had made no special arrangements to meet up with him. But then I received from him a telephone call on the morning of that third day. I could tell he was rather hurt at my failure to get in touch, and eventually found myself agreeing to a rendezvous that evening in a hotel in the French Concession.

It was well after dark when I found him waiting in the dimly lit hotel lounge. I had not laid eyes on him since school and was shocked by how worn and heavy-set he had become. But I tried to keep any such impression out of my voice as we exchanged warm greetings.

‘Funny,’ he said, patting me on the back. ‘Doesn't seem so long ago. And yet in some ways, it feels like another age.’

‘It certainly does.’

‘Do you know,’ he went on, ‘I got a letter the other day from Emeric the Dane? Remember him? Emeric the Dane! Hadn't heard from him in years! Living in Vienna now, it seems. Old Emeric. You remember him?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, though I could summon only the vaguest memory of such a boy. ‘Good old Emeric.’

For the next half-hour or so, Morgan chattered on with hardly a break. He had come out to Hong Kong straight after Oxford, then moved to Shanghai eleven years ago after securing a position at Jardine Matheson. Then at one point he broke off his story to say:

‘You wouldn't believe the God-awful trouble I've been having with chauffeurs since all this trouble started. Regular one got killed the first day the Japs started shelling. Found another man, turned out to be a bandit of some sort. Kept having to rush off to perform his gang duties, could never be found when you wanted to go somewhere. Picked me up once at the American Club with blood all over his shirt. Not his own, I soon gathered. Didn't say a word in apology, typical Chinaman. That was the last straw for me. Then I had two others, couldn't drive at all. One actually hit a rickshawman, hurt the poor fellow quite badly. Driver I've got now's not much better, so let's keep fingers crossed he gets us there all right.’

I had no idea what he meant by this last statement, since as far as I could recall we had not agreed to go anywhere else that night. But I did not feel like picking him up on it, and then he had quickly moved on to telling me about the shortages afflicting the hotel. The lounge we were sitting in, he confided, was not always so dimly lit: the war had stopped the supply of light bulbs from the Chapei factories; in some other parts of the hotel, guests were having to wander about through darkness. He pointed out also that at least three members of the dance-band at the far end of the room were not playing their instruments.

‘That's because they're really porters. The real musicians have either fled Shanghai or been killed in the fighting. Still, they do a fair impersonation, don't you think?’

Now that he had pointed it out, I saw that their impersonations were, in fact, poor in the extreme. One man looked utterly bored and was hardly bothering to hold his violin bow near his instrument; another was standing with a clarinet virtually forgotten in his hands, staring in open-mouthed wonder at the real musicians playing around him. It was only when I congratulated Morgan on his intimate knowledge of the hotel that he told me he had in fact been living there for over a month, having judged his apartment in Hongkew ‘too close for comfort’ to the fighting. When I muttered some words of sympathy that he had had to abandon his home, his mood suddenly changed, and for the first time I saw about him a melancholy that brought to mind the unhappy and lonely boy I had known at school.

‘Wasn't much of a home anyway,’ he said, looking into his cocktail. ‘Just me, a few servants that came and went. Miserable little place really. In some ways, it was just an excuse, the fighting. Gave me a good reason to walk out. It was a miserable little place. All my furniture was Chinese. Couldn't sit comfortably anywhere. Had a songbird once, but it died. It's better for me here. Much quicker to my watering holes.’ Then he looked at his watch, drained his glass and said: ‘Well, better not keep them waiting. Car's outside.’

There was something about Morgan's manner – a kind of nonchalant urgency – that made it hard to raise any objections. Besides, these were still my early days in the city, when I was in the habit of being taken from function to function by various hosts. I thus followed Morgan out of the building and before long was sitting with him in the back of his car, moving through the lively night-time streets of the French Concession.

Almost immediately, the driver only just avoided an oncoming tram, and I thought this would start Morgan off again on his chauffeur problems. But now he had fallen into an introspective mood, staring silently out of his window at the passing neon and Chinese banners. At one point, when I remarked to him, in an attempt to glean something about the event to which we were going: ‘Do you suppose we'll be late?’ he glanced at his watch again and replied distractedly: ‘They've been waiting for you this long, they won't mind a few more minutes.’ Then he added: ‘This must feel so odd for you.’

For a while after that we travelled on, speaking little. Once we went down a side-street on both sides of which the pavements were filled with huddled figures. I could see them in the lamplight, sitting, squatting, some curled up asleep on the ground, squeezed one upon the other, so that there was only just enough space down the middle of the street for traffic to pass. They were of every age – I could see babies asleep in mothers’ arms – and their belongings were all around them; ragged bundles, bird-cages, the occasional wheelbarrow piled high with possessions. I have now grown used to such sights, but on that evening I stared out of the car in dismay. The faces were mostly Chinese, but as we came towards the end of the street, I saw clusters of European children – Russians, I supposed.

‘Refugees from north of the canal,’ Morgan said blandly, and turned away. For all his being a refugee himself, he appeared to feel no special empathy with his poorer counterparts. Even when once I thought we had run over a sleeping form, and glanced back in alarm, my companion merely murmured: ‘Don't worry. Probably just some old bundle.’

Then after several minutes of silence, he startled me with a laugh. ‘Schooldays,’ he said. ‘All comes back to you. They weren't so bad, I suppose.’

I glanced at him and noticed tears welling in his eyes. Then he said:

‘You know, we should have teamed up. The two miserable loners. That was the thing to do. You and me, we should have teamed up together. Don't know why we didn't. We wouldn't have felt so left out of things if we'd done that.’

I turned to him in astonishment. But his face, caught in the changing light, told me he was somewhere far away.

As I have said, I could remember well enough Anthony Morgan's being something of a ‘miserable loner’ at school. It was not that he was particularly bullied or teased by the rest of us; rather, as I recall it, it was Morgan himself who from an early stage cast himself in that role. He it was who always chose to walk by himself, lagging several yards behind the main group; who on bright summer days refused to join in the fun, and was to be found instead alone in a room, filling a notebook with doodles. All this I can remember clearly enough. In fact, as soon as I had spotted him that night in the gloomy hotel lounge, what had come instantly to mind was an image of his sulky, solitary walk behind the rest of us as we crossed the quadrangle between the art room and the cloisters. But his assertion that I had likewise been a ‘miserable loner’, one with whom he might have made a matching pair, was such an astounding one, it took me a little while to realise it was simply a piece of self-delusion on Morgan's part – in all likelihood something he had invented years ago to make more palatable memories of an unhappy period. As I say, this did not occur to me instantly, and thinking about it now I see I may have been a little insensitive in my response. For I remember saying something like:

‘You must have me mixed up with someone else, old fellow. I was always one for mucking in. I dare say you're thinking of that fellow Bigglesworth. Adrian Bigglesworth. He was certainly a bit of a loner.’

‘Bigglesworth?’ Morgan thought about this, then shook his head. ‘I remember the chap. Rather heavy-set, jug ears? Old Bigglesworth. My, my. But no, I wasn't thinking of him.’

‘Well, it wasn't me, old man.’

‘Extraordinary.’ He shook his head again, then turned back to his window.

I too turned away, and for the next little while gazed out at the night-time streets. We were once again moving through a busy entertainment area, and I glanced through the faces in the crowds, hoping to glimpse Akira's. Then we were in a residential district full of hedges and trees, and before long the driver brought the car to a halt inside the grounds of a large house.

Morgan left the vehicle hurriedly. I too got out – the chauffeur made no effort to assist – and followed him along a gravelled path leading around the side of the house. I suppose I had been expecting a big reception of some sort, but I could now see this was not what awaited us; the house was for the most part dark, and aside from our own car, there was only one other in the courtyard.

Morgan, who was clearly familiar with the house, brought us to a side door flanked by tall shrubs. He opened it without ringing and ushered me inside.

We found ourselves in a spacious hallway lit by candles. Peering before me, I could make out musty-looking scrolls, huge porcelain vases, a lacquered chest of drawers. The smell in the air – of incense mingled with that of excrement – was oddly comforting.

No servant or host appeared. My companion continued to stand beside me, not saying a word. After a time, it occurred to me he was waiting for me to make some comment on our surroundings. So I said:

‘I know little about Chinese artwork. But even to my eye, it's clear we're surrounded by some rather fine things.’

Morgan stared at me in astonishment. Then he shrugged and said: ‘I suppose you're right. Well, let's go in.’

He led the way further into the house. We were in darkness for several steps, and then I heard voices talking in Mandarin, and saw light coming from a doorway hung with beaded threads. We passed through the beads, then a further set of drapes, into a large warm room lit with candles and lanterns.

What do I remember now of the rest of that evening? It has already grown a little hazy in my mind, but let me try and piece it together as clearly as I can. My first thought on entering that room was that we had disturbed some family celebration. I glimpsed a big table laden with food, and seated around it, eight or nine people. All were Chinese; the youngest – two men in their twenties – were dressed in Western suits, but the rest were in traditional dress. An old lady, seated at one end of the table, was being assisted in her eating by a servant. An elderly gentleman – surprisingly tall and broad for an Oriental – whom I took to be the head of the household, had immediately risen upon our arrival, and now the other males in the company followed his example. But at this stage, my impression of these people remained vague, for very rapidly it was the room itself that had begun to command all my attention.

The ceiling was high and beamed. Beyond the diners, right at the back, was a kind of minstrels’ gallery, from the rail of which hung a brace of paper lanterns. It was this section of the room that had drawn my gaze, and I now continued to stare past the table towards it, hardly hearing my host's words of welcome. For what was dawning upon me was that the entire rear half of the room in which I was now standing was in fact what used to be the entrance hall of our old Shanghai house.

Obviously some vast restructuring had taken place over the years. I could not, for instance, work out at all how the areas through which Morgan and I had just entered related to our old hall. But the minstrels’ gallery at the back clearly corresponded to the balcony at the top of our grand curving staircase.

I drifted forward, and probably remained standing there for some time, gazing up at the gallery, tracing with my eye the route our stairs had once taken. And as I did so, I found an old memory coming back to me, of a period in my childhood when I had made a habit of coming down the long curve of the stairs at huge speed and taking off two or three steps from the bottom – usually while flapping my arms – to land in the depths of a couch positioned just a little way away. My father, whenever he witnessed this, would laugh; but both my mother and Mei Li disapproved. Indeed, my mother, who could never quite explain why this particular practice was wrong, would always threaten to have the couch removed if I persisted with the habit. Then once, when I was around eight, I attempted this feat for the first time in months to discover the couch could no longer take the impact of my increased weight. One end of the frame completely collapsed, and I tumbled on to the floor, utterly shocked. The next instant, though, I had remembered my mother was coming down the stairs behind me, and had braced myself for the most terrible dressing down. But my mother, looming over me, had burst out laughing. ‘Look at your face, Puffin!’ she had exclaimed. If you could only see your face!’

I had not been hurt at all, but when my mother had continued to laugh – and perhaps because I was still afraid of a scolding – I had begun to make the most of a pain I could feel in my ankle. My mother had then stopped her laughing and had helped me up gently. I remember her then walking me slowly round and round the hall, an arm around my shoulder, saying: ‘There now, that's better, isn't it? We'll just walk it off. There now, it's nothing.’

I never was scolded over the incident and a few days later I came in to find the couch had been mended; but although I continued often to jump from the second or third step, I never again attempted a dive into the couch.

I took a few paces around the room, trying to work out the exact spot where the couch would have been. As I did so, I found I could conjure up only the haziest picture of what it had actually looked like – though I could recall quite vividly the feel of its silky fabric.

Then eventually I became conscious of the others in the room, and the fact that they were all watching me with gentle smiles. Morgan and the elderly Chinese man had been conferring quietly. Seeing me turn, Morgan took a step forward, cleared his throat and began the introductions.

He was obviously friendly with the family and reeled off the names without hesitation. As he did so, each of them gave a little bow and smile, touching hands together. Only the old lady at the end of the table, whom Morgan introduced with extra deference, went on gazing at me impassively. The family was called Lin – beyond this, I do not now remember any names – and it was Mr Lin himself, the elderly, bulky gentleman, who from this point took charge.

‘I trust, my good sir,’ he said in an English only slightly accented, ‘that it gives a warm feeling to return here again.’

‘Yes, it does.’ I gave a little laugh. ‘Yes. And it's a little strange also.’

‘But that is natural,’ Mr Lin said. ‘Now please make yourself comfortable. Mr Morgan tells me you have already dined. But as you see, we have prepared food for you. We did not know if you cared for Chinese cuisine. So we borrowed the cook of our English neighbour.’

‘But perhaps Mr Banks isn't hungry.’

This was said by one of the young men in suits. Then turning to me the latter continued: ‘My grandfather is rather the old-fashioned type. He gets very offended if a guest doesn't accept every piece of hospitality.’ The young man smiled broadly at the old man. ‘Please don't let him bully you, Mr Banks.’

‘My grandson believes me to be an old-fashioned Chinese,’ Mr Lin said, coming closer to me, the smile never leaving his face. ‘But the truth is, I am born and bred in Shanghai, here in the International Settlement. My parents were obliged to flee the Empress Dowager's forces, and take sanctuary here, in the foreigner's city, and I have grown up a Shanghailander through and through. My grandson here has no idea what life is like in the real China. He considers me old-fashioned! Ignore him, my dear sir. There is no need to worry about protocol in this house. If you do not wish to eat, then never mind. I will certainly not bully you.’

‘But you're all so kind,’ I said, perhaps a little distractedly, for in truth I was still trying to work out how the building had been altered.

Then suddenly the old lady said something in Mandarin. The young man who had addressed me before, then said:

‘My grandmother says she thought you would never come. It was such a long wait. But now she's seen you, she's very happy you are here.’

Even before he had finished translating, the old lady was talking again. This time, when she finished, the young man remained silent for a moment. He looked at his grandfather as though for guidance, then appeared to come to a decision.

‘You must excuse Grandmother,’ he said. ‘She is sometimes a little eccentric.’

The old lady, perhaps understanding the English, gestured impatiently for a translation. Finally the young man sighed and said:

‘Grandmother says that until you came in this evening, she resented you. That is to say, she was angry that you are to take our home from us.’

I looked at the young man, quite baffled, but now the old lady was talking again.

‘She says that for a long time.’ her grandson translated, ‘she hoped you would stay away. She believed this home belonged to our family now. But tonight, seeing you in person, seeing the emotion in your eyes, she is able to understand. She now feels in her heart that the agreement is correct.’

‘The agreement? But surely …’

I allowed the words to fade in my mouth. For puzzled as I was, while the young man had been translating his grandmother's words, I had started to locate some vague recollection concerning some such arrangement regarding the old house and my eventual return to it. But as I say, my memory of it was only a very hazy one, and I sensed that by opening a discussion on the matter I would only embarrass myself. In any case, just at that moment Mr Lin said:

‘I fear we are all being most inconsiderate to Mr Banks. Here we are, making him chatter to us, when in fact he must be longing to look about this house once more.’ Then turning to me with a kindly smile, he said: ‘Come with me, good sir. There will be time enough to talk to everyone later. Come this way and I will show you the house.’