Lesley settles into the rhythm of hosting Willie and Gerald at Cassowary House. She reads Willie's On a Chinese Screen late into the night, admiring his unsparing yet sympathetic eye for the people of China. Frustrated by dead ends in tracing the Tong Meng Hui, she visits her brother Geoff at the Penang Post, framing her search as research for a book Willie supposedly wants to write about Sun Wen. Geoff confirms the Tong Meng Hui is finished and most members dead or captured, but agrees to ask his Kwong Wah contacts for Sun's address in exchange for an interview with Willie. Geoff also presses Lesley about Robert's health and the planned move to the Karoo, which she resists.

That evening Willie dumps a pile of social invitations on the verandah. Gerald arrives bloodied from a poker brawl with Chinese players who tried to keep his winnings. Sifting through the cards, Lesley spots an invitation from Noel Hutton, a wealthy old friend whose party will draw the Malay royalty and Straits Chinese she needs to network with for Sun's address. She pushes hard for everyone to attend, and Willie eventually agrees, persuading Robert to come along.

Over a Peranakan dinner, Willie raves about the food. Afterwards, in the sitting room, he admires a Chinese door-panel painting and a Gauguin. Gerald gleefully recounts how he and Willie acquired a Gauguin-painted door in Tahiti for a pittance, prompting Lesley to accuse them of cheating the owner. The conversation turns to Willie's craft: how strangers confess to him, how truth is always edited, and how a writer fills the gaps and decides the ending.

After Robert retires, Lesley confides in Willie about Robert's shell shock since the war and his decision to move them to the Karoo, which she refuses to accept. Willie offers to relocate to the E&O Hotel, but she declines. He gently suggests the dry climate will help Robert and reveals that Robert once urged him to abandon medicine for writing and lent him money to do so, a kindness Robert never mentioned. Lesley lies awake, her image of her husband subtly altered.