‘Why did your mother die?’ ‘Cholera,’ Robin said after a pause. ‘There was an outbreak—’ ‘I didn’t ask how,’ said Griffin. ‘I asked why.’ I don’t know why, Robin wanted to say, but he did. He’d always known, he’d just forced himself not to dwell on it. In all this time, he had never let himself ask this particular formulation of the question. Oh, two weeks and some change, said Mrs Piper. They’d been in China for over two weeks.
