‘Miss Fletcher?’ asked the wizened old doorman, resplendent in a bone coloured tunic and turban.

  Mia nodded and turned to stare up at the dilapidated hotel before her. The majestic marble columns and crumbling portico plasterwork. The magnificent marble entrance stairs, dulled by age and the passing of many feet…

  The tangled mess of overgrown garden…

  ‘Welcome to Penang, Pearl of the Orient,’ he said grandly. ‘And the Cornwallis Hotel, lustrous heart of colonial Georgetown.’

  The hotel was situated in the heart of the island’s colonial district true enough, and had a certain frayed, yesteryear kind of appeal, but lustrous?  Mia slid the doorman a bemused glance.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘That the hotel is old and much in need of repair, but sixty years ago, when I first started working here, it was indeed a glory to behold.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  Rajah, according to his discreetly placed nametag, beamed. ‘It could be so again,’ he said. ‘Love could make it so.’

  Love and vast chunks of money.

  ‘Just as soon as the curse is broken.’

  ‘There’s a curse?’

  ‘But of course. How else would the hotel come to be in such disrepair?’

  ‘Years and years of neglect?’

  ‘That too,’ he said. ‘I’ll inform Mr Ethan of your arrival. He’s been waiting for you. We all have.’ Rajah swept open the door for her.   ‘Miss Fletcher.’

  ‘Mia,’ she said, belatedly wondering how he’d known who she was.