Sun realised immediately that the red room was not Korean, even before Mary Carson had crossed the threshold. It was that European take on Asia which old houses produced when they did not understand a continent but simply collected bits and pieces from it: Chinese lacquered furniture, a low tea table with curved legs, a screen depicting cranes and bamboo from Japan, heavy red silk on the walls, red tassels on the lamps, red ceramic bowls from Thailand set on dark wood. A canopy hung above the bed, embroidered with golden dragons. Even the bathroom continued the colour scheme: red tiles, red towels, a bowl of soap that smelled of sandalwood, jasmine and something sweet that Sun couldn’t name.

It was comfortable, opulent, exotic in the European sense, attentive to the point of intrusiveness. A room in which an Italian noble family had had Asia rendered in colour, scent and texture. Sun was familiar with such rooms. In Seoul they hadn’t been red, but made of glass, steel and money, mimicking French, British or Austrian styles.
Mary went in first. She looked around to see if she could find any Australian silk. Sun followed her, leaving the door ajar, but Mary went back and pulled it shut, so that only the keyhole remained as a dark eye in the wood.
Mary placed her small evening bag on the lacquered table. Then she removed her gloves, finger by finger, and every movement had the care of an old woman who was no longer in any hurry. When she looked at Sun, there was no longer any politeness on her face. Only seriousness, pride and a very clear resolve.
“I do not believe you are the murderer of this woman, Miss Bak. I did not really believe that at the table either, even when it seemed useful to me to direct suspicion towards you. Valeria Sebastienne was no stranger who happened to fall from the sky, but a blackmailer, and I am not unhappy about her death.”
Sun stopped by the door. The words might have reassured her, had they not simultaneously confirmed that Mary Carson was pursuing clear objectives – just as she herself was.
“So you used me to divert suspicion away from your own family, even though you knew I’d probably done nothing?” I understand the reason all too well, for in my own family, too, loyalty was often valued more highly than the truth. But I’d like you to at least speak honestly with me here, in this red room. I promise you I won’t tell Justine any of this. Nor anyone else, for that matter.”
Mary didn’t sit down straight away. She walked over to the folding screen and ran her fingers gently over the embroidery. The cranes on the lacquered screen stood on slender legs in a painted marsh, completely untouched by people, inheritances and corpses.

“Justice is a fine word for people who don’t have enough to lose. I had Drogheda, a name, a family that had wrapped itself around this land like a second skin, and a dead woman in the courtyard whose presence could tear it all open again. If I have to choose between a stranger from Korea enduring a night’s worth of suspicion at a dinner party and my family falling into the hands of a blackmailer, then I’ll choose my family without a second thought.”
Sun walked slowly towards the second chair. She sat down slowly. In the red light, Mary’s emerald seemed darker, almost black.
“You say ‘family’ as if the word were a fortress. I long believed that family was something you protect, even if it commands you to betray yourself. Now I know that a family can also be a building in which all the doors are locked from the inside. ”
Mary looked at her intently. The sentence wasn’t pleading. That’s why she took it seriously.
“Valeria claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of my husband, Carl Carson. She wrote to me saying she had evidence, and that she would no longer leave Drogheda to the Clearys, who’d married into the family, and a childless widow. Then she lay in wait for me in Sydney whilst I was there for a board meeting; she wanted money and silence, and in the end she even came to Drogheda to confront me directly about her supposed inheritance.”

Sun now settled herself more comfortably. Mary remained standing, as if this truth must not be spoken too softly.
“You didn’t believe her because you knew she was lying. You weren’t afraid of the legal claim, but of the wound she’d uncovered being reopened. You don’t need to explain to me that a false claim can still have an effect, because in families, even the shadow of an accusation is often enough to shake those still living.”
Mary turned away from the screen. For a moment, her face didn’t look weaker, but older. Not by twenty years, but by a twelve-year marriage.
“Carl was infertile. The doctor knew it, Carl knew it, and I knew it; that was quite enough, for a marriage needs no public assembly to acknowledge its most humiliating truths. I wanted children, Miss Bak, not just heirs, even if you may consider me cold enough to have long confused the two.”
She finally sat down on the chair opposite Sun. Between them stood the low lacquered table, on which Mary’s gloves lay like two discarded skins.
“I wanted heirs, of course I wanted heirs. Drogheda cries out for continuity, for a name, for children with dust in their hair who later imagine they chose the land, even though the land chose them long ago. But I also wanted a child who makes a racket in the morning—one that sounds not of property, but of life; and Valeria was foolish enough to threaten me with the inheritance, without realising that her knife, at a deeper level, had long since been both blunt and sharp at the same time.”
Sun let those words hang in the red room for a while. She knew the shame of a daughter who was not a son; Mary knew the shame of a wife who never became a mother. Neither woman would have needed to say that word out loud. Yet there it was.

“In my family, too, the legacy was greater than the people who were meant to carry it. My brother committed crimes—not even cleverly or with dignity, but greedily and cowardly—and my father demanded that I take the blame. I went to prison, not because my brother deserved to be saved, but because I wanted to prove to my father that I was the stronger daughter than his beloved son.”
Mary listened without pity. At that moment, that was a form of respect.
“So you paid the price for your brother in order to be recognised by your father? That’s the sort of sacrifice men like to call noble, as long as it’s women who make it. I suppose your father did recognise the truth after all; otherwise you wouldn’t speak of him in this way. I’m glad for your sake that he managed to express that before he died.”
Sun looked at the red ceramic bowl. It was empty. That was precisely why it looked like an altar.
“My father wanted to honour me after all. He wanted to expose my brother and give me what he’d previously denied me. My brother had him killed before that justice could take shape, and now he’s in prison, whilst I’m free and have become the sole heir to the Bak Bank.”
Mary’s expression changed at the words ‘sole heir’. Not greedily, but with understanding.
“In societies like ours, that always sounds like victory. People hear ‘sole heir’ and see only keys, signatures, buildings, men bowing before you, and bank accounts that don’t contradict you. But an inheritance is no gift when it falls from the shadow of a dead man whom you have simultaneously loved, hated and never quite left behind.”

Sun looked up. For the first time that night, she saw Mary not as an adversary, but as a woman who understood the weight of things.
“It feels like my father’s coat. It’s too big, too heavy, and it still smells of a man whose approval I craved, even though I knew it could destroy me. I’ve inherited banks, names and power, but sometimes I don’t know whether I’m standing in his place or merely in his shadow. I was even received by the Emperor’s wife so that she could offer me her condolences—an honour not often bestowed upon non-Japanese, you must know.”
Mary nodded slowly. The dragons above the bed glistened in the lamplight. The room was red, in the old Chinese style, opulent and inauthentic, but at that moment it held two women who had inherited too much.
“Then you understand Justine better than she does herself. You might think I only see Drogheda in her, but that would be too simple and also too facile. Justine is the only one who could one day carry this country without merely becoming its housekeeper, its widow or its priestess.”
Sun tilted her head. Mary was no longer speaking of Valeria. She was speaking of the living woman whom she had, almost tenderly, called ‘child’ at the table.
“Fiona would be dutiful enough to preserve Drogheda down to the last fence post, but in doing so she would extinguish herself and even apologise whilst standing in the dust. Meghan is too wounded, and every room would, in her grief, turn back into Dane’s room, even if he’d never slept in it. Justine has fire, pride, hunger and a dangerous audacity, and that is precisely why I love her, even though she’d probably rather die than let me love her.”

Out in the corridor, Justin Taylor stood in front of the red door.

He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. Vittorio had asked him to check the shutter at the end of the corridor, and Justin had gone because moving about was better than the stiffness he felt after dessert. Then he’d heard Mary’s voice – not the shrill voice from the table, but a deeper, more private one – and his body had come to a halt before his conscience.
The keyhole revealed almost nothing. A red glimpse. Mary’s gloves. A patch of lacquered table. But the words came through clearly enough.
Valeria claimed to be Carl’s daughter.
Carl was infertile.
Mary wanted children.
Justine was the only worthy successor.
Justin placed his hand against the wall. He didn’t interpret these sentences as clues, but as images sliding over one another: Mary’s emerald, Drogheda, the melting bombé, Justine’s tears in the napkin, Valeria beneath the sheet. He felt ashamed for overhearing what was not meant for him; but he could not leave, because the truth did not feel like curiosity at that moment, but like a fall that could no longer be stopped.
In the room, Sun continued speaking.
“If you love Justine, you should not just leave her a country. An inheritance can be a crown, but it can also become a prison, and I have lived too long in spaces that other people considered a duty. Perhaps Justine does not need Drogheda as proof of your love, but a love that is not only opened like a will after your death.”
Mary’s fingers clenched around her gloves. This time the movement was not imperious, but almost defenceless.
“You are demanding a language from me that I have never learnt. In my world, one bestows possessions, protection and a name, because tenderness is too easily turned against one. If I tell Justine that I love her, she will laugh, run away or hate me for saying it too late; if I leave her Drogheda, she can hate me and still survive.”
Sun did not stand up. Her calm remained, but she was no longer dismissive.
“Perhaps she will hate you anyway. Perhaps she will accept Drogheda or reject it, and perhaps it will take her years to understand what you were trying to tell her. But children, even grown-up children, can tell the difference between a gift and a burden, even when adults wait until both are wrapped in the same way.”
Mary did not reply straight away. There was more truth in that silence than in many of the things she’d said at the table. At last she spoke slowly, with a dignity that sought no audience:
“Valeria wanted to blackmail me with a daughter that Carl could never have. The ridiculous thing is that tonight, more clearly than I have in years, I know that I chose an heir long ago—just not by blood, and not from Carl. Justine isn’t my daughter, and yet she may be the only child in this family who can not only inherit, but also speak out against.”
Justin closed his eyes.
Something stirred behind him.

Justine was standing a few steps away in the corridor. She’d been looking for him because he’d been away too long, or because she didn’t want to lose sight of anyone else that night. When she saw him by the red door, she realised immediately that he hadn’t just been checking the shutters.
Justin stepped back from the door. He wanted to pull her away before she heard something that wasn’t meant for her ears. But Mary’s voice came through the wood once more, clear and deep enough to reach Justine.
“I won’t tell her that, Miss Bak. Not today, perhaps never, for some affection is safer in my family as long as it sounds like a decree. But if I survive this night, and if Justine is wise enough not to be broken by her mother, then one day Drogheda will belong to her, because she is the only one who wouldn’t just mourn there.”
Justine stopped in her tracks.
The red light seeped out only as a narrow strip from under the door. It fell on her shoes, not her face. Justine was grateful for that, for she could see enough as it was: the sudden stillness of a woman who otherwise transformed every hurt into movement, wit or attack.
Sun replied from inside the room, more calmly than before.
“You’re not thanking me because I contradict you, but because I’m forcing you to articulate the cost of your control. I thank you too, because you didn’t lie to me with kindness. We’ve both made mistakes because we want to do the right thing. And neither of us ever seems able to tell those we love that we’re asking for just a spark of their approval.”
A chair was pushed back.
Justin took hold of Justine’s wrist and gently pulled her into the alcove opposite the door. She let him. They both stood there, too close to one another, yet not out of a desire for closeness, but to avoid danger. Justine was breathing shallowly, and Justin sensed that she hadn’t heard Valeria’s blackmail. She’d also heard that Mary loved her, and that love took a form that almost looked like possession.
The door didn’t open. Sun said nothing more from inside the room. Mary pulled the bowl closer to her.
Justine remained motionless for another moment. Then she turned to Justin. Her voice was very soft, but it was more than just shock. It already bore the weight of what she’d heard.
Justin was still holding her hand. He let go when he realised he could no longer protect her by holding on to her.

‘I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, and I shouldn’t have let you go near that door. But I think you would have discovered this truth eventually anyway, because it lies too deeply beneath everything Mary said this evening.’
Justine looked at the red streak of light under the door. She said nothing for a long time.
“Perhaps in our family, everything important is only heard through doors, because no one can say it at the table without turning it into a weapon. So Mary loves me like a will, my mother loves Dane like a grave, and Fiona loves us by keeping her hands still until they’re sore. That’s not a family, Justin; it’s a house full of locked rooms, and yet one day I’m supposed to inherit the bunch of keys.”
Vittorio’s footsteps came from the end of the corridor. He stopped when he saw the two of them in the alcove. His gaze went to the red door, then to Justine’s face, then to Justin. He didn’t ask if they’d been eavesdropping.
“Come with me, and for now say nothing of what you’ve merely heard, because a door was old and a heart was weary. This night will yet force enough truths to light, without our carrying every one of them out into the corridor straight away. But I can see from the look on your faces that Valeria Sebastienne does not merely lie dead in the courtyard, but has already begun to work on through the living.”
Justine took her hand off the wall. She straightened up, but not like an actress, rather like someone who did not yet want to fall.
“Then let us go, Your Eminence, but do not think that silence is the same as obedience. I will not pretend I heard nothing, simply because it would be more convenient to leave Mary’s pain to Mary.”
Vittorio looked at her for a long time. Then he nodded slowly.
They walked down the corridor: Vittorio in front, Justin beside Justine, behind them the red room with Mary and Sun.
The colour lingered beneath the door like a narrow slit.