High society to wartime jail: Novel tells of British family whose luxury Hong Kong lifestyle was destroyed by Japanese during war

In 1942, my maternal grandparents, Doris and Vernon Walker, were interned with nearly 3,000 other expatriates in the Stanley camp, where they endured cramped conditions, humiliation, disease and starvation for 3½ years. My mother, Veronica, who'd been evacuated to Australia in 1941, at the age of 14, hardly recognised them when she saw them again, in 1945: they were like walking skeletons. It was while I was researching my relatives' experiences in the camp that the idea of writing a novel came to me: The Orchid Tree is set in Hong Kong during the second world war and the post-war era. It follows the fortunes of a fictional British family whose luxurious lifestyle was destroyed overnight when the Japanese invaded.

Although The Orchid Tree - extracts from which are published below - is a work of fiction, I incorporated real events, imagining characters similar to my grandparents and using my grandmother's anecdotes about their harrowing time in Stanley. I found the memoirs of Jean Gittins and George Wright-Nooth, who wrote a book about the Japanese occupation in Hong Kong based on his 1,000-page diary, particularly helpful for my research.

of the police station, we cross a short strip of land leading to a small peninsula. Barbed wire blocks the road. Japanese guards verify our names and let us through.

"Out you hop," Papa says in a false bright voice. "I'll go and find out where we're to be billeted."

A cold wind whips my coat. I shiver and stare at a queue of people waiting by a building. Papa returns with a short bald man. "This is Mr Davies from the Housing Committee." His voice is still chirpy. "We're in the Indian Quarters."

"What are the Indian Quarters?"