An Unsuitable Woman
Kat Gordon
First published in hardback as
The Hunters

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, whilst at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

First published in hardback as The Hunters

Kat Gordon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © Kat Gordon 2018

Newspaper article, © East African Standard, 14 July 1934

Selected quotes, taken from Kenya Legislative Council Debates, 1938, vol IV, Defence, col.6

Selected quotes, taken from Kenya Legislative Council Debates, 1938, vol VI, col.461

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © PlainPicture (woman) and Shutterstock.com (background)

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780008253066

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008253080

Version: 2018-11-15

Praise for An Unsuitable Woman:

‘A rich reimagining of a colonial Eden in which multitudes of serpents lurked’

Sunday Times

‘Kat Gordon has written a gloriously dark tale, packed with heat and glamour, and shot through with a fine, sharp edge. An absolutely compulsive read from beginning to end’

Liza Klaussman, author of Tigers in Red Weather

‘An evocative coming-of-age tale’

iPaper

‘Equally at home evoking the landscapes of east Africa and those of the flawed, capricious human heart … a seductive, troubling journey into Britain’s colonial past’

Anna Hope, author of Wake and The Ballroom

‘An outstanding achievement. This thrilling, evocative novel will transport and absorb you: brilliant’

Emma Chapman, author of The Last Photograph

Dedication

To my son, Noah, and the Somerville girls, for everything.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for An Unsuitable Woman

Dedication

Part One: 1925–1927

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Two: 1933–1937

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Part Three: 1937–1938

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Historical Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Kat Gordon

About the Publisher

Her heart stopped at 20:57 exactly. She had looked at her watch only moments before, and asked the totos to turn on a lamp. She had been reading and hadn’t noticed it getting dark until her eyes had smarted suddenly with the strain.

It had been a warm evening – a warm end to a hot, sticky day that had wrapped itself around her, dampening her upper lip and armpits and the backs of her knees – and she was wearing a thin blue cardigan over the white dress. It made her laugh, wearing white, after everything that had happened, or maybe it made her cry. She stopped the totos again and asked for some tea. Her stomach was still delicate. Her whole body had changed since childbirth, in fact. But she didn’t like to think about that.

She turned her head towards the door, as if she’d heard a noise outside. A crunch and a low purr, but not an animal’s; this was a car pulling up. She wondered for a moment if it was Theo – he often dropped by unannounced. She held the book up. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see anyone, except the totos passing in and out of the shadows cast by the lamp.

Through the screen door she could smell the magnolia tree, and the roses she’d planted. The sweetness of the flowers mingled with the sharpness of the limes that the totos used to polish the furniture, filling the room with a powerful haze. It made her feel tired, or was that the sudden quiet? The cicadas had stopped their humming, and she couldn’t even hear the water. Peace.

A toto stood in front of her with the cup of tea and she shook her head. She’d changed her mind. She didn’t want tea, she didn’t want anything. Go back to the kitchen, she said. Or anywhere; just stay out of this room. She closed her eyes.

The bullet went through the book first; she hadn’t lowered it. Maybe that was the reason there was so little blood, just a small, dark hole in her chest over her heart. When the totos found her, her eyes were open and clear. They said it almost looked as if she was smiling.

Part One

Chapter One

The station was big and crowded with no benches or stalls, just two signs, one reading ‘Mombasa’, and the other ‘Upper-class passengers and luggage’. Most of it was open to the hot November sun and the flies.

After a few minutes I found a porter, and led him back to my family: my father, mopping his forehead, my mother, tapping her foot, and my twelve-year-old sister Maud, melting against the pile of trunks holding books and clothes and everything else that hadn’t been sent on ahead to the new house at Lake Naivasha.

‘There you are, Theo,’ my father said. He waved our tickets and two pennies in front of the porter, ‘Load our luggage into the carriages, there’s a good man.’

‘Yes, Bwana Miller,’ the porter said. He was wearing a thick navy jacket and trousers. As he picked up the first of our trunks I saw he had dark circles under his armpits. He smelled different to the Africans in Tanganyika, less spicy and more sour.

Our carriages were two square compartments with an interconnecting door and mosquito screens attached to the window frames. I sat next to the window on a green-cushioned bench and my mother and Maud sat with me. Smartly dressed train guards checked our tickets and bowed to my father as he strode around the two rooms, explaining little features here and there. My father was an engineer, now Director of the same railway that in 1896 he’d come out to Africa to build.

I rested my forehead against the cool glass of our carriage window. We’d spent the last two weeks in Dar es Salaam, and if we were still there I would have been stretched out along the jetty with Maud and Lucy – the daughter of my father’s friends – soaking up the warmth of the wood beneath us, and listening to the shouts of the men unloading fish and spices along the harbour. In front of us, moored dhows would be bumping gently against each other in the waves, and kingfishers dive-bombing the water in flashes of blue and orange. Across the bay was Zanzibar, home to the sultan. One afternoon I’d taken my father’s binoculars out to look at the island, a stretch of brilliant white sand dotted with palms and matched by the whitewashed palace and fort at its edge. To the left I could see an Indian banyan tree, alive with vervet monkeys, and behind that, the shaded labyrinthine streets of Stone Town. Children darted in and out of focus, rusted-red iron roofs sloped upwards, and bedsheets, used in the place of curtains, flailed outwards in the breeze. ‘That’s the breath of God,’ Maud said, when I showed her. I didn’t see how Kenya could be better than that.

Along the train, doors began to slam.

‘Theo, open the window, please,’ my mother said.

‘Perhaps we should leave it closed,’ my father said. ‘It gets quite dusty later on.’

My mother frowned, and he hurriedly waved at me to do as she said.

With the window open the carriage began to smell. Home – Scotland – had smelled clean, like heather, or salt when the breeze blew straight from the ocean. And then in the spring and autumn the rain would come, hammering the earth and releasing the rich smell of peat from it. Africa smelled too much – fishy, peppery, rotting, and smoky all at once – and at first I’d thought I was going to pass out in the confusion. Now I could occasionally make something out: the sour, animal scent of a donkey, or the sweetness of the mimosa that spilled over the white fences surrounding the Europeans’ houses. Or caramel, from the sugared nuts a man was selling on the platform.

‘That’s hardly any better,’ my mother said, peeling off her gloves, and I pressed myself against the back of my seat to be further away from her. She was seventeen years younger than my father, and I knew that men found her beautiful. To me, however, she was only unpredictable. Sometimes she would nuzzle me, rubbing her nose against my cheek and gently pulling my hair, and other times she would fly at me, cuffing me around my head. My last tutor had quit when my mother – whose own schooling was stopped at thirteen – overheard me stumbling on my arithmetic and ran into the room to slap me across the face, shouting the right answers. After that I was sent to boarding school.

‘When are we going to leave?’ she said. ‘Can’t you have a word with someone, William?’

‘Just a few more minutes.’

Maud traced an outline with her finger over the mesh of the mosquito screen. ‘Will we come back to Mombasa?’

‘Another time,’ my father said. ‘We’re going to The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi now. You know, Theodore Roosevelt stayed there in 1909 on his “African Safari and Scientific Expedition”.’ He placed a meaty hand on my neck. ‘Your namesake, Theo.’

At fifty-four, my father was the one who resembled Roosevelt, with his moustache and his glasses and his waistcoats. I was slim, short and blond, and my mouth was too large – too thick-lipped – and my nose too wide, my eyes too green and my cheekbones too high to be much like the former President. I was too girlish-looking. The boys at my school had called me Theodora; sometimes they’d chased me around the rugby pitch and pinned me down while they took turns to kiss me.

I breathed in deeply; the idea that I’d never see a school again made me want to shout with exhilaration. My mother had already found a governess to take charge of my education. After the incident with one of the rugby boys that last term, and after I’d been sent back early, she hadn’t spoken to me for a week, but at least she seemed to realise I was better at home for the next three years. Then there would be university, but I didn’t need to think about that yet.

‘Will we see any animals from the train?’ Maud asked.

Maud had large brown eyes and olive skin; in Scotland they’d called her ‘the Spanish Sister’, because of her looks and her habit of carrying a bible around. I’d once heard my father tell a friend that Maud had never lied in her life.

‘We will,’ my father said.

There was a shrill blast of a whistle from the platform, and the train jerked forwards impatiently.

‘Finally,’ my mother said.

At first the scenery was of dusty bazaars and colourful buildings – pale pinks and greens and glowing whites with towers and domes and covered balconies – or wide roads lined with palm trees and sycamore figs and only a few cars in sight. The blare of shouting reached us through the open window, becoming muffled as we headed out of the centre and the houses turned European: well-spaced bungalows with large, tropically lush gardens. Then came the thatched huts and swampland, African children running alongside the tracks to wave at the train, and then we were out of the city completely. The view changed to brown scrubland and small streams and I turned away from the window, disappointed with what I’d seen of the country so far.

The journey was slow. We had to stop every time a buffalo wandered onto the track, and the train jolted badly. At Voi we stopped for an hour, this time to have dinner by the side of the track, under large hanging lamps and a cloud of buzzing insects. We started with soup then moved on to a rubbery-tasting fish.

‘It’s good to have some proper food again,’ my father said, spearing a large piece with his fork.

I swirled my own piece around its plate, leaving trails of slimy leeks in its wake.

‘What’s wrong?’ Maud asked me. ‘Do you miss Dar es Salaam?’

‘We were only there for a fortnight,’ my mother said. ‘You can’t be that fond of it already.’

In Tanganyika our supper had been dates, then spiced beef or fish curries cooked in coconut milk and served with rice on a metal platter, with hollows for each dish so we could mix the food if we wanted to. Sometimes, if we were still hungry afterwards, we’d buy food from the baba lishas – the feeding men – down by the harbour: grilled cassava with a chilli sauce, samosas, pineapple, custard apples, avocados and andazi, a sweet, deep-fried dough cake. Lucy’s parents had joined us on our second night for supper, bringing Lucy too, the first time we’d met. She sat with me and Maud and I tried to talk to her, but she was monosyllabic.

‘You made quite an impression,’ my mother said afterwards.

‘She didn’t like me.’

She gave me a funny look. ‘Your delusions never fail to amaze me, darling.’

My father pushed away his empty plate, and an Indian waiter in a starched white uniform swooped down and exchanged it for one piled with beef. My mother, who’d just laid down her knife and fork in the middle of her plate, hurriedly picked them up again and continued to pick at her fish.

A cat appeared in the doorway of the station master’s office, and sauntered along the platform in our direction.

‘Here, kitty,’ Maud said, holding out a morsel of fish.

The cat reached my mother and started to rub himself against her leg, purring and arching his back. My mother reached down and scratched his head, and I suddenly wondered what it would feel like to be him, to stroke my face against her long, smooth leg, and have her fingers gently massage the ticklish spot just behind my ears. I looked away from the two of them.

‘How much longer before we reach Nairobi?’ I asked.

‘Oh, sixteen hours or more,’ my father said.

‘Is it as far as Edinburgh to London?’ Maud asked.

‘Much further.’ He dabbed his mouth with his napkin. ‘That’s why it took so long to build. That and the lions, of course.’

‘The lions?’

‘In Tsavo,’ my father said. ‘Slave trader caravans used to cross the river there, and two lions developed a taste for human flesh. They must have been eating the bodies of dead captives left by the wayside before we showed up.’

Maud put down her cutlery.

‘They ambushed the workers at night and dragged them off. After a while most of the workers ran away – we had a devil of a time trying to get them back. The lions ate more than a hundred men until Patterson found them and shot them.’ He shook his head. ‘He took them home as rugs. Beautiful specimens.’

When we returned to the carriage, the guards had made up our bunks with crisp sheets, soft pillows and blankets. Our parents were in the compartment next door, and I shared with Maud. I lay on my top bunk, unable to sleep. After an hour or so I jumped down and stood by the window.

‘What are you doing?’ Maud asked.

‘Surveying my kingdom.’

She got out of bed and stood next to me, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Do you think there’ll be wild animals there? By our house, I mean.’

‘Of course there will be.’

‘I want to see an elephant. And a tiger.’

‘Tigers are in India, Spanish. Africa’s got lions, and hyenas. And leopards.’ I turned to face her, leaning back against the window. ‘You know they live in trees, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have to look up when you’re in a forest. Otherwise they could drop down behind you and bite you here,’ I put my hand to my throat, ‘and drag you back up and we’d never find you.’

‘They don’t eat humans,’ Maud said.

‘They eat everything.’

‘Stop trying to frighten me.’

‘It’s no fun if you don’t actually get frightened anyway.’

‘Mother says we can have a dog here.’

‘She won’t really let us.’

Maud looked up at me, wide-eyed. ‘But she promised.’

‘When I’m older and I have my own house,’ I said, ‘you can live with me and we’ll get a dog.’

‘Are you going to move out soon?’

‘Why? Do you want me to go?’

‘No. I hated it when you went to school. But I do want a dog.’

I tried to hide my grin.

‘Anyway,’ she said, leaning her head on my shoulder. ‘I won’t be able to live with you because you’ll have a wife and a family.’

‘I’ll never love another girl as much as I love you.’

She sighed. ‘Liar.’

Just before dawn the next day the train stopped for the passengers to stretch their legs. The light was silvery, just clear enough to see by, and jugs of hot water were produced for the men to shave. The grass by the side of the tracks was still wet with dew, the air so cold it burned my throat. We huddled together, scarves wrapped around our faces so that only our eyes were showing.

‘Only six more hours,’ my father told us. ‘You know, if we stayed on all the way to Lake Victoria we’d have travelled more than five hundred and eighty miles. How about that for engineering? We built this line through swamps, forests, mountains, plains, deserts, you name it. They didn’t think we could do it, but we did. And before the bloody Germans, too.’

Sometimes I wondered why my father disliked the Germans so much. Maybe, I thought, it was in solidarity with my mother, whose only brother had been killed by them in the War, whereas my father had stayed at home with flat feet. My mother never talked about her brother. I couldn’t remember him, but I’d seen a photograph of him in her locket. I thought he looked like her, and like me.

We climbed back aboard and as the train wound its way along the track the sun came out and coloured the landscape outside our window in blushing oranges and coppers and scarlets. Now that we could see better, we realised we were covered in dust from where the desert had blown through the mosquito screen. My mother took out a handkerchief and rubbed at her face, but said nothing, and the window stayed open.

A few hours after sunrise, the air was already shimmering with heat. Maud and I sat with our faces turned towards the view and I felt my stomach knotting with relief and excitement. Overnight, the scenery had turned dramatic – plains stretching endlessly away from us, matched by a colossal, empty sky. Looking upwards I saw it carried on blankly forever, miles and miles of bright blue and nothing else.

The plains, on the other hand, were warm with life. Giraffes clustered around trees, nibbling at the upper branches, and swooping long necks down to nuzzle at their babies, already taller than my father. Fifty or more zebra marched in a long snaking line towards a nearby pond, where a herd of wildebeest were bathing, the mud darkening their spindly legs. One of them raised his head and stared at the train. He had the gentle eyes of a cow, but a horse’s long face.

‘Look, Theo,’ Maud said, pointing.

I saw a flash of white, brown and black – four gazelles running and leaping abreast of each other to rejoin their herd.

‘They’re so sweet,’ she said, clapping her hands.

I pressed my face against the screen – Dar es Salaam had been exotic, but this new Kenya was the Africa I’d dreamed of, the Africa of H. Rider Haggard, and I was impatient to finish the train journey, to start living in this incredible landscape.

Eventually we saw a city on the horizon. It got closer and closer, the buildings on the outskirts made of daub and wattle, or yellow stone, then sturdier brick buildings, then the train pulled into Nairobi, and we piled out with our luggage onto the wide platform, with the station clock swinging from the canopy above us, showing twelve thirty in the afternoon.

‘Well,’ my father said. ‘Are we ready for our new lives?’

In the hotel lobby I saw a framed photograph of the town in 1904 – rows of identical huts along a dirt track and The Norfolk, newly opened. Nairobi had grown since then, but the hotel still looked the same: a long, low building with a mock-Tudor front, surrounding perfectly manicured gardens and a turquoise pool in a courtyard area. Inside, the roof was supported by rows of gleaming white columns and criss-crossing white beams. It was the grandest building I’d been in. I didn’t wonder that Roosevelt had chosen it for his hunting trip.

Our interconnecting rooms were homely, decorated in soft greys and caramel browns and furnished with sleek sofas and lacquered dressers. Chrome and frosted-glass desk lamps provided soft pools of light, and slatted doors to the garden kept the heat out. My father tipped the bellboy another penny and closed the door behind him.

‘What do we think?’ he asked my mother.

She lay down on the bed in their room. ‘A soft mattress at last,’ she said. ‘Maud, come and unpin my hair.’

My sister knelt by the side of the bed removing hairpins one by one until her hair fell in a fiery mane across the pillow. Maud had inherited red hair from our mother, but hers was a dark mahogany colour, not the pure copper that gleamed before us now.

I met my mother’s eye. ‘Can we go for a swim?’ I asked. She shrugged, but gripped my wrist as I turned to collect my bathing shorts.

‘Look after your sister,’ she said.

Maud and I changed and took our towels downstairs. Out of our room, I was painfully conscious of the bruising on my left thigh that showed just below the bottom of my shorts. My mother had been responsible for that, after I’d made too much noise outside her hotel room one afternoon in Dar. She’d had a headache but I’d forgotten, and the fact that I’d brought the beating on myself only made me want to hide the evidence even more, so when we reached the garden path I sped up. By the time I reached the pool I was running. I dropped my towel and sprang forwards, feeling my muscles uncoil after days of cramped conditions, and hitting the water with a smack.

I let myself sink to the bottom, holding my breath until I thought I was going to pass out, then clawed my way back to the surface. Maud was sitting cross-legged by the side of the pool. I could tell she’d been watching for my bubbles.

‘One day you’re going to go too far,’ she said.

We stayed for an hour, racing each other, doing handstands underwater, then drying off in the sun. It was early afternoon when we went back into the hotel and the lobby was deserted. The receptionist was talking to someone in the office – we could hear his voice floating out but not the words. We walked through the room, trailing our fingers over the deep armchairs arranged in groups around it. Our footsteps rang differently across the wooden floors, Maud’s slapping as she ran ahead, mine padding softly behind her. I’d been in a grand hotel in Edinburgh before, but that had been stuffy, smaller and darker and filled with elderly people asleep in uncomfortable leather chairs. The Norfolk was nothing like that.

‘We should put some clothes on,’ Maud said when we’d done a full circuit. ‘Someone might see us.’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘Are you coming?’

‘Later,’ I said. I heard her skidding off, but I was already looking at the covered terrace outside the hotel. The same plush armchairs were assembled out there, but two of them were occupied. I felt myself mysteriously drawn in their direction, not minding that the occupants were in a private conversation, or that I was naked other than bathing shorts.

At first I thought they were a young boy and an old man – since only old men wore brightly coloured African shawls – but then I reached the edge of the terrace and saw that the old man was young and blond, and the boy’s flannel shirt gave way to a long, white neck, and above that a slim face, half-hidden by a cocktail glass, but visible enough for me to see a woman’s painted mouth and elegant nose. More than that I noticed her eyes, which were fixed on me over the rim of her glass; they were the colour of the last moment of an African sunset, when the sky deepens with violets and blackish-blues, and they made me feel hollow. She was the finest, most delicate person I’d ever come across, a living china doll with porcelain skin and wide, doe-like eyes and black hair so shiny it was like an oil slick. When she smiled I felt a surge of energy in my stomach.

He had his hand on her knee, but lightly, as if he didn’t need to keep track of it. Her body was twisted towards him, one elbow resting on the arm of her chair and her face propped up in her hand.

When I didn’t look away she smiled, and dropped her gaze, then murmured something to the man who turned to look at me properly. He smiled too and called me over, and I felt a flush rising through my body that had nothing to do with the sweltering heat; I fled back inside the hotel, leaving them laughing at my shadow.

That was my first glimpse of Sylvie and Freddie.

Chapter Two

A few days later I was sitting at one of the outer tables on the terrace with my mother and Maud. It was nine pm, the hotel busier now, and the moon was out, much lower and larger in the sky than back at home. A few feet away in the dark was the creaking sound of a calling nightjar and the buzzing of katydids. Each table had a flickering candle to see by and waiters moved silently in and out of the shadows, bearing trays of cocktails and olives. A low hum of conversation filled the air.

‘I don’t know where your father’s got to,’ my mother said.

‘Mr MacDonald probably invited him for supper.’

She sighed.

‘Excuse me …’ The voice came from behind me. I turned and recognised the blond-haired man. He wasn’t wearing a shawl this time, but a shirt and dinner jacket. His face was half hidden in the darkness, but I could see a gleaming row of teeth and the whites of his eyes.

‘Yes?’ my mother said.

He stepped forwards. ‘I couldn’t help noticing you’re new here.’ He winked at me as he said it, and I flushed as deeply as I had at our first meeting. ‘I’m Freddie. Freddie Hamilton.’

‘Jessie Miller,’ my mother said warily. ‘My husband is William and these two are Theo and Maud.’

‘Come into the garden, Maud,’ he said.

‘My favourite poem.’ My mother smiled and I realised, thankfully, that she wasn’t going to be difficult.

‘I should congratulate you on two very good-looking children,’ Freddie said, and I felt he was looking at me particularly when he said it. ‘But how could they be otherwise with such an attractive mother?’ He clapped his hand on my shoulder and I started. ‘How old are you, Theo?’

‘Nearly fifteen,’ I said, at the same time that my mother said, ‘Fourteen.’

‘You make friends so quickly, Freddie,’ a woman said, and I felt myself tense under his hand as she came into the light, her eyes even darker and wider than before. I caught a hint of her scent in the air – musky and fruity, and intoxicating, like her voice, which was husky, with an American twang. It was nothing like the voice I’d given her in all the conversations I’d imagined us having over the last few days.

She was so close to me that I could have reached out my right hand and touched her. She was wearing the same outfit as before, with the addition of a small monkey perched on her shoulder. Now she was standing, I could see how long her legs were.

‘He’s called Roderigo,’ she said, and I realised she must have been watching me. ‘I’m Sylvie de Croÿ.’

‘These are the Millers,’ Freddie said. ‘Jessie, Theo and Maud.’

‘Can I hold him?’ Maud asked.

‘Of course you can.’ Sylvie offered her forefinger to Roderigo, who wrapped his paws around it, and swung him off her shoulder into Maud’s lap.

‘He doesn’t bite, does he?’ my mother asked.

‘This one’s tame,’ Freddie said.

‘Freddie bought him for me,’ Sylvie said. ‘He knows a man.’

‘You have to be careful who you buy them from. The locals know we like to have them as pets, so sometimes they wait underneath marula trees and catch them as they fall out, then pretend they’ve been domesticated for years.’

He still had his hand on my shoulder, weighing on me. I’d come across boys like him at school – popular, witty, larger-than-life. In comparison to them I’d always felt smaller and wirier than ever, with big, clumsy hands and feet.

I cleared my throat, trying to get my voice to sound as confident as Freddie’s. ‘What makes them fall out?’

‘Marula fruit gets them soused,’ he said.

‘He’s so sweet,’ Maud said.

‘He’s very naughty,’ Sylvie said, and smiled slowly.

‘And what brings you all to Kenya?’ Freddie asked.

‘That would be my husband,’ my mother said.

‘He’s the new Director of the railway,’ I said.

Back in Scotland, our neighbours had been amazed at my father’s job offer. Freddie and Sylvie didn’t even bat an eye. I shrank back in my chair, embarrassed that I’d tried so obviously to impress them.

‘The “lunatic line”,’ Freddie said. ‘That’s what they call it around here.’

I’d heard the name too. My father didn’t like it.

‘Of course it was going to be a difficult project,’ he’d said once. ‘It was the biggest we’d ever undertaken.’ The line had taken five years to construct, and he’d lost many of his Indian workers, shipped over by the British for the job. They’d been struck down by dysentery or malaria, and, in the worst cases, the malaria developed into blackwater fever, where the red blood cells burst in the bloodstream.

‘You have to know the symptoms to look out for,’ he’d told us. ‘Chills, rigor, vomiting. Black urine was the worst. If we saw that, we knew they were as good as dead.’

Sylvie took a cigarette case out of the pocket of her slacks. Her fingers were slim and delicate, but her nails were ragged and unvarnished. ‘I took the train when I first got in,’ she said. There was a kind of bubble in her voice, like she was holding back laughter. ‘My husband was sick after eating that brown stuff they serve.’

‘Windsor soup,’ I said, surprised. I couldn’t imagine Freddie being ill.

She leaned forwards and lit her cigarette with our candle. ‘I hear it built the British Empire.’ She bowed her head when she was talking, making it hard to tell who she was looking at.

‘Oh, here’s William,’ my mother said.

We all turned to look at my father, who was picking his way around the other tables on the terrace. He knocked into the back of a white-haired old lady’s chair, and she glared at him. I wished suddenly that he was younger, more dashing.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, darling,’ he said to my mother as he reached us.

She tipped her face upwards to receive his kiss. ‘Freddie, Sylvie, this is my husband, William.’

My father held out his hand and Freddie removed his from my shoulder; Freddie’s nails were in much better condition than Sylvie’s – smooth and blush-coloured.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ my father said. He shook hands with Freddie and Sylvie then mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Freddie wipe his fingers on his trousers.

‘Would you like to join us for a drink?’ my mother asked.

‘We’d love to,’ Freddie said.

‘Theo, Maud, give up your seats,’ she said, and we hopped up.

The grown-ups ordered drinks and we hovered nearby, Maud busy cradling Roderigo. It was well after our usual suppertime, but I was still brimming with energy somehow, even with an empty stomach.

Freddie sprawled back in my chair, the ankle of his left leg resting on the knee of his right. He was extremely physical, his hands constantly on the move, tapping his fingers on his foot then on the arm of his chair.

‘I can’t believe you’ve never seen Kirlton,’ he was saying. ‘How can you call yourself a Scot? When we were growing up I thought it was more important than Buckingham Palace.’

‘I’ve never seen Buckingham Palace either,’ my mother said.

‘Now you’re just being contrary.’

My mother laughed. ‘So is it still in your family?’

‘No,’ Freddie said. ‘My grandmother sold it, cursed woman. Generations of bad money management. My father even has to,’ he leaned forwards, ‘work.’

She smiled. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true. For the Foreign Office. He was training me up to replace him, but I married an unsuitable woman and came out here to be a farmer instead.’

I felt a thrill at hearing Sylvie described as ‘unsuitable’ and wished my mother would ask him more about it.

‘Well, you’re young enough to get away with it,’ my mother said.

‘You noticed,’ Freddie said, grinning.

‘You can’t be more than twenty-eight.’

‘Twenty-five in May, actually. But you can’t be more than eighteen.’

‘Now you’re being cruel,’ my mother said.

Sylvie was talking to my father about the railway. People’s expressions, especially women’s, usually started to glaze over within five minutes of the topic, but Sylvie was keeping up with him, asking him questions. Every time she exhaled she turned away so the smoke wouldn’t go in my father’s face. In profile, hers seemed sharper somehow, her nose and jaw clearly defined and her lashes long and sweeping. Her eyes protruded slightly, and she kept her lids halfway down, blinking dreamily. She spoke dreamily too; if Freddie was a torrent, Sylvie was like a slow-moving river.

‘Look, Theo,’ Maud said, appearing at my side. ‘Roderigo’s gone to sleep … I think he’s snoring.’ She put her head down to listen.

‘Maud, don’t get too close to the monkey’s mouth,’ my mother said.

‘Freddie said he was tame,’ I said.

‘Mr Hamilton, Theo.’

‘Freddie, I insist,’ Freddie said. ‘Especially as we’re countrymen. It’s good to hear my name pronounced correctly for once.’

‘Was that meant for me?’ Sylvie asked.

Freddie took her hand and kissed it. ‘You torture it more than the natives.’

‘I’m not surprised if they don’t get it right,’ Sylvie said, withdrawing her hand. ‘They’re all terrified of you.’ She cocked an eyebrow at him and he laughed.

‘Edie’s got you pegged,’ he said, and turned to my parents. ‘Edie’s my wife.’

I felt my stomach lurch – as if I was back at school in one of the rugby games, a bigger boy rushing towards me. So they weren’t married, or at least not to each other.

‘What does she say?’ Sylvie asked, smiling.

‘That you’re a wicked Madonna, slaying the menfolk and defending the vulnerable.’ He stood up and drew her up after him, slipping his arm around her back. She went slack and seemed to lean into him, raising her eyes to meet his and smiling that slow smile. I felt myself prickle with envy and admiration, but also embarrassment at my misunderstanding. They were the two most beautiful, exciting people in Africa. Marriage would have been too ordinary for them. Of course they were lovers.

‘Look at you –’ Freddie said. He lifted his free hand up to Sylvie’s face and ran his thumb across her lips. She made a snapping sound, like she was about to bite it, and he moved it quickly, laughing at her. I looked at my parents. They were both checking their watches, and I hoped it wasn’t time to go.

‘Well.’ Freddie bowed his head at my mother. ‘We should leave you to have your supper.’

My father stood up. ‘Yes – we better eat soon. Paid for the food here all week – don’t want to waste it.’

Sylvie turned away and I had a sudden dread that we’d never see them again. I took a step forwards. ‘Are you staying at the hotel?’ I asked.

My parents looked surprised. Freddie and Sylvie looked amused.

‘For tonight,’ Freddie said. ‘I’m driving back to African Kirlton tomorrow, but I’ll be in Nairobi again for Race Week.’

‘What’s that?’

‘One of the highlights of the social calendar here,’ he said. He looked at my parents. ‘It happens over Christmas. I’d be happy to take you around it if you’re interested?’

I prayed they’d accept.

‘Don’t feel like you have to,’ my mother said.

‘I don’t,’ Freddie said. He kissed her hand. ‘Good to meet you, Jessie, William, Maud, Theo. I’ll call for you in a week.’

My mother stood too and they all shook hands.

‘Very nice to meet you,’ my father said.

‘Nice to meet you too,’ Sylvie said. She came towards me and reached out her hands. For a moment I thought she was going to touch me, and my legs trembled, but she lifted Roderigo out of Maud’s arms instead, then left.

Chapter Three

On Friday morning my father said he’d take the afternoon off to show us around Nairobi. By midday the sun was fierce, and the lobby, where we were supposed to meet, was busy. I escaped into the garden and found my mother and Maud already out there. They were with another couple, a tall, dignified-looking man with thinning hair and a bristly moustache, and a slim, serious woman with dark, bobbed hair and a pretty, oval-shaped face. He was probably a little younger than my father, and she was probably a little younger than my mother. They were all standing on the garden path, and the woman was naming the flowers growing in the beds nearby.

My mother waved me over. ‘This is my eldest,’ she said. ‘Theo, say hello to Sir Edward and Lady Joan Grigg. Sir Edward is the Governor of Kenya.’

‘How do you do?’ I said.

Lady Joan looked me up and down and smiled at my mother. ‘I’m glad we don’t have a daughter,’ she said, which I thought was an odd remark.

‘Joanie’s trying to twist your mother’s arm,’ Sir Edward said to me. When he talked his moustache bristled even more. ‘She wants her to help out with the Welfare League she’s going to create.’

My mother spread her hands helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything about nursing or midwifery. What exactly could I do?’

‘Fundraising.’

‘I don’t have much experience of that, either.’

‘Every woman’s had to extract money from someone at some point,’ Lady Joan said. ‘And it’s a good cause.’ She nodded at me and Maud. ‘You’ve had children of your own. White settlers think the natives don’t feel pain when giving birth, but that’s completely ridiculous. We need to provide proper midwifery training for them.’

Sir Edward made a show of looking at his wristwatch. ‘I think I’ll head back to Government House. Leave you ladies to discuss the … finer points.’

‘No, don’t go,’ Lady Joan said. She turned back to my mother. ‘I won’t force you, of course. Just think about it.’

‘Well …’

‘She won’t leave you alone now,’ Sir Edward said, laying a hand on his wife’s arm. ‘It’s much easier to give in, believe me.’ He looked at Lady Joan as if he admired her and she rolled her eyes.

I felt the sun beating down on my head and shoulders, and wondered how much longer we were going to stand around.

‘You must come over for supper,’ Lady Joan said. ‘I can put my case across properly.’

‘Do you have any wild animals?’ Maud asked.

‘I’m afraid not,’ Sir Edward said. ‘We have lots of dogs, though. Do you like dogs? One of our bitches has just got pregnant.’

‘I like dogs,’ Maud said solemnly.

‘Perhaps we can find a puppy for you,’ Sir Edward said.

‘Then it’s decided,’ Lady Joan said. ‘Come around for supper and choose your dog.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ my mother said. ‘But we leave for Naivasha in a few weeks, and of course, there’s Christmas before that …’

‘And Race Week,’ I said, suddenly more awake. ‘Freddie’ll be showing us around then.’

‘Lord Hamilton?’ Sir Edward asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know him before you came out?’

‘We met him the other night,’ my mother said, frowning at me.

Sir Edward raised his eyebrows. ‘That might be his fastest work yet.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The government officials have a name for that crowd,’ Lady Joan said. ‘The Happy Valley set.’

My mother looked helpless again. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘The “Valley” is because they live in the Wanjohi Valley region. The “Happy” …’ She glanced at Maud and then me. ‘I wouldn’t really like to say.’

‘Freddie’s a decent sort,’ Sir Edward said. ‘He takes his farming seriously. And he’s going to be High Constable of Scotland when his father dies. That’ll force him to grow up.’

‘I liked him,’ I said.

‘He’s very charming,’ Lady Joan said, ‘and you’re very young. But he’s not a good friend to have.’

I fixed my gaze over her shoulder so I wouldn’t have to look at her properly. I’d changed my mind – she wasn’t pretty at all.

‘He’s her third husband,’ she continued. ‘And I’ve heard bad things about their new guests – the de Croÿs. I don’t believe Madame de Croÿ is a good influence.’

‘You don’t know her,’ I blurted.

Lady Joan gave me an odd look.

‘We shouldn’t keep you,’ my mother said, holding out her hand again. ‘And it’s very kind of you to invite us over. I know William will be delighted to meet you.’

Sir Edward touched his wife gently on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Joanie,’ he said. ‘We should be getting back.’

‘I’ll be in touch about the League,’ she said.

‘Please do.’

They headed off.

My mother turned to Maud. ‘Can you run out to the front of the hotel, darling, and see if your father is there yet?’

She waited until we were alone before beckoning me to her and twisting my ear viciously until it couldn’t go any further. I bit my tongue to stop myself from crying out. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ she hissed, and shoved me away. ‘Do you want us to have a chance out here or do you want to ruin it?’

I pressed my palm against the ear, trying to stop it throbbing. ‘Why can’t we have a chance with Freddie and Sylvie?’

My mother started walking away. ‘You don’t understand people,’ she said over her shoulder.

My father hadn’t arrived yet, so Maud and I waited on the terrace. I sat with my head against the cool of a pillar, boiling with anger; Maud sat next to me.

‘Lady Joan’s a bloody old witch,’ I said.

‘I liked her.’

‘She’s got something against Freddie and Sylvie, and now Mother’s bound to stop us being friends with them.’

Maud turned her face to me, eyes serious. ‘Mother only ever does something because she thinks it’s right.’

‘She does whatever she wants at the time.’

‘But she loves us, Theo.’

‘I don’t –’

‘There you are.’ Our father appeared before us and I bit my tongue.

Maud was sent to fetch our mother. We piled into the Model T Box Body my father had hired and drove away from The Norfolk, down Government Road and into the centre of the town. After a while, it got too hot with all of us in the front seat, and I switched to standing on the running board, hooking my arm through the door to stay on. Some of the roads had been laid properly, but many were made of a type of crushed gravel and a slight breeze blew its dust into my eyes and mouth. Every time my forearm touched the scorching metal a white-hot pain went through me, but it felt cleansing. My mother wouldn’t look in my direction, and I dreamed of catching her attention somehow – throwing myself off in front of another car maybe – and forcing her to see me, apologise to me.

Nairobi reminded me of the frontier towns in the Westerns I’d seen, with hitching posts outside the buildings and troughs for the horses. Only the people made it clear we weren’t in America. I tried not to stare at the women wearing skirts and nothing else, carrying large earthenware jugs on their heads.

My father showed us ‘railway hill’, where George Whitehouse had built his first house. He’d been the chief engineer of the railway, and my father used his church voice when he spoke about him.

‘The town was founded as a railway depot,’ he said, ‘and now it’s the capital of British East Africa.’

We turned onto 6th Avenue at the corner where the Standard Bank of South Africa stood. Groups of white settlers were standing on the bank’s porch, talking and smoking, and thick blue clouds had gathered around their heads. As we drove past my eyes began to sting.

Further up the road was the post office, with a white flag hanging from the tall flagpole in front of the building.

‘A blue flag means the mail ship’s left Aden for Mombasa,’ my father said. ‘A red flag means overseas mail has been received. The white flag means the mail’s ready for distribution. Not very sophisticated, but the couriers will find you anywhere – even on safari.’

‘Can I send a postcard to Grandma?’ Maud asked.

‘Good idea,’ he said.

The car juddered to a halt in front of the building, and I stepped down from the running board, stretching my back and arms. The sun was almost directly overhead and my skin felt tender from exposure to it. My mother made her way to the shade of a gum tree, fanning herself with the two wide-brimmed, floppy hats that all the women wore out here. She was still ignoring me and I suddenly couldn’t bear to be near her.

‘Maud, choose a postcard,’ my father said, mopping his forehead. ‘I need to send a telegram to the Glasgow office, and then we’ll head back.’

‘Can I stay out?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t mind walking home.’

My father looked to my mother and I felt my heart sink. Out of the corner of my eye, her expression was impossible to read. I scuffed my shoe in the dirt.

‘Don’t walk in the sunshine,’ she said eventually. ‘Here, take some money just in case.’ She held out some coins and I stepped towards her warily. ‘Remember – stay in the shade.’

‘I will,’ I mumbled.

She surprised me by kissing my forehead. ‘And be back at the hotel by four o’clock, or we’ll start to worry. We don’t want to lose you.’

My anger dissolved into gratitude at how quickly my punishment seemed to be over, and I started down the road with no clear idea of where I was going, relishing the opportunity to explore. Leaving the main streets behind me, I ended up in a more residential area, where most of the houses were bungalow mansions with tiled roofs, smallish windows and verandas supported by brick pillars. Perfectly straight paths ran between veranda and white picket fence, where flowers bloomed in pinks, purples, blues and creams, and in front of each house immaculate green lawns lay like carpets rolled out for important visitors. The road was wide, and dappled in the sun. I thought of the red tenements in Edinburgh, five storeys high and always cold inside, and felt a smile forming on my face.

These streets were mostly empty, but after a while I started to pick up a buzzing sound and, turning a corner, I stumbled on an open-air market. Stalls had been set up displaying all manner of produce: carnations, violets, tomatoes, large brown eggs, limes, courgettes, green bananas, aubergines, sacks of flour and dusty potatoes. People were thronging the aisles, squeezing and weighing the vegetables, and swatting away the flies that hovered at face-height. I hesitated, overwhelmed for a moment, but when I finally ventured in no one paid me any attention until I reached a crossroads in the market and paused, trying to decide where to go. A few shoppers knocked into me, and I felt a tap on my shoulder and smelled amber and peach. ‘You’re a lone beast, aren’t you, Theo?’

It was Sylvie. She was wearing a loose-fitting black blouse with a plunging neckline that ended just above her bellybutton, and black velvet trousers. Roderigo was wrapped around her neck, nibbling her earlobe. I got the impression she was laughing at me in a friendly way, although she wasn’t actually smiling. I felt a rush of panicked excitement at being alone with her.

‘I see you’ve found Mr Sand’s market,’ she said. ‘Here every Tuesday and Friday.’

‘Oh?’ I cursed myself for being so tongue-tied.

‘And what are you up to?’ she said, with that bubble in her voice again. ‘Buying provisions for The Norfolk kitchen?’

‘Just looking.’

‘Mm-hmm?’

It was hard not to stare at the apricot-coloured skin stretched taut over her stomach. She was still watching me, her head cocked to one side. I tried for the most grown-up conversation I knew, ‘Would you like to have a drink?’

Now she laughed for real, throatily. ‘Are you asking me on a date?’

Blood thrummed in my ears. ‘I’m …’

‘I’d love to have a drink with you.’

She fell into step with me. My body moved automatically, steering a path through the crowds and towards a bar on the side of the square. Despite all the people around, it was empty, and several of the tables had dirty glasses or overflowing ashtrays on them.

She sat in a chair on the porch, and I sat opposite her. When she leaned towards me I saw that she wasn’t wearing a brassiere, and her small, firm-looking breasts had dark nipples. My hand was on the table, and for a moment I thought they might brush against it. I bit my tongue, desperately trying to distract myself.

Roderigo scampered onto the table between us, exploring the ashtray, picking up the butts and tasting them before spitting them out onto the floor.

Sylvie folded her hands neatly in her lap and smiled mischievously. ‘I’ve never been taken here for a drink – I hear it’s quite unwholesome.’

I jumped up, my face burning. ‘We can go somewhere else.’

‘I want to stay here.’ She laughed at me again and signalled for the waiter. ‘I’ll have a whisky sour,’ she told him. ‘And this gentleman will have some wine-and-water.’

The waiter went away without saying anything, but I thought I saw him sneer at me. Freddie would have known exactly where to take her, I told myself, and he would have done the ordering.

Sylvie took out her cigarette case and lit a cigarette. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now I can get to know you properly.’

‘There’s not much to know.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. People are talking about you already, you know.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re absurdly handsome, Theo.’

I felt my heart beating violently in my throat. I’d never been made to feel handsome by people my own age – it seemed too manly a word – but maybe adults had a different idea of beauty to children and I thought how wonderful it would be to be part of a world where I was appreciated rather than laughed at.

Sylvie gave me her special smile and breathed blue smoke out of her nostrils. ‘Freddie noticed it,’ she said, ‘the first time we saw you at the hotel. He said “Who’s that beautiful boy over there?” You were like a wild animal, the way you were watching us with your big eyes. Then you ran away as soon as we’d spotted you.’

Knowing that Freddie thought that made me feel hot and cold at the same time. I flailed around for something to say. ‘Sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘For running away – it’s rude.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’ She leaned back again in her chair. ‘Now, I know you were born in bonny Scotland, but have you lived anywhere else?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘Born in Buffalo twenty-five years ago,’ she said, pulling on her cigarette. ‘Mother died when I was seven, father remarried.’ She parted her lips slightly to let the smoke curl out of her mouth. ‘I actually liked my stepmother, but my father was a bit of a kook, so I went to live with Aunt Tattie in Chicago when I was thirteen. Then she decided I was running with some unsavoury characters so she took me to Paris, where I met my husband, the Comte de Croÿ.’

The Comte de Croÿ; I rolled the title around in my head – he was probably old and rich and fat.

Our drinks arrived and Sylvie waited until the waiter had gone before continuing, ‘We lived for a little while in Beaufort, his castle in Normandy, but I felt … trapped. So he agreed to bring me out here.’

So he was some provincial Frenchman who didn’t speak a word of English and ignored her. I remembered Lady Joan’s disapproving face when she mentioned Sylvie, and felt a surge of protective anger. Why should she stay with her husband if she was unhappy? If someone younger came along who could make her laugh, and look after her, then why shouldn’t she be with them?

Sylvie dropped her cigarette on the floor and ground it out, then scooped Roderigo up in one arm. ‘And that’s the potted history.’ She held her glass up and I chinked mine against it. ‘Salut. Your turn.’

‘Born in Scotland,’ I said, shifting in my seat. ‘Lived there until a month or so ago. Both parents alive. One sister.’

‘She’s charming. She reminds me of my eldest daughter.’

I took a sip of my wine, but it went down the wrong way and I broke into a coughing fit. Sylvie took out another cigarette and lit it, pretending she hadn’t noticed. I took a second sip of the wine, trying to calm my throat. ‘I didn’t know you had children. You don’t look old enough.’

‘I’m not,’ Sylvie said. ‘I wasn’t. I should have waited.’ She drained her whisky sour and gestured to the waiter for another. ‘They’re both living in France with Aunt Tattie. Great Aunt Tattie now.’

‘Oh.’

‘They’re adorable, but they’re …’ She leaned back in her chair, resting her head against it. ‘People. Human beings.’ Roderigo climbed back up to his perch on her shoulder and she scratched him behind his ear.

‘I suppose so.’

She smiled. ‘I mean – they’re real. And they’re so small and they need you so much, and I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t going to mess up their lives.’

She looked so beautiful and fragile. I knew I should say something, but I didn’t want to disturb her, either.

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t. You’re very nice.’

‘I’ll give you a tip.’ She pulled on her cigarette. ‘That’s not really a word that women want to be called.’

‘Sorry.’

She was laughing at me again, but I didn’t mind.

The waiter brought over her second cocktail and we clinked glasses again. I was suddenly, idiotically happy.

‘To Africa,’ she said. ‘And new friends.’

‘To new friends.’

When we finished our drinks I tossed the money down onto the table and hurried over to pull out Sylvie’s chair for her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her tip the contents of the ashtray she’d been using onto the floor, and slip the ashtray into her purse. I stopped just beside her, feeling my cheeks flare up.

‘Well,’ she was saying. ‘Now I can cross this bar off my to-do list.’

‘Yes,’ I mumbled.

She looked up at me expectantly. My mind was racing – maybe her husband controlled the money and wouldn’t give her any. Maybe she was keeping it as a souvenir of our drink together.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I can’t get up with you standing there.’

I looked at her properly and she smiled. I felt her perfume envelop me.

‘Let me,’ I said, and moved her chair back for her as she stood.

‘You’re a rarity, Theo,’ she said. ‘Beautiful people don’t usually have beautiful natures.’

My breath caught in my chest, making me feel dizzy. Without thinking about it I offered her my arm, as I’d seen young men do to young women before. Sylvie considered it gravely, then slipped her arm through mine. I knew I would be late back to the hotel, and my mother would probably be angry, but it didn’t seem to matter any more.

‘Where shall we go?’ I asked.

Chapter Four

Christmas arrived a week later. I woke with the sunshine falling across my face. ‘Auntie’, the white-haired proprietor of The Norfolk, had arranged for stockings filled with oranges, nuts and chocolate to be hung on each guest’s door, and we ate the food with the shutters and garden doors wide open, the sky blossoming above us into a rich, cloudless blue. Ten feet away a group of white-bellied-go-away-birds gathered, bleating to each other on the branch of a mango tree. It was a world away from Christmas at home.

Down in the lobby, the staff had decorated the Christmas tree with bells and coloured candles, and guests were drinking glasses of champagne, fanning themselves in the heat. My parents joined them while we went for a swim, staying on the edge of the other groups of children, then we took a rickshaw to the Carlton Grill on Government Road.

By the time we arrived the place was almost full. Other families were already seated and pulling crackers, and the smell of herbs and woodsmoke billowed through the room. My father ordered us mutton chops cooked on an open fire in front of us, the juiciest meat I’d ever eaten. Afterwards, we had Christmas pudding, then climbed back into rickshaws for a ride around town. Coloured lights had been strung up along 6th Avenue, and a man dressed as Father Christmas was standing on the corner, handing out candy canes to passing children.

‘Take one for me, Theo,’ Maud said. I stretched out my arm as we passed and Santa threw a cane to me.

It was dark by the time we returned to the hotel. A pianist was playing carols in the lobby, and glasses filled with port stood in rows on the bar. Auntie moved between the various groups dotted around the room, smiling, asking after relatives and telling stories of her own. Maud and I gave our mother a tortoiseshell comb, and our father a book. Our presents from them were a pair of new shoes and a whistle each, and when Maud wasn’t looking, my father slipped me a few banknotes.

‘Isn’t this fun, children?’ he said, and winked at me.

Maud hung her whistle around her neck. ‘It’s so shiny.’

‘It’s not a toy,’ I said. ‘It’s to scare away animals if you come across them in the wild.’

‘They won’t hurt us,’ she said. ‘Animals only attack if they’re frightened.’

‘Quite so,’ my father said, looking around. ‘Can you see if they’ve run out of the port?’

‘What if they’re angry?’ I asked Maud.

‘Animals don’t get angry. Only people do.’

I shrugged, looking away. Several of the other boys staying at the hotel had been given airguns, and were running around the garden with them. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, trying not to give away how much I wanted to join them. My mother must have noticed however, because she took my chin in her hand, digging her fingers into my jaw.

‘I hope you’re not going to leave us,’ she said. ‘Christmas is family time.’

‘Oh good,’ my father said, holding up his empty glass. ‘They’re bringing it round now.’

The next few days were hot and humid, with no sun in sight behind a wall of clouds. The flowers were already wilting at the breakfast table when Freddie appeared beside us. He smelled of pomade and oil, and I guessed he’d just driven into town. He shook hands with my father and me, and kissed my mother’s and Maud’s hands.

‘I hope you’re still in the market for a guide,’ he said. ‘I hear the first race today is a good one.’

‘Actually,’ my mother said, folding her napkin on the table. ‘I’m not sure we can attend. We’ve been invited to lunch by the Griggs. I’m very sorry to put you out.’

‘Ah – our illustrious Governor,’ Freddie said. ‘Well that’ll certainly be a more dignified afternoon.’

There was a silence, and in that moment I hated my parents, and the dull way they lived their lives, even in Africa. If they’d driven him away, I’d never forgive them, I told myself. I wanted to tug the tablecloth off and break everything on the table.

‘I’ll leave you to your breakfast then,’ Freddie said after a while. ‘But you’ll come and visit when you’re settled in Naivasha, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ my mother said.

‘Well that’s something.’ He winked at me, and I realised with relief that he wasn’t angry. He said goodbye and we went back to our breakfast, although I’d lost my appetite and I pushed my porridge away.

‘Can I go into town?’ I asked my mother. ‘I want to see if the market’s open.’

‘Don’t you want to go swimming?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She narrowed her eyes at me.

‘I won’t be long.’

‘Why not?’ my father said. He leaned closer to me. ‘Maybe you can go to the bank, too? Look into some investment opportunities?’

‘I’ll do that,’ I said.

‘If you’re only going that far you should be back in two hours,’ my mother said. ‘I don’t want a repeat of last time.’

I looked at a point just past her left ear. ‘I told you I got lost.’

‘Don’t get lost again.’

As I was turning left out of the hotel gate, I heard someone call my name. Freddie was sitting in his car a few yards down the road, smiling at me. The car was huge: a dark green, open-top Hispano-Suiza with a long shiny body at the front and high wheels.

‘I thought you might change your mind,’ he said, when I reached him. ‘My old man was always trying to force me into that world too. Foreign Office engagements with lots of government bores. So …’ He smiled at me. ‘Still keen to see the races?’

‘Yes please.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’ve never been before.’

‘And your parents? They approve of you attending with me?’

‘Yes.’

He looked at me closely, and I tried to keep my face neutral. He laughed. ‘Hop in then.’

I climbed into the passenger seat as Freddie started the engine. The leather was blood-red and soft as butter. As he pulled away from the kerb I turned to face him. Close up, and in the daylight, his skin was smooth and creamy. I had an urge to reach out and run my finger along his cheek, feel the smoothness for myself.

‘I like your car,’ I said, raising my voice above the noise.

‘A wedding present from my wife.’

‘It’s a very nice present.’

‘She’s very rich.’

He pressed his foot down on the pedal and we shot away. I leaned back in my seat and felt my body relax.

The sky was a steel grey by the time we arrived at Kariokor race course, although it was still bright and Freddie shaded his eyes as he searched for rain clouds.

‘It almost flooded the first time we came,’ he said. ‘Thank God they built the grandstand a few years ago.’

‘I thought it never rained in Africa,’ I said.

‘In the rainy season it rains a lot,’ Freddie said. ‘As a farmer, I’m very thankful.’ He looked down at me. ‘Would you like to see the stables?’

I nodded.

He led me to a wooden shed with five stalls within. A stable boy looked up from sweeping the yard and nodded at Freddie. ‘You want to see the horses, Bwana Hamilton?’

‘Who’s the favourite in the first race?’

‘Chongo.’

‘We’ll see him,’ Freddie said, then stopped. ‘Is Wiley Scot running?’

‘Yes, Bwana Hamilton.’

‘We’ll see him then – he’s a distant cousin of mine.’ He kept his face completely straight when he said it and the stable boy didn’t react. I wondered if he’d understood, or if he just thought that Bwana Hamilton was mad.

It was gloomy in the stall, with only a small window high up in the wall, and it smelled like damp and a mix of leather, grain, sweat and peppermints. I felt suddenly trapped, being in such a close, dark space, and I closed my eyes for a moment. I could still hear a rustling, snorting sound, and when I opened my eyes and peered around Freddie’s back I could make out a dark chestnut stallion picking restlessly at straw in a feeder. He was tall, with an extremely broad, glossy chest and a heart-shaped patch of white on one thigh. I knew horses were designed for speed and grace, but I found it hard to imagine as we stood in the stall – all I could see was the mountainous torso, the knobbly knees and delicate ankles, and I wondered how his legs didn’t snap underneath all that bulk.

Freddie moved forwards and patted Wiley Scot on his muscular neck and the horse threw his head back and began stamping his legs. My heart was hammering.

‘Be good now,’ Freddie said quietly. The horse breathed out loudly, then stopped stamping.

‘He’s a beauty,’ Freddie said. ‘Do you ride?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Never?’ He looked back at me. ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a city boy.’

‘I’m not.’

Freddie laughed. ‘You’re very mysterious.’

He turned to face the horse again. He looked so natural in these surroundings, but then he’d looked easy and confident wherever I’d come across him. I could picture him at school, mobs of admiring boys following him down the lane and laughing at his jokes. I felt a smile form on my face – I would never have got within five yards of him there, and here we were now, alone as friends.

‘Introduce yourself,’ Freddie said.

I went to stand next to him, and ran my hand along the horse’s flank. I could feel his muscles trembling under his coat, and smell something coming off him that was almost bitter, like the taste in the back of my throat when my mother was on the warpath. The phrase, ‘His blood is up’, was circling my brain – this must be what that means, I told myself, and realised I was trembling too.

I placed a finger on Wiley Scot’s nose, between his wet, dilated nostrils, and stroked downwards. He rolled his eyes until they were mostly white, then shook me off.

‘He’s nervy today,’ Freddie said. He pushed his hat back on his forehead, and I followed the bead of sweat that trickled down from his temple to his collarbone, until it disappeared beneath his shirt. I felt sweat start to form in sympathy on my upper lip, and brushed it away quickly with the back of my hand. ‘Let’s leave him to it.’

As we were leaving the stables, a few jockeys were walking in our direction, and they greeted Freddie, slapping him on the back and nodding in my direction.

‘Better watch out, Freddie,’ one of them said. ‘You might have a contender here for the ladies in a few years. He makes you look as ugly as the rest of us.’ Little flecks of spit hit my face as he laughed.

A second one prodded me in the stomach. ‘What sort of little gentleman are you then, sonny? Baron? Earl? Little lord?’

‘I’m not a gentleman.’

‘Good to hear it – a new order for a new world.’ He grinned at Freddie. ‘No one’s told the toffs yet, though.’

‘Don’t mind them,’ Freddie said to me. ‘All the jockeys out here are Englishmen, God save them, so they’re not very bright.’ He was smiling, but his voice was cold. I kept quiet, and the jockeys went on their way, cackling to themselves. When they’d gone Freddie looked me up and down. His expression made it seem as if he’d just thought of something unpleasant.

‘Have you seen enough yet?’ he asked eventually. ‘Not everyone gets to come back here, you know.’

‘Thank you.’

Freddie looked irritated, and I wondered if he’d started to find me dull. I was reminded again of school, and suddenly wanted to go back to the hotel and crawl into my bed.

Freddie shrugged. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said.

The race course was two miles in circumference, with a rickety grandstand near the finishing line, and a small, peeling bandstand in the middle. A band was already playing – the King’s African Rifles Band, Freddie told me – and people were mingling in front of them. As the morning wore on the air became increasingly damp and sticky. Small insects darted through the grass, biting whatever exposed flesh they could find, until I felt as if my ankles were on fire. Freddie found us two glasses of pink gin and I had to stop myself from pressing mine against my forehead to cool down. I was amazed that no one was passing out from the heat.

We drank the gin as Freddie pointed out the officials – the timekeeper, the clerk of the scales and the clerk of the course. The drink was less refreshing than I’d hoped, and following what Freddie was saying became quite difficult. His good mood had disappeared completely, and his eyes were constantly scanning the crowds as if he were looking for someone more interesting to talk to.

‘There you are, Freddie,’ someone said after a particularly long silence between us. ‘Edie left – she said to tell you she was too hot and too pregnant.’

A tall, blue-eyed man wearing a beautifully cut suit had appeared at Freddie’s elbow. He had a gentle face with slightly prominent ears and his voice was gentle too, with a hint of an accent.

‘Nicolas,’ Freddie said. ‘This is Theo Miller – I believe you’ve heard of him.’

Nicolas bowed, and I wondered, sluggishly, why he would have heard of me.

‘And where’s your charming wife?’ Freddie asked.

‘Sylvie? She’s been captured by that brute, Carberry.’

I had to look down at my feet to stop myself from staring wide-eyed at him; so this was the Comte de Croÿ, my fat, old Frenchman who spoke no English.

‘Another admirer?’ Freddie said. ‘Theo, you’ve got company.’

My cheeks burned to hear how obvious I’d been. I wished I could laugh it off, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘More accurate to say we all do,’ Nicolas said.

‘You French are so damn philosophical.’

Nicolas bowed again and I caught sight of Sylvie over his head.

She was walking in our direction. A dark-haired couple were walking behind her, the man looking at Sylvie’s behind. I didn’t like his expression, or his skull-like face. His hairline was receding, and his eyes were small and close-set. The brunette with him had a rather large nose and pointy teeth, but nice eyes and an open smile, which she turned on me as they approached.

‘A word of warning,’ Nicolas said quietly to me, ‘John Carberry is the devil. Don’t listen to a word he says.’

‘Hello, boys,’ Sylvie said, and I got a wave of her perfume.

‘Hello, darling,’ Nicolas said.

‘Hello, trouble,’ Freddie said.

Sylvie shook her head. ‘It’s hard to be troublesome when you’re sober.’

‘Surely not?’

‘Surely yes.’

‘Let me save you,’ Freddie said, but Nicolas held up his hand.

‘That’s my cue, Freddie. You stay here and look after Sylvie.’

‘Thank you, darling,’ Sylvie said.

Nicolas gave the dark-haired couple a half-bow and left. I was sorry. Freddie and Sylvie were smiling at each other now in a way that felt exclusive, and when he kissed her hand I felt a shiver run along my neck.

I looked over at the two strangers. The man had on a mocking smile.

‘Another husband bites the dust, Freddie?’ he said. His voice was flat and had an unusual accent.

Freddie straightened up and Sylvie rolled her eyes. Neither of them looked at all embarrassed.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here, Carberry,’ Freddie said, then turned to me. ‘John and Bubbles, this is Theo Miller.’

‘Maia Anderson,’ Carberry said. ‘Bubbles is a stupid name.’

Sylvie turned away with an angry expression on her face, and I guessed she had the same reaction to Carberry that I had.

‘Where’s Roderigo?’ I asked her.

‘Edie took him to The Norfolk,’ she said, and smiled wickedly. ‘He kept stealing all the ladies’ hats.’

‘And wearing them,’ Maia said. ‘The worst of it was he looked better in mine than me.’

‘Baloney. You look lovely.’

‘You’re too sweet, Sylvie.’

‘You know what to do with monkeys who steal?’ Carberry said.

‘What?’

‘Chop their paws off. Same with the natives, they won’t do it again.’

Sylvie looked sickened. Freddie raised an eyebrow.

Carberry jerked his thumb in my direction. ‘Speaking of natives, don’t you think this one here could almost pass for one of them? He’s got the thick lips and the crafty eyes.’

‘Is that meant to be an insult?’ Sylvie said icily. She put her hand up to touch her thick, dark hair, and I wondered if anyone had ever made the same comparison with her.

Carberry leered at me. ‘I bet I know what happened. Grandfather probably fucked a slave-girl.’

I’d heard this sort of thing from boys at school, but never from an adult, and my ears burned in shock. I saw Carberry’s face crease up with laughter. Maia looked embarrassed.

Freddie put his hand firmly on my shoulder. ‘See you around, Carberry.’

There was a moment of silence. I could feel Freddie’s fingers gripping me hard.

‘Pompous Brits,’ Carberry said at last. He took Maia by the elbow and steered her away. She looked back at us and mouthed ‘sorry’ over her shoulder. I felt Freddie relax.

Sylvie swung around to face us, eyes black in anger.

‘I know, I know,’ Freddie said, although she hadn’t said anything. ‘I feel sorry for Bubbles.’ He took his hand off me, and I felt a surge of relief – Freddie was still my friend, he’d saved me from Carberry.

‘Are you alright, Theo?’ Sylvie asked.

‘Is he alright?’ Freddie said. ‘I had to physically restrain him, or he might have beaten Carberry to a pulp.’

I looked down and saw my body was shaking, and my hands were in fists. I hadn’t even realised.

The races started just after one pm, by which point my head was pounding from the gin and the closeness of the air. I’d no idea what excuse I could give my mother for staying out so long – that was a problem some other Theo would have to deal with. This Theo sat between Nicolas and Freddie in the grandstand, with Sylvie on Freddie’s other side. First up, Nicolas told me, was the divided pony handicaps. I could barely watch. The thundering of the horses’ hooves as they swept past made my headache a thousand times worse, and I closed my eyes so their blurred forms wouldn’t make me feel too sick. I desperately wanted some water, but no one had offered me any, and it seemed childish to ask.

Next was the jumps racing. Nicolas and Freddie argued good-naturedly over whether it was called steeplechasing or National Hunt racing. I dozed off in my seat, and woke even thirstier than before.

The feature race was the Jardin Lafitte Cup, a 1400m course. Wiley Scot was running.

‘What about a bet on him, Theo?’ Freddie asked. ‘A simple win-bet?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, still sleepy. ‘What are the other horses like?’

They laughed.

‘Very smart,’ Nicolas said.

‘A disgusting level of pragmatism,’ Freddie said. ‘Where’s your faith?’

‘Will they let me bet?’ I asked.

‘I’ll place it for you,’ Freddie said. He stood up and held out his hand. I gave him the notes my father had slipped me on Christmas Day. Freddie counted them, then slapped me on the back.

‘You’re either a bloody idiot or a confident genius,’ he said.

Sylvie leaned over and put her hand on my arm. My skin tingled where she was touching me. ‘Don’t do it if you don’t want to,’ she said.

‘It’s just a bit of fun, darling,’ Freddie said to her.

‘It’s fine,’ I said.

She moved closer to me to let Freddie pick his way out of the grandstand, and her thigh came to rest against mine. I prayed I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, and tried to think of distracting images – suet pudding, my grandmother’s bunions, my father in his undergarments.

‘I hear you had a run-in with Carberry, Theo,’ Nicolas said on my other side.

‘I don’t think he liked me.’

‘He was despicable as usual,’ Sylvie said. She took out a cigarette and Nicolas lit it for her.

‘Maia’s pregnant, you know,’ he said.

‘Oh God. The poor woman.’

‘What did he say to you?’ Nicolas asked me.

‘He was talking about my appearance.’

‘He did that to me as well,’ Nicolas said. ‘The first time we met, he insinuated I was a closet homosexual. I said, if only I were that interesting.’

He smiled at me and I returned it.

‘You’re a hundred times more interesting than John Carberry,’ Sylvie said.

Their easy conversation confused me, knowing what I did about Sylvie feeling trapped. Nicolas was the nicest person I’d met, I thought, and I wondered what it was about him that was wrong for her.

Freddie returned with more pink gin for everyone and a ticket for me. ‘They’re leading them on now,’ he said.

I looked over and saw the eight horses being walked onto the course, saddled and draped with rugs to keep their muscles warm. I recognised Wiley Scot immediately. Even from a distance he seemed to be quivering.

‘Bonne chance,’ Nicolas said.

I made the effort to tear my eyes away from the animals to look at him and offer a smile, although it felt more like a grimace. The blood was thundering through my body as loudly as the horses had sounded earlier, but otherwise everything was strangely quiet. The crowd was waiting, tense. When the grooms removed the rugs and the jockeys sprang up into the saddles, I was convinced I could hear the creak of the leather, and the murmurs as the men tried to calm their mounts. Wiley Scot bucked and did a side-step, looking like he was trying to shake his rider off.

‘He doesn’t want to race,’ Sylvie said.

‘Of course he wants to race,’ Freddie said. ‘It’s all he knows how to do. He’s just picking up on the atmosphere.’

The jockeys were lining up on the other side of the course now like coloured specks of dust; red, green, yellow, and Wiley Scot’s in dark blue. Nicolas handed me a pair of binoculars and I trained them on the figures with wet hands.

‘They’re off,’ someone called. People were clambering to their feet around me and I jumped up too. The horses were all clumped together at first, but soon they separated out and I picked out Wiley Scot in third place.

Now I saw the elegance in the horses’ movements. Their bodies hardly seemed to move at all; heads and chests thrust forward they cut a streamlined shape through the air as their legs curled and stretched out below, each hoof only touching the ground for a fraction of a second before they were flying again.

‘Come on, Wiley Scot,’ Freddie shouted near me.

He was coming up on the outside of the horse in second place. Now they were closer I could see the sweat darkening his brown coat, and his muscles rippling with each stride, and my throat began to close up with a lump of excitement and fear. I was keenly aware of the ticket between my fingers, the enormity of the money it represented for me. The ground was shaking and the wind that had sprung up blew back the jockeys’ jackets like sails. I tightened my hold on the ticket, half-hoping, half-afraid it would be carried away.

Wiley Scot’s jockey kicked at him and he passed the second horse. He was gaining on the horse in first place now, with less than fifty yards to go. I was clenching my entire body, my teeth pressed together as if that would spur my horse on, when I saw the first horse stumble and fall, the jockey rolling off his back right into the path of Wiley Scot. I heard Sylvie cry out just as Wiley Scot leaped gracefully, gathering up his legs to clear the figure in front of him, and then he was galloping past us in a cloud of red dust, his head bent down as if for a charge. I only realised I’d stopped breathing when he passed the finishing post and I found myself gasping for air.

‘You’re rich, young man,’ Freddie said, clapping me on the back as the grandstand erupted around us.

The outside of the Muthaiga Club was pink pebbledash and white stone, turning red and gold in the setting sunlight. Freddie guided me up its colonnaded walkway and paused for a moment so I could lean against one of the ivy-covered pillars. After my win, and with Freddie’s encouragement, I’d had several more gins, and now the ground seemed dangerously unsteady beneath my feet. Any thought of getting home soon had long since vanished.

‘Come on, I’ll give you the tour,’ Freddie said.

We pushed through the glass door into an airy lobby with a parquet floor and cool cream and green walls. Freddie continued towards the back; I tried to follow him without falling, Sylvie and Nicolas walking behind me.

‘Ballroom,’ he said, pointing through a set of double doors. ‘Bar – no tall stools allowed. Squash courts here, and golf course at the back.’ We stepped through a set of French doors onto a covered veranda, and I had an impression of a perfectly manicured lawn, sprinkled with banana plants, ferns, flowerbeds and avenues of eucalyptus trees. Several people were in the middle of a croquet game, and the thud of the mallet meeting the ball carried over to us as we hovered on the step leading down to the garden. I clutched my head and hoped it would stop reeling soon.

‘They call it the man’s paradise,’ Freddie said. ‘No Jews allowed, of course.’

‘Although they’ve had to let women in,’ Sylvie said. ‘The balls were a little lonely beforehand.’

‘I think I should sit down,’ I said.

‘You do that,’ Freddie said. He helped me back onto the veranda and into a deep wicker chair then called a waiter over.

‘We’ll have some coffee,’ he said. ‘And then some champagne.’

I rested my elbows on the table, propping my head up in my hands and massaging my temples with my fingertips. From the ballroom came the sound of a band tuning up.

Sylvie leaned against the pillar to my left and Nicolas came to stand beside her, one hand resting on the small of her back. Her amber smell seemed more powerful than before and my mind was fugged up with it.

Freddie pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. ‘You’ll feel better soon,’ he said, grinning. ‘I remember the first time I got tight – even younger than you. I ended up passing out under my friend’s parents’ bed. No idea how I got there.’

‘I’m sure there was a female involved somewhere,’ Sylvie said, and Freddie laughed.

The drinks arrived and I grabbed at the coffee, then swallowed it in four gulps.

‘That should do the trick,’ Freddie said. I looked up and he grinned. ‘What about a game? Played croquet before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on then. The four of us versus the four of them.’

I followed him onto the lawn. A waiter followed with our champagne in an ice bucket and placed it at the edge of the croquet court.

There were two men and two women already in the game, and introductions were made, although I only remembered Hugh Cholmondeley – Lord Delamere – who had a large nose that overshadowed all his other features, and a high forehead covered in papery skin. He looked to be in his late fifties, frailer than my father, but still authoritative.

‘Mind if we join?’ Freddie said.

‘We’ll start again,’ Delamere said. ‘Only just got going, anyway.’

He tossed a coin and Nicolas called correctly. Freddie handed me a mallet. ‘We’ll be blue and black,’ he said. ‘Association rules here. You know them?’

The coffee was mixing uneasily with the contents of my stomach but at least it had cleared my head. ‘I think so.’

‘Good. You play first. Start with the south-west hoop.’

The court was rectangular, with a peg driven into the grass at the centre, and three hoops on either side. Four of the hoops stood almost at the corners of the rectangle, with the two inner hoops on each side slightly closer to the peg. I vaguely remembered having to follow a pattern of the outer hoops first, then the inner hoops, then playing another circuit in semi-reverse before you could hit the peg. My hands felt hot and slippery with sweat. It was a long time to keep upright and sober.

Freddie placed both our balls on the ground near the south-west hoop. I gripped my mallet and swung gently at the blue ball. There was a thunk as it made contact, and I felt a momentary wash of relief, but the ball rolled uselessly to the side of the first hoop.

‘Never mind,’ Freddie called out behind me.

I turned around, face burning, and handed the mallet to Nicolas, then went to stand with the other players, a few yards away from the first hoop.

Lord Delamere took the first turn for the other side and the red ball sailed through the hoop. ‘I hear Black Harries was at Kariokor today,’ he said, lining up for a continuation stroke.

‘I didn’t see him,’ Freddie said. ‘And I’m surprised – I thought he never left Larmudiac.’

‘He sounds like a pirate,’ Sylvie said, lighting a cigarette.

‘He looks like one too – he’s got one hell of a black beard. And he’s probably the strongest man in Africa.’

‘They say he killed a leopard with a single blow to the head,’ Lord Delamere said. The red ball continued its path towards the second hoop, but stopped just short. Nicolas took the next turn and hit the black ball so it stopped just before the first hoop, dead on; Freddie grinned at me and I tried to return it.

‘He loves horses,’ he said, ‘but he doesn’t tame them. He has acres and acres of land, and he lets them roam around, but he doesn’t geld them or break them in or feed them.’

‘What happens with the horses if there’s a drought?’ Sylvie asked.

‘They starve.’

‘He sounds cruel.’

‘But they’re free.’ Freddie caught my eye. ‘Don’t you think animals prefer to be free, Theo?’

‘But Harries isn’t an animal,’ Sylvie said. Her lips were white and pressed together. ‘He knows they’ll starve and it’s in his power to do something about it.’

‘Don’t upset yourself, my dear,’ Lord Delamere said. He nodded at the ice bucket. ‘What if we distribute some of that champagne, eh?’

The champagne was poured, candles were lit on the veranda and suddenly it was my turn again. I stood to the side of the first hoop and lined up the shot more carefully this time. I managed to get the ball halfway through the hoop but when I went to tap it again Delamere called out, ‘No continuation stroke – you haven’t run it through.’

I handed the mallet over. ‘I’m not helping much.’

‘You’re helping us,’ one of the new women said kindly. She pointed at my glass. ‘Here – have a top-up.’

We all moved to stand in a line along the west boundary now, watching Delamere’s play. The red ball was already through the second hoop, and he took it through the third and the fourth before his turn was up.

‘What do you think of that, eh?’ he said.

Sylvie had gone quiet since the argument about Black Harries, but now she swore. ‘Fucking goddamn it. Not twice in one day.’

I felt the mood change before Carberry reached us, and my heart sank. The conversation died out. Only Freddie looked comfortable still.

‘Ill met by moonlight, Carberry,’ he said.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ Carberry said. ‘Talking about Johnny Bull.’

‘You’re British too,’ Freddie said. ‘Or Irish, at least. Have you forgotten, Baron Carberry?’

Carberry took out a cigarette. Sylvie was at the end of the line, and he leaned towards her, taking her wrist in his fingers. ‘May I?’

She shrugged, but I felt the revulsion coming off her. I took a long drink of my champagne.

Carberry lit his cigarette on hers, then stood back. ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he said, blowing smoke out in a cloud. ‘But I got my American naturalisation papers six years ago.’

‘I hear they were revoked,’ Lord Delamere said. ‘For bootlegging.’

‘Finally,’ Sylvie said, crushing out her own cigarette in the grass. ‘Something interesting about you.’

Carberry nudged the yellow ball with his foot, sending it back towards the start. ‘I can’t wait to see your faces when your little Empire comes crashing down.’

Lord Delamere turned purple. ‘Look, Carberry –’

Carberry snapped his fingers at a waiter on the veranda and called over, ‘Bring me a whisky, boy. And don’t bother trying to cheat me on the chit – I can read.’

Nicolas stepped onto the court and picked up the yellow ball, returning it to its old spot. ‘Lucky for us I have a photographic memory. Excuse us while we continue play, Carberry.’

‘Which team are you on?’ Carberry asked Sylvie. ‘I’ll join you. One of the only good British exports, this game.’

She looked away.

‘It’s my turn,’ Nicolas said. ‘Take it if you want.’

Carberry took the mallet Nicolas was offering, held his cigarette in his teeth, and hit my blue ball cleanly through the first hoop and all the way through the second.

‘Good shot,’ Delamere said reluctantly.

We stayed on our boundary line, watching as Carberry played the blue ball through the third and fourth hoops and hit Delamere’s red ball. On either side of me, Delamere winced and Freddie murmured, ‘bad luck’. I went to take another mouthful of champagne and noticed my glass was empty.

Carberry lined up the next shot more deliberately than any of his others, taking several practice swings to test the angle before smacking his mallet so hard against the blue ball that the red bounced completely out of court. The blue ball rolled forwards to rest in front of the fifth hoop. Carberry looked up at us, smirking.

‘Sorry, old boy. It’s just so easy to teach you all a lesson.’ He puffed out a cloud of smoke. ‘Strutting around as if you owned the place.’

‘We built the place,’ Lord Delamere said.

Sylvie took his arm. ‘Don’t listen to him, darling.’

Carberry snorted. ‘You and your bunch of amateurs. Most of them went back home with their tails between their legs, if I remember rightly.’ He came towards us and stopped just in front of Sylvie. ‘They’ve told you about J.D. Hopcraft, of course.’

‘Should they have?’ She crossed one slender leg in front of the other and I noticed the men’s eyes following her movements, especially Carberry’s.

‘He applied for land on the west side of the lake,’ Freddie said. ‘But unfortunate things kept happening to his surveyors.’

Carberry put his hand on Sylvie’s other arm, smiling unpleasantly. He was close enough to smell the sickly sweetness of booze mixed with tobacco on his breath. ‘His first surveyor, or the second, went swimming in the Malewa River,’ he said. ‘A python took him while he was in the water – held him with its teeth and wrapped its body around him, and killed him.’ He inhaled, flaring his nostrils. ‘Some people think that constriction breaks your bones, but it doesn’t. I’ve heard two theories: the snake holds you just tightly enough to prevent you from taking air into your lungs, and you slowly run out of oxygen and suffocate. Or the pressure from the constriction raises the pressure inside your body until your heart explodes.’

He pinched Sylvie’s arm then withdrew his hand. An angry red mark appeared on her skin, but she didn’t react; no one else along the line spoke.

‘Either way,’ Carberry said. ‘The man was gone, and his report went with him, and Hopcraft had to find another surveyor.’ He smiled again, showing his pointy eye-teeth.

I turned my head to face the garden. The lawn was blue in the moonlight, and rippling gently. The automatic sprinklers had come on, and the soft hiss of the water soothed my ears. I breathed in the scent of eucalyptus, frangipani, fuchsias, lilies, far stronger now in the cool dark than during the day.

‘Why did he go swimming with his report?’ I asked Carberry.

‘What?’

I raised my voice. ‘Why would he take the report in the river?’

Carberry narrowed his eyes and started to say something, but Lord Delamere drowned him out with a roar of laughter.

‘By God, he’s got you there, Carberry,’ he said, and clapped me on the back.

‘No one believes the story anyway,’ Carberry said, waving his hand dismissively.

‘You seemed to believe it,’ Nicolas said.

‘Just trying to scare the ladies.’

‘More champagne for the boy genius,’ Delamere said.

Carberry’s hands were gripping the mallet so hard they’d turned a greenish-white. ‘Don’t spoil the brat.’

‘You’re just jealous,’ Freddie said. He and Nicolas and the two nameless ladies raised their glasses to me. Carberry threw the mallet down and stalked off, looking disgusted.

‘Our saviour,’ Sylvie said to me. She came round Delamere and kissed my cheek, sending a shiver up my spine.

We left the croquet court and sat back down at our table. They toasted me, my head spinning, then we toasted the Muthaiga Club, then Kenya, then the King. The champagne seemed never-ending. The nightly ball started and the ladies, laughing, disappeared to change into their ballgowns. We moved to the bar. More men joined us, more names I didn’t catch, and a friendly debate started. Freddie was asked to weigh in, held up his hands and made a joke. I noticed the men all laughed loudest at his jokes. Nicolas draped his arm around my shoulder, and one of the new men gave me a cigar. Delamere was in good spirits, and demonstrated it by shooting at the bottles of spirits on the shelves with his revolver. The bar staff didn’t protest; they handed him a fine on a club chit and went back to serving other drinkers.

‘Let’s have a rickshaw race,’ Delamere’s son said, or at least that was what I thought he said. Everything was becoming strangely muffled, and the ground had started to move underneath me again. The ballroom doors were open, and through them I could see a blur of colours and movement – pink faces, blue gowns, yellow gowns, black tails, waiters in white carrying silver trays of honey-coloured whisky and golden champagne.

‘Boy Genius doesn’t look like he’ll make it,’ Delamere said.

‘Jack’s gone to get a rugby ball,’ someone said. ‘We’ll have a game in the ballroom.’

‘Not before I dance with my wife,’ Nicolas said, hiccupping. ‘I promised her we’d dance.’

‘Well I’m down a wife,’ Freddie said. ‘So I think maybe I should take our young friend home.’

My head, which had been getting heavier by the minute, finally became too much for my neck and I dropped it onto the bar in front of me.

Water was brought, and hands tipped my head back and held the glass out to me. For a moment I thought I was back in the dormitories at school, and I started to struggle, but then I remembered I was in Africa, among friends, especially Freddie.

The water tasted strange. There was a cry of alarm, then I was looking at the floor and there was a puddle of red and yellow on it that smelled like the inside of my mouth.

‘Put it on my chit,’ Freddie said, then he was steering me through the bar, while the other men laughed and clapped. I was going to tell him that I was alright, and I wanted to stay and see Sylvie in her ballgown, but I was strangely sleepy, and I must have drifted off while he was loading me into his car, because the next thing I knew I was back at the hotel, sitting in an armchair in the lobby, and Freddie was talking quietly to my mother, who must have waited up for me.

‘It’s my fault, completely,’ he was saying.

‘Thank you for bringing him home,’ my mother said. Her eyes were rimmed with red, as if she had a cold.

‘He’ll be fine – maybe a little delicate tomorrow, but he’s tougher than he looks.’

‘We’ve been beside ourselves all day – he said he was just going out for a walk.’

‘I’m afraid he’s been at the races,’ Freddie said. ‘I almost forgot.’ He rummaged around in his pocket and brought out a handful of notes. ‘He made a bit of money, actually.’

‘Well.’ My mother took the handful. ‘This might soften the blow for his father a little.’

Freddie laughed. ‘I’d better get back.’

‘Thank you again.’ She put out her hand and he shook it. ‘Really.’

When Freddie had left, my mother stuffed the money into my trouser pocket, then leaned over me, her hands resting on my knees. I had a burning sensation in my throat, and tried to keep my mouth closed to stop the smell of sick escaping.

‘Can you walk?’ she asked me.

‘I think so.’

‘Good.’

She walked next to me all the way to our rooms. I noticed that I was taller than her now, when she didn’t have her shoes on.

At the door she turned me to face her. I flinched as she ran the back of her hand along my jaw-line.

‘I suppose you think what you did was daring,’ she said.

‘No.’ I put out my hands behind me to prevent myself from falling. The door was cool under my touch, or maybe I was hot all over. I wished she would let me go into my room.

‘You can have a good life here, Theo. I don’t want to send you away again – and your school doesn’t want you back, either. You know why.’

Beads of sweat gathered along my hairline. I didn’t like to think about that afternoon, or the boy – Mark Hennessey – who’d followed me around all year, tripping me up, taunting me. Once he’d made me drink water from the toilet bowl. After the fight, none of the boys would look me in the eye, even the few friends I had. It didn’t matter that he’d had me cornered, or that all boys fought. I’d gone too far. I’d been happy when the headmaster had suspended me.

I wondered if I was going to be sick again. ‘Can I go to bed now?’ I asked.

My mother drew back her hand and hit me across the face. At the last moment I turned so it caught the side of my head, and the jolt seemed to go right through to my brain. I looked at her in time to see her hand fly towards me again and this time I caught it and held it tight, digging my fingers into her wrist.

‘Don’t,’ I said.

Her face was just below mine, her eyes wide open. Both of us were breathing heavily. I wondered if another guest, looking out of their bedroom, would think we were about to kiss.

I let her go and she stayed exactly where she was, arms hanging loosely at her sides now. A few strands of hair had escaped her plait and formed a copper haze around her face. I wanted to apologise, or laugh it off, but the longer the silence went on, the more tongue-tied I became.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I said, eventually.

‘No, it’s not too late,’ she said. I thought she must be talking to herself because I didn’t understand her words, or her voice – gentle, and sad and flat. She hesitated, then reached past me and opened my bedroom door.

I went through it and shut it behind me. My head was thumping and my body felt clumsy with shock. I thought Maud was asleep, but as I slipped under my bedsheets she rolled over.

‘I’m glad you’re back,’ she said.

Chapter Five

Nairobi train station seemed familiar, ordinary even, the second time around. I’d been feeling the effects of my drinking for the last few days, staying in our bedroom with the blinds closed while Maud read quietly nearby. Now, the first thing I did when we entered our carriage was throw the window open.

‘Watch out for the mosquitoes,’ my mother said, but nothing more. She’d barely spoken to me since the night of the races, although once or twice I’d caught her looking at me with a new, almost uneasy expression. I didn’t know what she’d told my father, but it must have placated him, because he hadn’t mentioned my absence, and I wondered why she’d protected me, or if she was just holding it over me until I did something else.

‘Let’s hope the good weather holds,’ my father said, as we settled ourselves.

I hoped so too – I knew from reading up about it that Lake Naivasha was called after the Maasai word for rough waters.

I leaned my head against the back of my seat and dozed off. It was fifty-four miles from Nairobi to Naivasha, over three hours by train. Occasionally voices broke through – Maud asking questions, my father pointing out towns – but I woke properly only as we were sliding into our station. My father folded his newspaper and bounded up, beaming.

‘Here we are,’ he said.

Ramsay, the man my father had hired to build our new home, was late, pulling up in a dusty Buick a long time after the train had left us behind on the station platform. He was a small, squat man with a Scottish burr, and a glass eye.

‘We expected you an hour ago,’ my father said, frowning at him.

‘You’re on Africa time now,’ Ramsay said. He picked up our suitcases and tossed them into the back seat as if they were made of air. ‘The bairns will have to walk. It’s only a few miles.’

There was a moment of silence.

‘Well –’ my father said, doubtfully, but Ramsay was already laughing to himself.

‘Just a wee joke,’ he said. ‘They can sit on the luggage at the back.’

We clambered on top of the suitcases, almost slipping off when the engine started with a jolt, and travelled like that for the few miles to our new home.

Naivasha was much smaller than Nairobi. The main street was only a few shops long, and they were all shuttered. The surface of the road was even more pitted, and I held Maud’s hand tightly as the car bounced along. No one was out on the road, although occasionally we saw lights in windows, figures moving through rooms on their way to the dinner table, or to gather around the wireless, check the baby was sleeping.

It was fully dark when we turned off the road and onto a forested drive. The trees were tall and shapeless, muffling the sounds around us. Maud drew closer to me, and I squeezed her, thinking suddenly of the leopards I’d talked about on the first train journey. I thought I heard a soft snap, as if twigs were breaking under a heavy foot, and a low growl, and I was about to ask Ramsay if we could go faster but then the trees were thinning and we suddenly saw the lake spread out before us, glittering in the moonlight. Down by the water was a house, with a large garden sloping downwards to end in a jetty. Ramsay pulled to a stop ten feet from the veranda and we climbed out.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Kiboko House.’

‘What does that mean?’ Maud asked.

‘Hippo House.’

‘It’s rather dark,’ my mother said.

‘I’ll find the lanterns,’ Ramsay said.

While the adults huddled on the porch trying to work the lanterns, I picked my way down to the end of the jetty. Fireflies skimmed the water, lighting up the papyrus that grew thickly beneath the wooden planks, and blue water-lilies on the surface. A rowing boat was tied to one of the posts and bumped against it in a small wave when a dark shape rose out of the water a few yards from me, then quickly submerged again. I backed slowly away.

‘Theo?’ My mother’s voice floated down to me. ‘Where are you?’

I turned to face the house. They’d lit the lanterns now and hung them on the porch. Beyond, everything was in darkest shadow, but the house itself was bathed in a flickering orange glow. It was a yellow-stone bungalow with tiled roof, like the houses I’d seen in Nairobi on Market Day. Remembering them led me to thoughts of Sylvie, and I wondered how far we were from her and Freddie at that moment.

I walked back up to join the others as they rattled the key in the lock. Behind us, there was a splashing sound, and a chorus of frogs and ducks set up a complaint. Ramsay was chattering away about the area, pointing into the darkness.

‘The cleft over there, that’s known as Hell’s Gate,’ he said. ‘Red cliffs. And you’ll see Mount Longonot as soon as there’s any light. It’s a dormant volcano, over nine thousand feet high.’

‘Charming,’ my mother murmured.

Maud was leaning against one of the pillars on the porch with her eyes closed. Her face was white.

‘Tired, Spanish?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘We’ll be in soon,’ I said.

The key made a grinding sound and the front door swung open. Ramsay stepped forwards and held up his lantern. We peered inside. The door gave way straight onto a large cream sitting room with an open stone hearth in the middle and two corridors leading off the room at either end of the far wall. Our furniture had been sent ahead, and now it was all in place: the mahogany secretaire bookcase, the Windsor chairs in elm and ash, the oriental hardwood coffee table, the oil paintings of ships, all looking incongruous in their new surroundings.

Ramsay took us through an arched opening on the left and into the dining room – same proportions and decor – and the small kitchen, where Ramsay’s wife had left us a cold meat pie and some bread and apples. Behind these rooms was the left-hand corridor, with three of the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms. My bedroom was cell-like, with white walls, a small chest of drawers and single cast-iron bed. Next door, Maud’s was exactly the same. At the end of the hall, our bathroom had a claw-footed tub, toilet, sink and a wall-hung medicine cabinet. Mosquito screens were fitted over all the windows.

Off the other corridor was another small bedroom, another bathroom, then the master bedroom, with two large walnut beds, and silks and drapes on the wall. At the end of that corridor was a small study for my father.

‘Excellent,’ he said.

‘I’ll bring the luggage in,’ Ramsay said. ‘When will your maid be arriving?’

‘Maid?’ my mother asked.

‘Most families bring one with them,’ Ramsay said. ‘That’s who the extra bedroom is for, on your corridor.’

‘Ah,’ my father said. ‘I thought you might have arranged that already, Jessie.’

I saw my mother’s jaw tighten.

‘Nae matter,’ Ramsay said, cheerfully. ‘I’m sure I can find one for you – one of the Nairobi families is bound to leave soon. And cooks and drivers and other staff you can hire from the natives. They’re able to do that much.’

‘Well,’ my father said, after a pause. ‘We can make do tonight, anyway. Thank you so much for all your help.’

‘I’ll get the bags,’ Ramsay said.

‘Theo, you go with him,’ my father said, and I followed Ramsay out onto the porch.

By the time I’d carried my suitcase into my bedroom, sweat gathering in the small of my back, he’d already moved all of the others.

‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said. ‘Watch out for the hippos. Meanest creatures alive. And leopards – if they come prowling round at night, turn on the lights and make plenty of noise, scare ’em off. And never leave your windows open.’ He nodded at me and went back to his car, whistling.

The next few days were spent exploring the house, the lake and the garden, which was lush with jacaranda trees, lawn and flowerbeds. The gardener had planted scarlet canna, frangipani, bougainvillea, and, probably as a nod to potential homesickness, English roses. Our water came from a stone well sunk into the ground one hundred feet from the house. Further away still were the Africans’ buildings, round mud huts with thatched roofs where our staff would live.

In the end Ramsay couldn’t find us a maid, but he did find Abdullah, who served as ‘head boy’. My parents hired a cook, a driver and some low-level servants known as ‘totos’, who wore kanzus, long brown cotton robes that were the typical uniform for servants in Kenya. None of the totos had their bottom two front teeth. When I asked why, Ramsay said they all had them removed as a preventative measure, so if they developed tetanus – rife in Kenya – and therefore lockjaw, they would still be able to take food in through the gap. The boys walked hand-in-hand, or with arms wrapped around each other. There was something intimate about it that I didn’t like to watch, and I turned away whenever a pair came into sight.

My father bought a second-hand Buick that broke down at every opportunity. We broke down on the way to Gilgil, Nakuru and N’Joro, as the road wound in and out of sight of the railway line. We broke down in Gilgil itself, a dusty station that doubled up as a post office, with one Indian duka, as the small retail shops were known, and nothing else. We broke down next to the Kikuyu settlement where African children ran away screaming that the mzungu had come to eat them. But east of Gilgil were the Aberdares, the easternmost mountain range of the Great Rift Valley, and there the car ran as sweet as honey. Climbing up into the hills, we looked down on the valley, with its cliffs and boulders, burbling streams and gushing waterfalls, its silvery forests of figs and olives, and vast, dark green pastures that stretched between our escarpment and Mau escarpment, tens of miles to the west. The soil beneath the car was red, and volcanic, but good for farming, our father told us, which was why so many Europeans had settled there.

The air was cold on the Aberdares, and brilliantly fresh, but descending, we drove through a mist that filled the car with the smoky, pine-like smell of cypress trees.

‘It feels like Scotland,’ Maud said.

The whole time we were playing and exploring and settling in I was thinking of Freddie and Sylvie, wondering what they were up to, and whether they were expecting us to call on them, as my parents had promised to do. When we went out in my father’s car, I kept a sharp eye out for Hispano-Suizas, and one dark-haired passenger in particular.

After two weeks in the new house, Freddie’s car pulled up outside as I was reading at the veranda table. Freddie whistled, and I got up, moving forwards as he opened the door for his passenger. An elegant ankle appeared, then a perfectly formed leg. I felt my excitement rising until her mousy-brown hair; it wasn’t Sylvie.

The new woman was very small and slight, with a weak chin, small mouth, large nose and high forehead. She was wearing a fashionable drop-waisted silk dress and strings of pearls, and her bare feet were dainty. She was a carrying a pot of geraniums, and shifted them to the crook of her arm to wave at me in a friendly way. She looked a little older than Freddie, who seemed almost boyish next to her.

‘Theo,’ he said, ‘meet Edie, my wife. She insisted on calling on you.’

‘I’m the friendly one,’ Edie said, and flashed her teeth at me in a smile.

‘Theo?’ my mother called from inside the house. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Freddie,’ I called back.

My mother appeared in the doorway. ‘How nice to see you again,’ she said, shading her eyes from the sun.

‘You must be Jessie,’ Edie said. She held out the geraniums. ‘I’ve brought you these – you’re meant to plant them around your doorway.’

‘Thank you,’ my mother said, accepting them.

‘The smell repels the puff adders.’

‘Oh goodness.’ She looked down at the pot in her hands. ‘The agent never told us about that. Would you like a drink? I’m afraid William isn’t at home.’

‘Wonderful,’ Edie said. ‘We brought some champagne for the road, but I finished it a few miles ago.’

‘Please sit.’ My mother put the flowers down on the porch table and disappeared inside.

Edie grinned at me. ‘Freddie, I’m bloody exhausted,’ she said, lowering herself onto one of the chairs. ‘Can you bring me my cigarettes from the car? Would you like one, Theo?’

‘Does that repel puff adders too?’

She smiled again. ‘Good, you’re funny.’

Freddie brought her cigarettes over and she lit up. ‘They’ve all been talking about you non-stop, you know,’ she said. ‘Sylvie especially.’

My skin tingled the same way it had when she’d touched me at the races. ‘Is she still staying with you?’

‘They’ve just moved out,’ Freddie said.

‘Oh.’

‘They bought a spot nearby – fell in love with it. They’ll be building that for a good few months.’

I looked at the table, trying to hide my smile, but I felt it radiating from me anyway.

‘Here we are.’ My mother appeared again, with Abdullah behind her carrying four glasses of white wine on a silver tray, three full and one half-full. Behind him, Maud trailed, looking sleepy as she was introduced. The half glass was placed in front of me and I looked sideways at my mother, who nodded.

‘Cheers.’ We clinked glasses. The wine tasted heavy in comparison to champagne. I swallowed it quickly.

‘How about a quick tour of the garden?’ Edie asked. ‘I’m crazy about gardening.’

‘Of course,’ my mother said. She led the way down from the veranda, looking uncertain. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know where everything is.’

‘The roses are at the bottom of the hill,’ Maud said. ‘Next to the hydrangeas. The gardener puts coffee in the soil so they turn blue.’

‘You show us, darling.’

Maud led us down the lawn and stopped in front of a rose bush. ‘This one’s my favourite.’

‘I can see why.’ Edie leaned forward, eyes closed, and sniffed the biggest flower. ‘It’s so good to be able to bend over without a giant belly getting in the way.’

‘Edie gave birth to our daughter on the fifth,’ Freddie said.

‘Congratulations,’ my mother said.

‘Nan,’ Edie said, opening her eyes. ‘She’s called Nan.’ She put out a finger and gently touched the rose, which bowed slightly then sprang back up. Her expression was blissful. ‘Isn’t this beautiful?’

‘She’s beautiful,’ Freddie said, and kissed his wife. ‘And what a pair of lungs.’

‘Where is she?’ Maud asked.

‘She’s at home with her nurse,’ Edie said.

‘Probably making this face,’ Freddie said, and scrunched up his nose and eyes.

We laughed, even my mother, and Freddie turned and winked at me. I wished the boys back at school could see me now. They’d never have believed that someone so charming, so attractive, could be friends with me. It was intoxicating, and I almost forgot Sylvie wasn’t with us.

‘So you’ve just got these two beautiful children?’ Edie said. She moved on to the hydrangeas and repeated the smelling and touching routine. We stood behind her in a semi-circle. Maud watched her with a serious expression.

‘Yes,’ my mother said.

‘You must have been terribly young when you had them.’

‘I’d been looking after my little brother for a few years by then – I didn’t feel young.’

‘And where’s he now?’

‘In a field in France.’

Edie pulled a face. ‘I’m so sorry. That bloody war.’

‘He was at university when it started – Edinburgh. His tutors all said he was doing very well, but Percy always had such a clear sense of duty.’

Freddie looked sympathetic. ‘I’m sure we would have loved him.’

‘Everyone did,’ my mother said. She smiled – a different smile to before, but it reached her eyes. I felt dizzy all of a sudden and realised I’d been holding in my breath.

After we’d finished looking around the garden I walked Freddie and Edie to their car. My mother and Maud had already gone back inside, leaving the front door open for me. I could hear my mother calling to Maud from one wing to another, and the cook, in the kitchen, clanging pots and pans together, preparing supper for that evening.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ Edie said, ‘Aren’t you glad you came?’

‘Yes.’

‘Africa suits you,’ Freddie said.

I opened the passenger door for Edie and she slid in gracefully.

‘We’ll have a get-together soon,’ she said. ‘You’re invited, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘What’s wrong? You don’t look very sure.’

‘Carberry won’t be there, will he?’

She laughed. ‘No. I hear you’re not exactly firm friends.’

‘Someone should shoot him.’

It came out less witty than I’d hoped, and Freddie raised an eyebrow, but Edie laughed louder. ‘Not you,’ she said, ‘or you’ll miss all the fun at the party. Do come.’

‘As long as you stay away from the gin,’ Freddie said, wagging his finger at me.

‘And the champagne,’ I said.

‘Oh darling, we’re not barbarians,’ Edie said. ‘It’s a party – of course you’ll have champagne.’

Freddie grinned. ‘See you around, Boy Genius,’ he said.

He started the engine, reversed the car up the driveway, and then they were turning the corner and out of sight.

I couldn’t sleep that night, and around eleven I got up to fetch a glass of milk. My mother and father were talking on the veranda, and I paused in the sitting room when I heard Freddie’s name mentioned.

‘Just turned up,’ my mother was saying. ‘I don’t even know who he was here to see. He seems pretty experienced for a twenty-five-year-old, too experienced for Theo.’

Freddie’s face danced before me – his wide smile and straight white teeth, his raised eyebrow and smooth skin. My heart thumped painfully in my side, and I moved closer to the screen door, staying out of sight. It would all be fine, I tried to tell myself – Freddie didn’t think I was too young and immature. My mother couldn’t stop us being friends if we both wanted to be.

‘He’s changing.’

‘Well that’s natural, my dear. I know mothers want their children to stay children forever –’

‘You know Theo’s different. I don’t want him influenced in the wrong direction. Not when I’ve worked so hard on him.’

‘Of course you have,’ my father said soothingly. ‘But Lord Hamilton seemed alright to me. A little bohemian, maybe. Was he alone?’

‘No – with his wife. Lady Joan mentioned her in Nairobi.’

‘Not complimentary?’

‘Not very.’

‘Women never approve of other women.’

My mother’s voice changed. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh this? I picked it up today – MacDonald said every household needs one.’

‘I don’t want it indoors.’

‘It’s for the leopards.’

‘What if the children see it?’

‘They won’t know what to do with it.’

‘I don’t want it indoors.’

‘It’s for our own protection, my love.’

‘It’s asking for trouble,’ my mother said. ‘Hide it.’

‘As you wish.’ My father must have recognised the danger in my mother’s voice, as I did, because he changed the subject. I silently thanked him for whatever purchase had distracted my mother from deciding to end my new friendship, and went back to bed.

Chapter Six

Miss Graham, our tutor, was tall, with overlapping front teeth and eyebrows that met in the middle. She’d come out to Kenya with a family from Edinburgh, but they’d gone back and she’d stayed out for her painting.

Maud adored her, but I got the impression that Miss Graham didn’t like me, and I didn’t warm to her either. Three weeks after she started she complained to my mother about ‘disturbing images’ I’d drawn on my exercise books. They were doodles I’d done without thinking, but my mother sided with Miss Graham, although all she did was look at me coldly and tell me if I wanted to be treated as an adult I had to act like one. I lingered after she’d left, scuffing my shoe against the dining table, reluctant to go back to the classroom. I might have escaped a beating this time, but her words still stung, and the thought of Miss Graham’s satisfied look made me rigid with anger.

We woke every weekday for breakfast at eight. Lessons were between nine and twelve, then our mother joined us for a hot lunch. Afterwards, there were more lessons until two, when we had a bath. The totos ran the bath for each of us, which took nearly an hour: first they drew the water from the well – at least ten buckets per bath – then heated it in a cauldron kept in the kitchen hearth. Afterwards, they transferred it from cauldron to bath in ten more trips with the bucket. Sometimes they forgot to heat the water for long enough, and we had to sit in ice-cold water, our lips and fingers turning blue.

In the afternoons, my mother napped, and we would row out onto the lake, or go for a walk, or watch Miss Graham painting. Her fingers were surprisingly delicate when they held a paintbrush. We were silent around her, unless she started the conversation.

‘I’ll be running out of blue soon,’ she always said, as she was choosing a colour for the sky. ‘Blue and brown, those are the colours I use most out here.’

‘What colours did you use most in Scotland?’ Maud asked once.

‘Green and grey.’

‘Did you ever go anywhere else? What colours are other countries?’

‘No, not me,’ Miss Graham said. She dipped her brush into the pot of cobalt. ‘But the family I was with before were in India for a while.’

‘What colour is India?’

‘Gold. And orange.’

‘What about America?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know America,’ she said brusquely.

Two of the totos appeared with the laundry, laughing and whooping. They were younger than me, probably no more than twelve, and my mother must have ordered their kanzus in the wrong size because they were both tripping over their hems. One of them carried the washtub, the rub board and soap banging against its sides as he walked. The other carried a pile of clothes and bedding that was higher than him. When the first toto saw Miss Graham he stopped, and the second crashed into him, dropping most of my father’s shirts.

Miss Graham rapped her easel with the handle of her paintbrush; it made a sound like a gun-crack, and the first toto flinched. ‘Shall I tell Bwana Miller that you throw his clothes on the ground?’

The totos mumbled something.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘They’re dirty anyway.’

‘You have to instil discipline,’ Miss Graham said. ‘The natives are awfully lazy.’ She turned back to them and made a flapping motion with her free hand. ‘Pesi pesi.’

We’d been out in Africa long enough to know that meant ‘get on with it’.

The totos crept past us and sat on the jetty, whispering to each other as they washed our laundry. Maud watched them with a confused look on her face. After a while I went back inside.

If the totos were afraid of Miss Graham, they were even more afraid of my mother. A few times I’d been in the kitchen with them, bothering the cook, when someone had muttered ‘Bibi Miller’, and everyone had melted away.

Joseph, the cook, was the only person who didn’t seem intimidated by her temper. He was a good-natured old man whose fingers were covered in calluses. Once I saw him use his bare hands to take a hot cast-iron dish from the oven and realised where the calluses came from. Two months after we moved in, when my voice began to change, becoming cracked and hoarse, Joseph made me a special hot drink that tasted bitter and grainy.

‘You a man now, Bwana,’ he said. ‘This drink make you into a good husband.’

Joseph could cook anything, but he loved schnitzel and potatoes, which drove my father to despair. For my fifteenth birthday, Joseph made me apple strudel with ice-cream. The pastry was light and flaky, the apples were soft and tasted of burnt sugar and cinnamon. It was the best cake I’d ever had.

After a while my mother had a word with Joseph and he grudgingly started cooking food we were more used to. He could cook anything: meringues, custard flans, layer cake, soups, breads, scones, pies. It had felt strange sitting down to schnitzel and potatoes in the middle of Africa, but no stranger than kidney pie and rice pudding.

Abdullah, the head boy, was gentle in everything. He had big brown eyes and a slight stammer that made him shy to speak. Every evening he put down a prayer mat on the grass and prayed for exactly seven minutes. Unlike the other servants who were all Kikuyus, Ramsay told us, head boys were normally Somalis because they were nobler and stricter. My father liked Abdullah a lot, because he approved of my father’s beard that he was trying to grow. My mother liked him because he was a genius at running the house, and Maud liked him because he helped her nurse injured birds she found in the garden. When Miss Graham was on leave, it was Abdullah who looked after us. Soon after we moved in, Maud fell out of a tree we were exploring, and ended up with a small gash on her shin. Abdullah washed the wound, then left us sitting by the well while he hunted through the grass near the woods.

‘What’s he looking for?’ Maud asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘How’s your leg?’

‘Bleeding.’

‘Do you think you’ll bleed to death?’

‘Don’t – you’re not funny.’

Abdullah made his way back to us with something in between his thumb and forefinger. ‘This is for you,’ he said, as he reached the well.

‘What is it?’ Maud asked.

‘Safari ant.’ He showed us the ant, which was squirming in his grip. It was a deep cherry-red colour, and almost twice the size of his thumbnail, with long, pincer-like jaws protruding from either side of its head.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ Maud asked, biting her lip.

‘Maasai use them like this,’ Abdullah said. He brought the ant down to Maud’s cut, until the pincers were on either side of the wound then pressed them onto her skin. The ant went rigid, the pincers snapped together and Abdullah twisted the body off in a quick, clean movement. ‘Very strong,’ he said.

We looked down – the head was still hanging off Maud’s leg, but the pincers had closed the gash like a makeshift suture.

‘How long does it last?’ I asked.

‘Until skin heals,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Abdullah,’ Maud said. She blushed as he helped her to her feet.

It was April, almost three months after we’d moved in, when Sylvie arrived out of the blue. I was out on the lake with Maud when I saw her sitting on our jetty, legs outstretched in the sun. She raised a hand lazily and I jumped up, almost sending us head first into the water.

‘Who is it?’ Maud asked.

‘Sylvie.’

‘You must have good eyesight.’

‘Maybe it’s because I don’t strain them reading all the time,’ I said, beginning to row us back to shore.

‘I didn’t know you could read?’

‘Very funny.’ I caught sight of a monkey-sized figure scampering between Sylvie and the edge of the jetty. ‘Look – she’s brought your husband with her.’

Sylvie waited until the boat had bumped gently against the jetty before standing up in one slow, supple movement.

‘Is it nice out there?’ she asked. ‘It looks so peaceful.’

‘Do you want me to row you out?’

‘Another time.’ She was looking straight at me, and I passed a hand over my face, feeling the roughness of new hair growing around my mouth and below my ears. I was glad my voice had finally settled.

‘I came to invite you to see our new house,’ she said. ‘Well – our land, anyway. The house isn’t completely built yet.’

I moored the boat and jumped up onto the landing stage. ‘Is it nearly done?’

‘So the builder promises us.’

I stared at her perfect teeth and those soft-looking lips. She stared back, smiling.

‘Theo,’ Maud called from the boat. ‘You know I need help.’

Sylvie laughed. Maud held out her hands and I lifted her onto the jetty. Roderigo jumped into Sylvie’s arms and she kissed his head. ‘Shall we find your mother?’ she asked us.

‘Lady Joan came to see her for lunch,’ Maud said. ‘They’re out on the porch now.’

‘The Governor’s wife?’ Sylvie peered back at the house. ‘That’s lucky – I haven’t met her yet.’

I wondered if I should warn her about Lady Joan’s opinion of the Happy Valley set, but she’d already started walking, Maud trotting next to her. I hurried to join them.

When we reached the house a greyhound was shivering in the sunlight at the bottom of the stairs, and Abdullah was standing nearby, like a protective parent.

‘Thank you for looking after Fairyfeet,’ Sylvie said softly to him. She crouched down and stroked the dog’s ears, shushing it when it whimpered. ‘She’s so scared all the time – Nico’s almost given up on her.’

My mother came down the steps. ‘Good afternoon, Countess de Croÿ.’

Sylvie straightened up again. ‘Oh – call me Sylvie, please.’ She looked at Lady Joan, who was still sitting on the porch. ‘It’s nice to –’

Lady Joan cut her off with a wave of her hand. ‘No introductions necessary. Are you still with the Hamiltons?’

‘We’ve bought our own place actually – I’m here to invite the Millers to tea.’

‘How kind of you,’ my mother said. She didn’t move, and I realised she hadn’t offered Sylvie a drink, or invited her inside, or even shaken her hand. Behind me, I could sense Maud fidgeting, and Fairyfeet still whimpered softly, but otherwise a silence had descended. My mother crossed her arms in front of her chest; Lady Joan raised an eyebrow.

I looked at Sylvie. She’d turned pale. It made her seem much younger, somehow, and helpless, and I felt a wave of anger on her behalf.

‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ I asked.

My mother caught my eye and shook her head, subtly. I hurried on. ‘We don’t have champagne. I don’t know if Abdullah knows how to make whisky sours – you like those, don’t you?’

‘You remember.’ Sylvie smiled at me, and the colour came back into her cheeks. She looked as if she was about to refuse, then Roderigo broke the ice, jumping out of her arms and onto Maud’s shoulder.

‘He knows me,’ Maud said excitedly.

Sylvie laughed. ‘He always chooses the prettiest person to sit on.’

‘Actually,’ I said. ‘We were going to ask your permission for Roderigo’s hand in marriage. Maud’s game.’

‘Theo,’ my mother said, frowning.

‘Maud shouldn’t be thinking about marriage yet,’ Sylvie said. ‘Not for a long time.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind Maud’s ear. ‘You’ve got much more to offer the world, haven’t you, darling?’

There was another pause. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother draw herself up as if she had something important to say.

‘Sylvie,’ she said. ‘Won’t you join us on the veranda? What would you like to drink?’

Sylvie drove with one hand on the wheel and the other in her lap. She was constantly looking over her shoulder to talk to Maud and drifting across the road, or skidding as we turned corners. Freddie had driven too fast, but at least he’d seemed in control.

Cedar trees whisked past in a dark blur, and golden stalks of corn bowed their prickly heads in our wake. Fairyfeet and Roderigo trembled in Maud’s lap. We were driving towards the mountains, and I had visions of Sylvie tunnelling straight through them. She was telling us the story of their journey to Africa from France, but her words were snatched away by the wind, so I caught only a haze of dances and sea-sickness and misunderstandings.

Then she was slowing down, turning a last corner and Nicolas was waiting to open a gate in the long hedgerow for us. We drove through and parked sharply, while Nicolas fiddled with the gate, trying to shut it again. I looked around. We were at the edge of a lush expanse of countryside, around six hundred acres or so, with a few thatched huts, gently smoking, dotted here and there in the distance. The Aberdares reared up to our right, a silvery waterfall cascading down their sides, and close by on our left the river moved sluggishly around a bend, where a deep pool had formed.

‘Welcome.’ Nicolas was walking towards us now, and it was only then that we noticed the smallish ball of yellow fluff, with large, ungainly feet, trotting next to him.

‘Is that a lion?’ Maud asked.

‘Our surprise,’ Sylvie said, turning in her seat. ‘Samson the lion cub.’ She looked at me, and I felt somehow she’d wanted to show him to me in particular.

‘Say hello to him if you like,’ Nicolas said, opening the door for Maud. Fairyfeet took the opportunity to escape, and bounded into the bushes. ‘He’s very tame.’

We carefully approached Samson, who was sitting a few feet from the car. He was no bigger than a domestic cat, but stockier, with shorter legs. His fur was sand-coloured, and there were brown spots on his head much like a leopard. His eyes were wide and black, and his mouth was open, tongue hanging out pinkly, giving him a quizzical expression. His teeth looked sharp enough.

I felt myself breaking into a smile, just looking at him. Here was a real, live predator. A man-killer.

‘Where does he like to be stroked?’ Maud asked.

As if in answer, Samson flopped onto the ground in front of us and rolled over, exposing his belly.

‘He’s a flirt,’ Nicolas said, slapping him playfully on his flank. Samson growled, and wriggled from side to side, scratching his back on the rocky surface of the drive.

‘We’ve been cursed with all the naughty animals,’ Sylvie said, picking Roderigo up from the back seat of the car. ‘Now come see the plans for the house. We’re living in the manager’s house in the meantime.’

The manager’s house was smaller than ours and painted white with green shutters. There was a narrow porch along the front of the house with a table and four chairs set up. Inside was white as well, with red tiles on the floor, and stacks of unopened boxes in the corners. No paintings hung on the walls, but there was some needlework above the fireplace, proclaiming ‘Home, Sweet Home’.

We sat around a coffee table near the open front door while Sylvie flitted about trying to find the plans, and Nicolas ordered us a jug of lemonade. Roderigo scampered up a tall armoire, and perched on the top, surveying us calmly.

‘Here we go,’ Sylvie said, unrolling a sheet of paper on the table and tapping a dark line that snaked across the page. ‘It’ll face Satima Peak, in the Aberdares, and the back will face the Wanjohi River.’

‘Sylvie insisted we live near water,’ Nicolas said. ‘I don’t know what it is about people who grow up in the city. They always worry if there’s no water nearby.’

Sylvie stuck her tongue out at him. ‘And people who grow up in the countryside worry if they can’t see the horizon.’

‘If you’re talking about your monstrous skyscrapers –’

‘Much more practical than your draughty old castles.’

‘Our castles – exactly. We need to see the horizon to see who’s coming to attack us.’

Sylvie waved a hand. ‘Who wants them? Anyway, I love water. I used to think I’d like a burial at sea.’

I remembered the times I’d planned my own funeral as a boy, whenever my mother had been angry with me, imagining myself finally beyond her reach and how sorry she’d be. I knew it was wrong to think about it, even sometimes wish it, so it was surprising to hear Sylvie talk so openly about the things I dreamed about in private. I felt a thrill run through me at the thought of everything we shared, and how brave she was.

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