My fingers and toes throbbed with a rush of blood. ‘What’s the news?’

She smiled at me. ‘Sylvie arrived today,’ she said. ‘Nico wrote her a letter of recommendation, and the new Governor’s granted her the right to stay.’

Chapter Fifteen

Sylvie moved back to The Farm with a minimum of fuss. Noel Case, her new housekeeper, oversaw everything, moving the furniture in from the manager’s house, hanging new curtains, buying new sofas.

She’s a godsend, Sylvie wrote, in her first letter to me. So sensible. She’s settled the servants’ wages – I was behind by years, apparently.

She seemed to fall quickly back into her old life. She wrote about riding and reading, and walking the new puppies – Minnie the dachshund and Louis the Rhodesian ridgeback. She played backgammon and drank whisky sour cocktails with grenadine and fresh lime. Sometimes Edie would be there with offerings: goat’s cheese and pâté from France, dark chocolate from Belgium, cigarettes from Turkey, ham and oranges from Spain.

She only does it to annoy her new husband, Sylvie put. He thinks I’m extravagant.

Lucy seemed disappointed when I started spending every weekend at Kiboko. I promised I would be around more in a little while; I didn’t tell her I wanted to be available for Sylvie. I waited for an invitation but August came and went without one, and something stopped me every time I turned my car in the direction of The Farm. This would be the first time Sylvie met me as an adult, and I wanted the setting for our reunion to be perfect.

Sometimes Sylvie’s letters asked about Freddie, who hadn’t been to visit yet. I barely saw him either – he was busy supervising the build of the golf course and lending library for the Naivasha Sports Club. In August, he planned and inaugurated the Hamilton Cup race for his new yacht club. Eventually, in early September, Maud and I received a dinner invitation from him. It’s time to bring Maud into the fold, he’d scrawled at the bottom. Sylvie is coming too.

The day of the dinner party was warm and cloudless. Maud spent the morning laying out and rejecting dresses.

‘Don’t worry so much,’ I said.

‘It’s my first party with your friends.’ She shooed me away. ‘Go be unhelpful somewhere else. Oh for goodness’ sake, they’re all covered in dog hair.’ She gathered them up and disappeared in search of a toto.

Sylvie drove over to Kiboko mid-afternoon, and I took her onto the lake. Fifteen minutes out from the jetty I laid the oars down and let us drift.