Boy laughed and looked at me. ‘Here’s someone who really shouldn’t get into politics.’

Supper had been set for nine o’clock, but Soames and Gwladys started on a new batch of cocktails at five minutes to. Freddie shook his head, grinning, and beckoned a toto over.

‘We’ll be eating later now,’ he said. ‘Make sure you keep the food warm.’

The toto scratched his head, looking worried. ‘Bwana, maybe it burn if cook for longer.’

‘It’s your head if it does.’

The boy’s eyes rolled back to show the whites and he made a clumsy half-bow before running back to the kitchen. Maud looked as if she wanted to run after him. I caught her eye and grinned, but she didn’t return it. There was a small ‘v’ between her eyebrows that deepened when she glanced at Freddie.

‘Freddie,’ Martha said loudly. ‘You can’t say that – you know how literal Kikuyus are.’

‘Poor buggers,’ Boy said to me. ‘They’ll be gathered round the oven all night now.’

At eleven the cocktails ran out and we made our way into the dining room. The table was laid with blue-and-white porcelain dishes, and vases full of English roses. ‘Freddie knows they’re my favourite,’ Martha said.

Freddie sat at the head of the table, in between the District Commissioner for Naivasha and Byrne, the new Governor. Sylvie sat opposite me in the middle, to the left of Soames; Maud was on his right.

Freddie’s neighbour, two seats away from me, tried to interest me in bridge.

‘You have the perfect face for it,’ he told me. ‘Gives nothing away. Like Freddie’s. He’s bluffed us up to far too high a level before, holding only five points. And then there’s his damn memory – he’s so good at forcing defence.’

I met the eye of the woman sitting in between us. ‘I didn’t understand a word of that,’ I said.

‘Never you mind,’ he said. ‘We’ll train you up in no time.’

Across the table, Sylvie was deep in conversation with Soames. He was sprawled back in his chair with an amused expression on his face, and I remembered how good she was at telling anecdotes. Maud was speaking quietly to her other neighbour, the purple man from before. They were both drowned out by Freddie’s story of meeting the Prince of Wales on the ship back to Mombasa.

‘He doesn’t hold with the Duke of Devonshire’s views,’ he told us. ‘And I agree with him. The colonial office has no idea what it’s like to live out here.’

‘What’s the Duke saying now?’ Genesse, Boy’s wife, asked.

‘He thinks we should be considering the rights of the natives more.’

There was a murmur around the table.

‘I’m glad D’s dead,’ Gwladys said. ‘All his work creating the white ideal out here annihilated by a government thousands of miles away.’