The next few months were taken up with travelling to other stations along the line to report back on their conditions. My father’s enthusiasm was catching, and I found myself arriving at dusty, tin-roofed out-of-the-way places with visions of grand stone buildings and bustling markets springing up around them. I sketched plan after plan every night at the club, surprised by how vivid my imagination could be.

I didn’t see Sylvie, except in passing at the club, or the market. I heard from others that Rupert had finally signed the divorce papers and gone back to England, where he was locked up for killing a pedestrian in a drink-driving case. I felt a grim satisfaction whenever I thought of him behind bars. To celebrate, Sylvie had bought herself a beach house in Tiwi and a bungalow next door to the Muthaiga. Boy Long found me buying a newspaper from the duka in Gilgil and told me she was driving Noel crazy, disappearing to her other properties without letting Noel know, then suddenly turning up at The Farm again.

‘The first time it happened, Noel called the police. Thought she’d killed herself,’ he said. ‘Wish I’d been there to see her breeze back through the doors to all the fuss.’

‘She’s always been irresponsible,’ I said.

‘We went for a drive the other day, too, and she started arguing with me about Edie. She bloody jumped out the car while it was still moving. I’m telling you – she’s half-cracked. We were going uphill, so it was pretty slow, but she still scraped her knee and tore a hole in her cardigan.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘I shouted at her and she just shrugged and said “What did you expect?” I could have wrung her neck there and then.’

Maud was busy too, with the cattle and the land she’d bought, producing milk and butter and growing rice and mealies. She wrote in June, saying she was planting orchards now: peach, plum, apricot and quince, and wanted to start a jam business; Abdullah was overseeing the gardening.

We’re up at first light, she put, and it never stops. I wish I had Abdullah’s energy, but sometimes all I want to do is sleep. Bulawayo got into a fight with one of the other totos, and Mother wanted to get rid of him – she says he’s a troublemaker – but I knew he struggled to find work before we took him on, so I talked her out of it.