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.