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.’