‘That’s hardly any better,’ my mother said, peeling off her gloves, and I pressed myself against the back of my seat to be further away from her. She was seventeen years younger than my father, and I knew that men found her beautiful. To me, however, she was only unpredictable. Sometimes she would nuzzle me, rubbing her nose against my cheek and gently pulling my hair, and other times she would fly at me, cuffing me around my head. My last tutor had quit when my mother – whose own schooling was stopped at thirteen – overheard me stumbling on my arithmetic and ran into the room to slap me across the face, shouting the right answers. After that I was sent to boarding school.

‘When are we going to leave?’ she said. ‘Can’t you have a word with someone, William?’

‘Just a few more minutes.’

Maud traced an outline with her finger over the mesh of the mosquito screen. ‘Will we come back to Mombasa?’

‘Another time,’ my father said. ‘We’re going to The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi now. You know, Theodore Roosevelt stayed there in 1909 on his “African Safari and Scientific Expedition”.’ He placed a meaty hand on my neck. ‘Your namesake, Theo.’

At fifty-four, my father was the one who resembled Roosevelt, with his moustache and his glasses and his waistcoats. I was slim, short and blond, and my mouth was too large – too thick-lipped – and my nose too wide, my eyes too green and my cheekbones too high to be much like the former President. I was too girlish-looking. The boys at my school had called me Theodora; sometimes they’d chased me around the rugby pitch and pinned me down while they took turns to kiss me.

I breathed in deeply; the idea that I’d never see a school again made me want to shout with exhilaration. My mother had already found a governess to take charge of my education. After the incident with one of the rugby boys that last term, and after I’d been sent back early, she hadn’t spoken to me for a week, but at least she seemed to realise I was better at home for the next three years. Then there would be university, but I didn’t need to think about that yet.

‘Will we see any animals from the train?’ Maud asked.

Maud had large brown eyes and olive skin; in Scotland they’d called her ‘the Spanish Sister’, because of her looks and her habit of carrying a bible around. I’d once heard my father tell a friend that Maud had never lied in her life.

‘We will,’ my father said.

There was a shrill blast of a whistle from the platform, and the train jerked forwards impatiently.

‘Finally,’ my mother said.