After we’d finished looking around the garden I walked Freddie and Edie to their car. My mother and Maud had already gone back inside, leaving the front door open for me. I could hear my mother calling to Maud from one wing to another, and the cook, in the kitchen, clanging pots and pans together, preparing supper for that evening.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ Edie said, ‘Aren’t you glad you came?’

‘Yes.’

‘Africa suits you,’ Freddie said.

I opened the passenger door for Edie and she slid in gracefully.

‘We’ll have a get-together soon,’ she said. ‘You’re invited, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘What’s wrong? You don’t look very sure.’

‘Carberry won’t be there, will he?’

She laughed. ‘No. I hear you’re not exactly firm friends.’

‘Someone should shoot him.’

It came out less witty than I’d hoped, and Freddie raised an eyebrow, but Edie laughed louder. ‘Not you,’ she said, ‘or you’ll miss all the fun at the party. Do come.’

‘As long as you stay away from the gin,’ Freddie said, wagging his finger at me.

‘And the champagne,’ I said.

‘Oh darling, we’re not barbarians,’ Edie said. ‘It’s a party – of course you’ll have champagne.’

Freddie grinned. ‘See you around, Boy Genius,’ he said.

He started the engine, reversed the car up the driveway, and then they were turning the corner and out of sight.

I couldn’t sleep that night, and around eleven I got up to fetch a glass of milk. My mother and father were talking on the veranda, and I paused in the sitting room when I heard Freddie’s name mentioned.

‘Just turned up,’ my mother was saying. ‘I don’t even know who he was here to see. He seems pretty experienced for a twenty-five-year-old, too experienced for Theo.’

Freddie’s face danced before me – his wide smile and straight white teeth, his raised eyebrow and smooth skin. My heart thumped painfully in my side, and I moved closer to the screen door, staying out of sight. It would all be fine, I tried to tell myself – Freddie didn’t think I was too young and immature. My mother couldn’t stop us being friends if we both wanted to be.

‘He’s changing.’

‘Well that’s natural, my dear. I know mothers want their children to stay children forever –’

‘You know Theo’s different. I don’t want him influenced in the wrong direction. Not when I’ve worked so hard on him.’

‘Of course you have,’ my father said soothingly. ‘But Lord Hamilton seemed alright to me. A little bohemian, maybe. Was he alone?’

‘No – with his wife. Lady Joan mentioned her in Nairobi.’

‘Not complimentary?’

‘Not very.’

‘Women never approve of other women.’

My mother’s voice changed. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh this? I picked it up today – MacDonald said every household needs one.’

‘I don’t want it indoors.’