At first the scenery was of dusty bazaars and colourful buildings – pale pinks and greens and glowing whites with towers and domes and covered balconies – or wide roads lined with palm trees and sycamore figs and only a few cars in sight. The blare of shouting reached us through the open window, becoming muffled as we headed out of the centre and the houses turned European: well-spaced bungalows with large, tropically lush gardens. Then came the thatched huts and swampland, African children running alongside the tracks to wave at the train, and then we were out of the city completely. The view changed to brown scrubland and small streams and I turned away from the window, disappointed with what I’d seen of the country so far.

The journey was slow. We had to stop every time a buffalo wandered onto the track, and the train jolted badly. At Voi we stopped for an hour, this time to have dinner by the side of the track, under large hanging lamps and a cloud of buzzing insects. We started with soup then moved on to a rubbery-tasting fish.

‘It’s good to have some proper food again,’ my father said, spearing a large piece with his fork.

I swirled my own piece around its plate, leaving trails of slimy leeks in its wake.

‘What’s wrong?’ Maud asked me. ‘Do you miss Dar es Salaam?’

‘We were only there for a fortnight,’ my mother said. ‘You can’t be that fond of it already.’

In Tanganyika our supper had been dates, then spiced beef or fish curries cooked in coconut milk and served with rice on a metal platter, with hollows for each dish so we could mix the food if we wanted to. Sometimes, if we were still hungry afterwards, we’d buy food from the baba lishas – the feeding men – down by the harbour: grilled cassava with a chilli sauce, samosas, pineapple, custard apples, avocados and andazi, a sweet, deep-fried dough cake. Lucy’s parents had joined us on our second night for supper, bringing Lucy too, the first time we’d met. She sat with me and Maud and I tried to talk to her, but she was monosyllabic.

‘You made quite an impression,’ my mother said afterwards.

‘She didn’t like me.’

She gave me a funny look. ‘Your delusions never fail to amaze me, darling.’

My father pushed away his empty plate, and an Indian waiter in a starched white uniform swooped down and exchanged it for one piled with beef. My mother, who’d just laid down her knife and fork in the middle of her plate, hurriedly picked them up again and continued to pick at her fish.

A cat appeared in the doorway of the station master’s office, and sauntered along the platform in our direction.

‘Here, kitty,’ Maud said, holding out a morsel of fish.