‘Theo – this is Rupert,’ he said. ‘He knows nothing about writing, but don’t let that put you off him.’

‘I’m English,’ Rupert said. ‘We invented writing.’

‘And the Greeks?’ Nicolas asked.

Rupert made a derisory noise. His arms were folded across his chest, and he looked as if it was taking an immense amount of willpower not to tap his foot.

I handed Nicolas his glass.

‘Is that other for me?’ Rupert asked. He took it before I had time to respond. ‘Thanks, Tom.’

‘Theo.’

‘Another fan of Greek, hmm?’

A bell rang, and Edie announced dinner. I was given a seat at the end of one of the tables, opposite Nicolas and next to a beautiful Russian woman whose name I forgot immediately. A farming neighbour sat on her other side and talked to us about his various crops for the first course. I kept trying to find Sylvie, and eventually saw her on another table, seated next to Rupert. They had their heads bent together as if they were sharing a secret, and I felt my shoulders stiffen. I turned back to my neighbours in time to hear the woman say:

‘And now they’re saying all men came from Africa, but look how different we are to the natives.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ the farmer said.

‘What about Broken Hill Man?’ Nicolas asked. ‘They found him in Kabwe a few years ago, and they say he may be two hundred thousand years old. Much older than the Neanderthals found in Europe.’

‘Still,’ the farmer said. ‘It’s rather hard to credit.’

‘We must have come from somewhere,’ Nicolas said, sipping his wine.

‘But here? It’s so inhospitable.’

‘We seem to have come back, anyway.’

‘It’s different now,’ the farmer said. ‘We have tools, machinery, vaccines, you name it. We’ve evolved.’

Nicolas noticed me listening and smiled. ‘What do you think, Theo? Are white men meant to live out here?’

I’d never questioned it before, and was suddenly embarrassed at my lack of sophistication. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Why shouldn’t we?’ the farmer said. ‘We’ve brought running water, electricity, roads, the railway.’

Nicolas laughed. ‘You talk as if we did it out of the goodness of our hearts. White men came out to Africa because we realised we had a native population we could use as labour. And now we depend on them to build and maintain the foundation of our white culture and they can’t know it.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘You should never let anyone know how much you need them,’ the Russian woman said. ‘It gives them the power.’ She rattled the ice in her glass. ‘That’s how you men think, isn’t it?’