The fleas and ticks got to Scotty, making him howl in misery. Maud and I picked them off, one by one. Chigoe fleas, or ‘jiggers’, were the worst. The males simply sucked blood, like other fleas, but the females would burrow into Scotty’s paws, or our feet, feeding off blood vessels underneath the skin, staying there and swelling as they produced eggs. We dug them out with safety pins, and washed the wounds in paraffin, which was stored in reused bottles. In Naivasha, Miss Graham would give us a teaspoon of paraffin with our milk, to disinfect our insides, so Maud put some in Scotty’s milk too.

He was supposed to sleep on the veranda, but Maud trained him to wait until the lights were out, then push open the screen door and trot into her room. He slept curled up next to her under the covers, his head resting on the crook of her outstretched arm.

On our last night, my mother knocked on my bedroom door after I had blown out my candle, then came in and sat on my bed.

‘How do you like it here?’ she asked.

‘Very much.’

‘It’s a long way from Scotland.’

‘Yes.’

She was looking away from me. I waited, watching her profile caught in a beam of moonlight. She was fingering the locket around her neck.

‘I want to ask you about your friends, Theo,’ she started, then turned her face to me. In the bluish light I could see her large eyes and her sharp white teeth when she spoke again. ‘I let you spend time with the de Croÿs because I think they’re harmless, really.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Countess de Croÿ is very young,’ my mother said, ‘but she understands what it means to be a woman in our world, so I don’t think she’ll do anything rash. However, the government people disapprove of … certain behaviour that they hear about.’

‘Do they?’

‘You know that as well as I do.’

I thought of the party and smiled. The government people probably couldn’t even imagine what we’d got up to.

‘Well?’

‘People like to exaggerate,’ I said.

‘So there’s no truth to the stories?’

‘I haven’t heard the stories.’

She put her hand on my leg. ‘You haven’t done anything, have you, Theo?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I don’t mind what your friends do,’ she said. ‘As long as you aren’t caught up in it.’

‘Caught up in what?’

‘You’re only fifteen. One day you’ll be grown up and you’ll have a good job and make a good husband. You’re my son – I want that for you.’

‘You don’t need to worry about me.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

She was quiet for a moment, then she withdrew her hand and left, closing the door softly behind her.