‘You’re going to have to learn the hard way,’ Tim took her thin shoulders and shook her. ‘Because it will all come round in a backlash one of these days, and you’ll pay a heavy price for using your friends in your sick, horrible schemes. You’re going to wind up a sad, messed-up woman just like your mother, and you needn’t come asking any of us for help.’

‘I only wanted to shock her. To punish her for what she’s doing to Daddy.’ Camilla made no attempt to brush away the tears that had begun to slip down her face. ‘For what she’s done to him and to me, all these years. I wanted to pay her for the way she’s treated each of us here. That’s all I meant to do. Please, please try to understand.’

Piet stood like a stone pillar, his face white, his mouth set in a thin, twitching line. Then he took Camilla’s hand.

‘Come on, Lady Camilla,’ he said. ‘We should go home now. We should all go home and get ourselves together.’

But Sarah could not find it in herself to walk with them. Tim called out her name as she rushed away from the group and found the ladies’ room. She locked the door. Then she slid to the floor, leaning against the tiled wall of the stall and sobbing, before she vomited all her foolish dreams into the cold, white bowl.

Chapter 7

Rhodesia, April 1965

Hannah slammed the screen door and went out to sit on the steps of the porch. In the midday heat, dust devils whirled desiccated leaves into the air with a dry rustling, then died into hot silence. In front of the verandah was a small patch of ground from which Lottie was trying to coax the beginnings of a garden, planting bougainvillea and portulacca and periwinkles, to bring a little colour to the drab face of the bungalow. Beyond that was the tobacco, miles of tall green stalks, their broad leaves rattling and swishing rumours through their ranks as the wind curled around them. High above her in the brassy sky a kestrel sailed the up-currents, watching for unwary prey below. It had already plummeted down once, grasping a mouse in its talons, carrying it off to some barren place to be devoured.