I’m going to die out here, Hannah said to herself. I’ll dry up, like those skeleton leaves. The wind will carry me off, and I’ll be forgotten. Or worse still, I’ll grow old and fat, like that cow Mrs van Riebeck, and then it will take a crane to carry me anywhere, never mind the wind. I’ll end up smelling of sweat, doused in April Violets cologne, heaving around in a shapeless cotton shift with a dreadful flowered apron tied across my sagging bosom. Man, what a horrible thought! And they’ll pair me off with someone like that cretin Billy Kovaks who sniffs all the time. Imagine having to kiss him! All blubbery wet lips and dead fish hands prodding me everywhere. She shivered violently at the thought, then smiled. Well, it would be something to write about to Sarah. ‘These are my waking nightmares. Aren’t they gross?’ What really was gross, though, was that they were all she had to offer. A frightening dream of the future that offered no future. And on the other side of the world, her friends and her brother were discovering what it was to live. Not fair, just not fair.

Pa was drinking again. She could smell the sourness of his breath, and his eyes were dull and bloodshot. Today he had shouted at Lottie, before leaving on another patrol with his cousin. At Langani he had never shouted at his family. How could Ma put up with it now? Hannah hated to see her mother’s face, pinched with pain, her eyes so sad and so understanding at the same time. But it was no good being kind and understanding – how could she not see that? It just made him more angry, encouraged him to wallow in self-pity. He should pull himself together, stop hiding away in this wretched hole where the work was nothing like what he had done at home. It wasn’t even his farm. His cousin, Kobus van der Beer, treated him like a servant. Her pa was overseer on a tobacco plantation, a hired hand taking orders from an ox of a man who was mean and rude, and hadn’t anything but straw between his ears. Pa should be back on his own land, raising his cattle and his wheat. When they had talked about it, Jan had said his name was on a list because he had fought against the Mau Mau. That the kaffirs would remember. He said Langani could have been confiscated after Uhuru if he had stayed on. Now the subject was forbidden and the possibility of a return to Kenya was no longer mentioned.