But anything would be better than this place where Jan spent increasing amounts of his time out in the bush, hunting down gangs of black guerrilla fighters hungry for their share of the white man’s land. The talk on all the farms centred on the growing number of dangerous thugs hired by black nationalists to terrorise the white community, and to destroy oil and power lines coming into Rhodesia. Everyone said it was vital to resist a sell-out of white power, and to deal swiftly and harshly with any show of violence from the tribes. Ian Smith would keep them on the right road, they agreed. He had already banned the black political parties and exiled their leaders, and he promised to crush any movement towards majority black rule. The result was a constant state of tension in the country, and the formation of private patrols like the one that Kobus van der Beer had organised. Hannah hated to see them ride out with guns, and that closed-down expression on their faces. Sometimes he and Pa were gone for days. When Jan came back he smelled horrible. His eyes were red-rimmed and he had obviously been drinking heavily. And Ma was miserable in the run-down house with the leaking roof, and the sagging verandah where termites chewed relentlessly at the foundations. They should all go home. Take their chances.

Everything had been ruined on that terrible night in Mombasa, when Camilla’s mother had made her accusation and destroyed the family. Jan’s face had gone hard as stone when she spoke. Then it had sort of crumbled, and the fight had gone out of him. He had shrivelled before Hannah’s eyes, become an old man. But Pa wasn’t old. He was her pa, a giant who could do anything, take on any difficulty and triumph over it. This sullen hulk who left the house with a gun in his hand, and returned to fill his belly with whisky, who sat in the half-dark and shouted at her mother, this wasn’t her pa. When he was not working in the fields, or out on patrol, he drank and drank. He had a haunted look now, as though ghosts walked with him, whispering words of judgment and retribution in his ear, and he shouted at Lottie just to silence them and keep them at bay. Today Hannah had tried once more to talk to her mother, to make her see that she must get him to bring them home.