‘Good teamwork, Sarah. Oh, here’s my mother. She wants to know if you’d like to come to lunch with us one weekend.’ As she spoke the words in a rush, she saw Camilla Broughton-Smith appear. ‘You too, Camilla.’

Hannah could not believe what she was saying, but there was a better chance that they would come if she asked the two of them.

‘Me too, what? Congratulations by the way, you played brilliantly. That shocked the heifers out of their grubby little socks.’ Camilla draped a pale arm around Sarah’s shoulders.

‘My mother would like you both to come to lunch with us. Next weekend. Well, any weekend. If you want to, I mean.’

Hannah’s courage evaporated quickly and she began to feel the pain of embarrassment. She should never have started this at all. Sarah Mackay was staring at her open-mouthed.

‘What a heavenly idea!’ Camilla prodded her friend. ‘Of course we’d love to come. Wouldn’t we, Sarah? I’ve never been to a farm around here. Have you got cows and sheep? What about horses?’

‘Ma, this is Sarah Mackay.’ Hannah felt she had no option but to plough on. ‘Remember, you met her before? And Camilla Broughton-Smith. They’d both like to come to lunch. As you suggested.’

‘Good. I’ll arrange it right now with Sister Evangelis.’ Lottie smiled at her daughter. ‘What about next weekend, if that’s all right with you girls? We can have a braai if the weather’s good. And Piet will be at home. Bring bathing suits if you like. There’s a swimming hole, but I warn you, the water is cold.’

Langani Farm had been van der Beer property since 1906 when the family had first arrived in Kenya. They had brought their wagons with them on the boat, all the way from South Africa. In the cluster of shacks that would one day become the city of Nairobi, they had purchased a span of untrained oxen and a few basic supplies before setting out for the highland forests, fighting their way upwards with their heavy furniture and belongings, wheezing in the thinning air, trudging through miles of slippery mud that sucked them back and down at every step. Sometimes they hacked their way through thick vegetation, sometimes they shivered through bitter cold and fog and mist, to reach the new, promised land and their allocated acres. For years they had struggled with the raw earth, wresting new crops from the reluctant soil, suffering the heartbreak of dying animals, of rust in the ears of their wheat, of suffocating drought and drenching rain and locusts that swarmed over the ripening crops, leaving their harvest a vanished dream. But perseverance was the corner stone of the Afrikaners. Slowly, and with characteristic intransigence, they tamed and moulded their surroundings.