They splashed their faces, gulping handfuls of the icy water. The horses drank deeply, snorting with contentment, and then turned to graze along the river bank. Piet lay in the shade, his arms behind his head. Sarah and Hannah sat cross-legged beside him. Camilla leaned her back against a tree trunk and stretched out long legs to full advantage.

‘It’s extra salty, this,’ she said, making a face as she chewed on the dark, stringy meat.

‘What would you know about biltong, Lady Camilla? You don’t chew that at parties in Government House, I’ll bet.’

‘No, we don’t. And if she saw me eating this stuff, my mother would haul me off to a doctor to check for worms and then to an emergency session with the dentist.’ Camilla looked at him through a fall of blonde hair. ‘While you’ve been away learning useless theories at college, we’ve had Hannah for our cross-cultural lessons. She brings us biltong at school. Part of our regular care package, along with your mother’s treacle tart. And don’t call me Lady Camilla.’

Piet sat back into the shadows, observing his sister and her friends. They were so unalike in their appearances, so different in their backgrounds.

‘It always seems strange to me, the friendship between the three of you,’ he said. ‘You’re like sisters in a way, but you’re poles apart. I listen to you talking and it’s like a kind of code, almost as though one knows what the others are thinking, or going to do, before it happens.’

‘That’s not even the half of it,’ Camilla said. A clutter of memories made her laugh out loud. They had shared detentions and prize-givings, finished each other’s homework, survived falls from horses and whacks from hockey sticks, and religious classes and exam nerves and school dances. Awful boyfriends, too, callow and spotty or slicked up and pressing for an advantage that they could brag about in some locker room. ‘You’ve missed all kinds of fun, Piet, being away in South Africa. And you even passed up Sarah’s invitation to join us all at the coast last year. Too busy playing rugby or something equally riveting. Bad choice.’

‘I’d like to see South Africa,’ Sarah said.

‘It’s beautiful. But I don’t like the way they treat the Africans and the Coloureds. It’s a police state, and there’ll be bloodshed eventually,’ Piet said with regret. ‘Unfortunately, the Afrikaners will be mostly to blame for it. We’re lucky to be here in Kenya, in spite of Pa’s misgivings about Uhuru. And it’s home, heh?’

‘Imagine all this being your home. God, what a heritage,’ Sarah’s voice was reverential.