Sarah cringed with embarrassment. Surely he wasn’t going to tell Simon that she was seeing things, throwing fits around his new lodge?

‘I have heard nothing, bwana. I went with Kipchoge to look at some buffalo tracks. There must have been many here last night.’

‘Good. You’d better start putting the drinks tray together. Everyone else should be here soon.’

‘I will get them ready. And the toasts.’

Sarah glanced at her watch. Five o’clock already. She didn’t want time to go this fast. At school the weeks had crawled by and she had longed for the times when she could spend a weekend at Langani, or go home for the holidays. Now the days were racing past far too quickly. I must be getting old, she said to herself. I didn’t think you felt like this until you were old.

‘Piet?’ She forced herself to walk out to where he was standing, and tentatively took his hand.

He looked down, smiling. ‘What?’

‘It’s been a wonderful day. I really appreciate your letting me see the lodge first – that you valued my opinion.’

‘What are you hoping to do when you finish at university?’ He was very close, but his tone was more companionable than romantic. ‘Remember how we used to tease you about ending up in a convent?’

She laughed, but there was an undercurrent of annoyance in her reply. ‘That was only in your imagination. But what I want is to come back to Kenya, to work. I’d like to join a wildlife research project. And I want to use my camera too. Luckily, photography can be a useful tool in the kind of work I’m hoping for. And it’s turned out to be something I’m good at.’

‘Camilla told me about the competition you won. Did you bring any of the pictures with you?’

Camilla. Inevitable, she supposed. For all that he had said to Hannah, his old flame was here between them. Still, he could not be expected to exclude her from his thoughts indefinitely.

‘I brought prints of my best pictures from the exhibition, for anyone that wants to see them.’

‘Of course we want to see them. Why wouldn’t we? Or are they indecent, arty-type pictures?’ He leered at her.

‘No, of course not,’ she said, laughing. ‘They’re portraits of all my down-and-out friends, in the shelter for the homeless where I work in Dublin. I’ll show you them tomorrow.’