She turned away and Lottie clung to Sarah briefly before walking out to the waiting car and driver. She did not look back. Mwangi and Kamau wept as she took her leave of them. Then the beam of the headlights swept the walls and finally the sound of the engine faded into the night. In the sitting room Hannah slumped on the sofa. Her head was in her hands and a high, keening noise came from her lips.

‘Help me get her to her bedroom, Sarah,’ Anthony said.

He sat at Hannah’s bedside, saying words that she did not hear, stroking her hand until she was quiet. Sarah stood in the doorway, watching. There was comfort for Hannah in his presence. But all Sarah had ever needed or wanted lay in ashes up on the ridge. She was utterly alone. She turned and fled the room. Outside on the lawn she saw the askari on duty, wrapped in his heavy coat, his rifle at his side, his breath misting in the cold air. Like a sleepwalker waking from a dream, she found herself in Piet’s bedroom, surrounded by his belongings, his school photographs, the books he had loved and planned to read with her. She took his shirt from the back of a chair and put it on over her clothes. Then she lay down on his bed and buried her face in his pillow, to breathe in the last scent of him.

Two days after the cremation there was a memorial service in Nanyuki, and after that Hannah moved through each interminable day as though she inhabited a separate world. She could not answer the telephone or face the questions and concern of old friends. She spent her time in the dairy, or driving around the farm, finding and taking on unimportant tasks that normally she would have delegated. Although Mike Stead was helping out, he had been offered a permanent and better-paid job and he had told her that he could only remain at Langani for two months. There had been no word from Lars, no sign that he had heard the terrible news of Piet’s death. He had seemingly lost all contact with Kenya, or he had chosen to bury Hannah’s rejection of him and to put his time at Langani behind him.