‘I come here to see my chums. And for the wine list.’ George was smiling. ‘But never for the food. Are you going to see your mother now?’

‘I’ll be there for dinner. Such as it is.’

‘I haven’t mentioned this Nairobi thing to her.’

‘Of course you haven’t,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in bringing up anything that’s not immediate.’

He hugged her tightly on the steps of the club. When she looked back at him, out of the taxi window, he seemed somehow diminished, walking along Pall Mall, his body bent into the cold afternoon wind. Camilla wondered about his private life, but she quickly decided that she did not really want to know.

At home she made herself tea and began to read a novel, but it was difficult to concentrate. She felt restless, displaced and apart from everything. Her father was going back to Kenya where he would be seeing the people she loved most. The man she loved who did not love her. Outside the window a weak sun faded, leaving the light smoke-grey and mean. Camilla thought of the wild brooding spaces and colours of Kenya, of the breathless afternoons when even the weaver birds had fallen silent in the stifling heat. English rain tapped on the window as she conjured up the heady African nights, the way she had lain beneath Anthony and opened herself to receive him. They had listened to the sounds of the bush. She had clung to him in their canvas bed when she heard a lion roar in the distance, and they had laughed at the snorting and splashing of hippos in the river below their tent. Was love always this painful she wondered. And then she thought of Sarah, and her own sense of loss seemed to shrink in her mind. The telephone interrupted her train of thought and she was grateful.

‘Camilla? Don’t put the phone down. Please.’

‘Who is this?’ Camilla asked. There was something familiar about the voice, but she could not place it.

‘It’s Giles Hannington.’

‘I’m on my way out,’ she lied.

‘Please listen to me,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I’m late already, so I’m hanging up now. And I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t phone me again.’

‘You had lunch with your father today. I want to talk to you about him.’

‘Just stay away from me,’ she said, and hung up.

But he telephoned again. And again. ‘We do need to talk,’ he said, when she picked up the receiver for the third time, angry and brusque. ‘Just for a few minutes. I know how much he means to you. This is important. If you’ll see me this once, I’ll give you my word that I will never bother you again.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Just around the corner, in the Brompton Road.’