‘You will go on, Hannah. With Lars, you’ll be able to start again. There are wonderful times ahead. Jan and Lottie are not lost to you, Han. They’ll weather things just as you have, and somewhere down the road you’ll see them again, even if it’s not on your wedding day.’

‘You’re right, I know,’ Hannah dried her eyes. ‘So come on then, and tell me what to do with my pigtail.’

They spent the next morning arranging the wedding presents on a table in the sitting room.

‘You never sing any more,’ Hannah said, out of the blue.

‘I do, in the shower,’ Sarah replied, inspecting an antique silver jug and putting it in a prominent place.

‘Would you sing something at the wedding?’ Hannah asked. ‘At school I always wanted a voice like yours, and it’s been so long since I heard you.’

Sarah stared at her in astonishment. ‘What do you want me to sing?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. You used to make up things. Do you think you could do that? For Lars and me?’

‘You’re mad, Hannah, but yes, I’ll try.’

The house was full of flowers and laughter and excitement. Anthony had been chosen as best man. Lottie’s brother, Sergio, and his family arrived from South Africa, and Lars’s parents came from Norway. Friends from farms all over the country gathered, and put up tents in the field beyond the garden. On the day of the wedding, the sun blazed out of a cloudless sky, and Kirinyaga stood out clear in the azure morning, its snow peaks glistening. Mwangi said the mountain was giving Hannah its blessing. At five o’clock in the evening, the house staff and farm workers and their families formed a guard of honour around the verandah, as Sergio led Hannah down the steps and into the garden where Lars stood waiting. Beneath a garlanded arch on the lawn was the table that Hannah had chosen as an altar. It had come to the farm on the family’s first ox-wagon, and it was covered with a white linen cloth embroidered by her great-grandmother as part of her own trousseau. The dominee of the Dutch Reform Church rose to begin the ceremony. It was a bittersweet occasion, with the joy of Hannah’s marriage overshadowed by the memory of Piet, young and vital and golden, and lost to them all. In the hours leading up to the ceremony, Sarah had been assailed by the same terrible grief she had experienced at the time of his death. There were moments of pure agony when she followed Hannah through the congregation and saw Lars’s craggy features, soft with love as he took the hand of his bride. It was Anthony who steadied her, placing his arm lightly around her waist as she swallowed the beginnings of a sob.