‘It’s getting chilly in this water,’ Piet said. ‘Come with me, Lady Camilla. I’ll fix up a lantern for your tent. Make sure you don’t set the place on fire.’

There was a brief silence. Then Camilla laughed.

‘I’ll make do with the moonlight. I just need my beauty sleep, even if it’s in a space barely large enough for a sardine.’

‘You can dream about the opulent tents, with chandeliers and silk carpets and bathrooms, that I’m going to create for your great reunion safari,’ Anthony said.

‘I agree it’s time for bed,’ Tim made an attempt to defuse the growing tension. ‘Piet, we should go and sort out water and lanterns for the tents. You girls can follow us up in a few minutes. Where are you staying, Anthony?’

‘I’m down the road – bunking with some friends who have a house. Happy New Year, everyone. I’ll see you around. Soon, I hope.’ Anthony walked away down the beach, heading towards the distant light and noise of the Turtle Club.

‘What a wonderful night this has been,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s hard to let it go, not knowing where we’ll all be even in a few days’ time.’

‘Let’s make a promise,’ Hannah said. ‘A solemn promise like before. That we’ll come back here together, when we turn twenty-one.’

‘I’ll promise.’ Camilla held out both hands. ‘We’ll all promise. Won’t we?’

They knelt in a circle on the sand, surrounded by the ripple and swirl of the dark, star-spattered ocean and embraced one another, laughing at the brightness of the future, and the achievements they would relate to one another in the heady days of their reunion.

Chapter 6

London, November 1964

Camilla awoke to a shrill chorus of birds. Not the whistle of robin chats or the low crooning of doves that heralded each Kenya morning. Here the birds you could see were mainly crows, black and raucous, shrieking at the leaden sky from their perches on telephone wires and bare trees. In Italy there had been sunshine, and a glorious extravagance of landscape and architecture. Her father had been posted to the embassy in Rome for a year and she spent a great deal of time with him, exploring the ancient streets and monuments of Italian cities, walking in the Tuscan hills, gliding through the canals of Venice. At his insistence she had taken the art-history course in Florence and had enjoyed it. But now they were all back in London, and she counted the days to the completion of the obligatory secretarial course, and longed for the freedom to live another kind of life.