At least they were close to the park. Everyone told her how fortunate she was to live a stone’s throw away from its grassy spaces and rain-washed trees, and Camilla walked there every day. Her mother proclaimed frequently on the perfect location of their flat, although she was rarely to be found there. Marina’s diary was largely taken up with lunches, bridge parties or the organisation of charity events. Camilla found that she was happy with her own company, and she could not envisage any close friendships that might compare to the bond she shared with Sarah and Hannah. Letter writing did not come easily to her, but she sent regular postcards with breezy messages on the back, and gifts from each new place that she visited. She did not think her friends would understand the sense of isolation she felt in London, her inability to belong to any of the groups of people her mother approved of, and she detested Marina’s obsession with London’s social hierarchy.

Her father had returned to the Africa Desk in the Foreign Office, and he still regularly travelled between London and Nairobi. When he was not abroad he seemed to be caught up in late-night meetings at Whitehall. He remained a key player in complex negotiations between the British and Kenyan governments, as they drew up the new constitution that would turn Kenya into a republic. Camilla had heard him on the telephone, discussing the contentious problem of the Asian community and their right to live in Britain. In Parliament, Enoch Powell was strident in his opposition to unrestricted immigration, and the press was full of emotional rhetoric on the subject. Many white farmers in Kenya still ridiculed the land redistribution scheme, claiming that vast tracts of the country’s most fertile territory would be destroyed by ignorance and mismanagement. There were angry accusations that the British government, in its haste to hand over the former colony, had abandoned the very people who had made the country prosperous. When Camilla had brought up the subject of the van der Beers, her father’s reaction was brusque.

‘They chose to join the exodus to Rhodesia, my dear, so that their son could start afresh. Now it’s up to your young friend to make a go of it.’

‘They’d never have left, if it hadn’t been for Mother’s outburst,’ Camilla said. ‘And you’ve never explained what that was all about.’

‘You know I can’t discuss sensitive information.’

‘So sensitive that she had access to it?’

‘Jan van der Beer made an unselfish choice for his son’s sake. As a result Piet should do well, if he keeps his head and works hard,’ George said. ‘It was probably best that it worked out this way.’