‘I suppose I could get some of the women in to clean the place up,’ Sybil went on. ‘But there doesn’t seem much point. We shan’t be staying long, and the new owner can deal with it.’

She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve scheduled the service for five o’clock, so there’s time to have a drink and make sandwiches. I expect Jim and Jeremy will be hungry and thirsty by now.’

Sarah helped make the sandwiches and then carried some bottled water down to where the two men were supervising the sweating natives. The funeral director was sitting on a log and watching the proceedings through a haze of cigarette smoke, while the padre squatted down amongst the native children and showed them tricks with bits of string.

Sybil had chosen a quiet spot close to the office where Jock had orchestrated the smooth running of the rubber plantation. There were exotic flowers scrambling over the wooden hut now, with weeds and vines poking their way through the structure which was slowly rotting in the damp heat.

Sarah struggled to push open the warped door and stepped inside.

It smelled of heat, pipe tobacco, old paper, ink and mice – and held the very essence of her father. The big desk he’d once sat behind was as he’d left it, the leather chair now cracked and spewing its horsehair stuffing. Sarah regarded the duty rosters that were still there from 1940, the dusty diary on the desk, and the collection of pens and pipes in their various racks.

She reached for her father’s favourite briar pipe and felt the silky smoothness of the wood his hands had once held, breathing in those long-remembered scents of the days she’d once worked here as his secretary – and where she’d fallen in love with Philip.

Putting the pipe carefully in her dress pocket, she opened each drawer in the desk to find old letters, paperclips, broken nibs and scraps of paper covered in Jock’s bold handwriting. The ancient filing cabinet was stuffed with more paper, and Sarah smiled as she recognised many of the letters she’d typed all those years ago. And then she saw a file marked ‘Tarrant. Official documents’.

She carefully drew it out and placed it on the desk, perched on the edge of her father’s old chair and opened it. She found Philip’s birth certificate, old school reports, and letters he’d received when he was at boarding school and university in England. There was his mother’s death certificate, and reams and reams of official documents relating to the plantation and the family house. And beneath it all was a copy of Philip’s will.

Sarah’s hand trembled as she unfolded it to discover it had been written long before she and Philip had become engaged. The firm of solicitors was based in London, so it was no wonder they hadn’t been able to trace this will. As she read through the simple last testament it became clear that should Philip die without a wife or children, the plantation was to be passed on to his father’s brother or his heirs. By the address given, it appeared that the family lived in England.