‘You should have carried it the African way, on your head,’ Wangari said. ‘Much easier.’

‘Now she tells me!’

They stopped and all talk of politics ceased as they looked down from the top of Primrose Hill and saw the view across the skyline of London. The dome of St Paul’s was visible, and Big Ben too.

Saffron opened the hamper and produced a tartan picnic blanket on which she laid plates, knives and forks. Next came four crystal wineglasses, followed by a bottle of champagne, wrapped in a damp cloth to keep it cool. Gerhard popped the cork, poured them each a glass and they drank to Benjamin’s success, and Wangari’s too.

Saffron then made Benjamin’s and Wangari’s eyes widen in amazement, as she opened a series of greaseproof paper packages to reveal piled slices of smoked salmon and roast beef, fresh tomatoes, a crusty loaf of home-baked wholemeal bread, half a dozen large brown hard-boiled eggs and a punnet of strawberries.

‘How did you get hold of food like this?’ Wangari asked. ‘The food in England is terrible and the rationing . . . ugh!’

‘I have English and Scottish cousins who live on large farms. I rang them a couple of days ago and said I needed emergency supplies, and they sent them on the overnight trains.’

‘How long are you over here?’ Wangari asked.

‘We’re only in England for a couple more days,’ Saffron said, ‘and then we’re moving to Germany.’

‘I have family business that needs attending to,’ Gerhard said. ‘And I fear that, unlike this delightful occasion, it will be no picnic.’

Cricket was traditionally seen as a peculiarly English sport, played by gentlemen dressed in white, who interrupted the game with breaks for lunch and tea. The rules were baffling, but impeccably observed. The spectators watched in silence, with polite applause for good play, even by the team they opposed. But what was also English, though less obvious to the casual spectator, was that beneath its civilised veneer, cricket was a dangerous, even brutal sport. The bowler was perfectly entitled to aim a very hard ball at the batsman’s head, or the more delicate parts of his anatomy, with the specific intention of hitting them as painfully as possible.

Such a battle was taking place in the Kenyan White Highlands at the Wanjohi Country Club, or ‘the Wanjo’ as it was known to its members, where the annual match between the club’s First Eleven and a team of officials from Government House, the colonial administration in Nairobi, was taking place. The African sun blazed down upon the immaculately mown turf of the club’s cricket pitch. The rolling brown hills stretched away towards the Aberdare Mountains on the horizon. Uniformed native servants offered the elegantly dressed spectators afternoon tea, or something stronger if they preferred.

Meanwhile, in the middle of the pitch, a large, angry man called Billy Atkinson was walking towards the end of his run-up, pushing a stray shank of sweaty black hair from his forehead. Billy Atkinson was the Wanjo’s secret weapon. A Yorkshireman by birth, he was the quickest bowler in East Africa and the meanest, too.