They passed the rusted carcass of an abandoned truck and rounded a corner to see a troop of baboons loitering in the road. Stephen slammed on the brakes but the car scarcely slowed. The animals scattered just in time. He waited for his heart to stop pounding.

‘We need new brakes.’

Ginie was powdering her face with a small mother-of-pearl compact. She snapped it shut and put it back in her handbag.

‘Yes. The springs feel worn out, too.’

Stephen frowned, his eyes fixed on the road. His palms were sweating against the steering wheel.

‘We only replaced them a few weeks ago. If the roads were in better condition we wouldn’t have these perpetual problems.’

Umtali was nestled in a basin formed by lush hills. The place itself felt somewhere between a modern city and a pioneer’s settlement; wide streets were banked with flowering trees and there were shops and offices, yet many of the roads tapered off into the scrub and trees of the bush.

Heat beat down from a clear sky, shimmering in waves. The smell of scorched tarmac reached them through the open windows of their car. Stephen parked and they walked through the small, wilted gardens off Main Street. The asphalt felt soft and tacky under their feet and the trees were motionless. As they approached the bank they saw a crowd of about twenty Africans standing in the road, waiting patiently. The bank did not allow them in. They were served from a counter in the wall after all the whites had been seen and had their families asked after.

Stephen withdrew his staff’s wages in silver, embarrassed by the obsequious manner of the teller, a tall, stooped man with brown eyes that peered distrustfully through rimless pince-nez. The bag of coins was heavy and Stephen wished he could leave it in the car, but they were an obvious target and couldn’t risk being robbed. On their way to the post office, they passed a cenotaph for the war dead. Tall, splendid and lovingly maintained, it was made from white marble, with the names of the dead engraved in gold. A few belonged to local African riflemen. Stephen paused in front of the monument. So, an African soldier was good enough to die for the Commonwealth, but he wasn’t good enough to vote in it, he thought wryly.

In many of the houses in the area, there were photographs of dead soldiers. Some veterans continued to work in the town – the owner of the Cecil Hotel, Ron Clarke, had pieces of shrapnel in his legs, and the ­postmaster had a steel plate in the back of his skull. The pain of war could be felt everywhere.