We were silent. I lay down again, a little apart from him. Tears ran out of the corners of my eyes and dripped onto the grass.

‘If I could go to university, I know what I’d be,’ said Mufaro.

‘What?’

‘A politician.’

I stared at the leaves overhead. I was envious, for I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

‘You could go to the Cape,’ I suggested. ‘They have African students in the university there. Or Johannesburg.’ Mufaro pulled himself into a sitting position and started picking at a scab on his knee.

‘I can’t study enough to get to university, and it’s so expensive.’ There was a pause, then he burst out, ‘I wish I could drive the whole lot of you out, every single one! I don’t want to see a white face left in Africa.’

I found myself trembling, shocked by the violence of his feelings, by the unfamiliar sensations he had awakened in me. I wanted to get up and run away. He gave the scab a savage tug and it came off. It wasn’t fully healed underneath and a bead of blood appeared. He swiped the blood away with his forearm and we were quiet for a long time.

‘Sorry,’ he said, at last. ‘I’m sorry. Sometimes, I don’t want to see another white person ever again. Not even you. And it makes me feel bad inside.’

I gazed at him, unsure how to respond. ‘I think I understand,’ I managed.

He gave me a hesitant smile, and my affection for him returned. Then, he took something out of his pocket, concealing it in his closed fist.

‘Hold out your arm.’

He uncurled his fingers: on his palm lay a bracelet made of woven elephant hair, joined together by red glass beads that glinted and glittered in the light. ‘This is so you don’t forget me when you’re grown up,’ he said. Slipping the bracelet onto my arm, he began tying the ends into a knot.

Mufaro and I had often touched. We climbed over each other and rolled around, we played chase or tag, we spun and danced. But this time, something was different. This time, a slow warmth started spreading through me as his hands brushed my skin, and there was a trembling sensation in my stomach. And yet, mixed with the sweetness was a pain that I didn’t understand.

Something in Mufaro’s sudden stillness told me that he was feeling it too. His wide eyes searched for mine. Scarcely breathing, I made myself look back at him.

It was late when I got home, the shadows of dusk were advancing on our house from the edges of the forest. It looked low and small and huddled. The front door swung open before I was even up the front steps. My mother stood in the doorway, a dark shape against a rectangle of golden light.