Ginie and I regret that you haven’t felt you could visit Rhodesia yet. Do come or we shall soon forget what you look like. We’ve had a bad time recently, and living (as they say) far beyond the Mountains of the Moon, it has made us miss our family and friends more than ever. It’s sad that there is such distance between us. . .

He stopped and put down his fountain pen before scrunching up the piece of paper and lobbing it into the wastepaper basket. He could hear the whine and drone of a mosquito close to his ear. He felt it bite and slapped at his cheek a few times, but missed. The mosquito danced to the window, its buzzing making his head spin. He rested his head in his hands. I need a whisky, he thought.

It wasn’t just the senseless slaughter of Jongy and the damage it did Ginie that hurt. He had reaped such satisfaction from creating a place that was free from fear and discontent, politics and strife. It was his painter’s canvas, his sculptor’s block of stone and now, it was nothing but ruins.

Ginie watched Mary fold a pile of sheets. Her hands, with their slim well-shaped fingers, smoothed and stroked the linen as she worked. Ginie was conscious of depths in Mary; troubled and patient.

‘You must miss Eliot,’ she said, abruptly.

Mary drew in her bottom lip with her front teeth and kept it tucked in like that for so long that Ginie began to regret asking.

At last, Mary said, ‘My people don’t think that a man and a woman are married just because they have had a wedding ceremony. It sometimes takes years for a couple to be really joined.’

She paused. Ginie gazed at a silver chain around Mary’s neck. The links were snug and graceful against her skin.

‘It took ten years for me and Eliot to be really married,’ said Mary, eventually. ‘Things were very bad at first.’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, the usual story of life in Sakubva,’ Mary said, bitterly. She stared ahead. ‘There was no work. Too many babies came in a short time. Most nights, Eliot went to the shebeen to drink and he came home full of anger. I wanted to leave, but there was nowhere to go.’

Her mouth trembled for a moment. Ginie offered her handkerchief, but Mary shook her head and pulled herself together. ‘But then, nkosi Thompson gave Eliot a job. He stopped drinking and we began to cleave together, like the Bible says. It wasn’t always easy. He had to be careful of the Thompsons, they could lash out like puff adders.’

‘Oh, I can imagine.’

Mary frowned. ‘That is not a good kind of settler, but it was the only kind I knew. When I first met you and Mr Stephen, I didn’t know what to make of you.’

Ginie gave her a thoughtful look.