When she met Eliot he was so handsome, so full of life, all thoughts of a career disappeared. Before she knew it, she had young children who needed to be fed, clothed and given a roof over their heads. She spoke of how hard life was in the township.

‘I didn’t work and I didn’t think my children would find work. There isn’t any, you see.’ She paused, chewing her bottom lip. ‘We’ve no healthcare. We want education, we want books; we thirst for them. You don’t know what it’s like to feel that way, to be so desperate for knowledge. But there aren’t enough places in schools for the children. We can’t carry on like this.’

‘I think we should stop trying to help all the time. It’s become too risky,’ Stephen said that evening on the veranda, watching the sun sink below the hills.

The sky was awash with pink and gold and the dogs snoozed peacefully at their feet.

‘Let’s close down the home crafts club and put a halt on our other plans. We’ll keep a lower profile.’ He leaned forward and squeezed Ginie’s hand. ‘I don’t care so much for my own safety, but I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’

Ginie drew her shawl around her shoulders and turned the dark beacon of her stare on him.

‘Just supposing we did all of that,’ she said. ‘Would we really be left in peace? We’ve earned a reputation now. Whoever shot Jongy might carry on tormenting us anyway.’

Stephen didn’t answer, he was looking at the horizon, lost in thought. He had always felt at home in this valley. For years he had sat here, watching the vast skies change above the hills, seeing them disappear into a haze of mist when it rained or stand clear in sunlight. In his favourite chair, he had seemed to absorb the hills’ strength. They were an antidote to the landscape that was still imprinted on his inner eye: the slime and rubble, the blasted trees, a snarl of wire that bore shreds of khaki and flesh, horses flailing as they drowned in shell-craters. . . These sights were still with him and always would be, but they were distant now.

Jongy’s death had shattered his peace. It was as if his familiar and beloved hills had retreated from him. He was now just a stranger in unfamiliar territory, observing but not part of it.

‘Perhaps we should leave Rhodesia,’ he said, at last. ‘Let go of La Rochelle and make a fresh start, somewhere without this terrible race hatred.’

‘Mmm. I’ve thought about it too.’

‘We could always go home, there’s no shame in it, you know.’