There was a long pause. Eventually Kenny whispered, ‘He said you were dirty.’

This was so plainly absurd that Vic felt like laughing. ‘Like I’d fallen in the mud or something? Did he really think that was why my skin is brown? What an idiot.’

‘S’pose so,’ Kenny mumbled. ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re not going back there. Let’s go to sleep.’

Next day, as they stood on the river bank aiming stones at a log in the water, Kenny said: ‘Do you mind?’

‘Mind what?’

‘People calling you dirty?’

The question took Vic aback. Of course he minded. It made him angry and uncomfortable, as though it was his fault or made him a lesser kind of human being, somehow. But his mother and father had explained it was only ignorance that made people rude, and he should take no notice of them. He busied himself searching for another stone.

‘Nah,’ he said at last, picking up a small rock. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to what you feel inside. It’s only stupid people who don’t know that.’

He lobbed the rock and it crashed into the log square on, temporarily submerging it. ‘Yeah, direct hit!’ he crowed. ‘I win.’

After that, Vic decided he would try to ignore any stares or insults directed at him. He spent some hours in front of the mirror perfecting an expression of mild amusement, of looking perfectly friendly while completely detached. The thick spectacles he’d worn since he was twelve certainly helped to complete the impression, he felt, of someone whose mind was on higher matters. He grew his hair as long as the school would allow, in tribute to his hero, Albert Einstein.

When Vic turned sixteen the physics master told him that he would be putting his name down for the Cambridge entrance exams. ‘You are easily the brightest boy I’ve had in my class for many a year, and if you don’t pass it with flying colours I’ll eat my hat,’ he said.

‘But sir, if you don’t mind me saying, I’ve never seen you wearing a hat.’

‘You’re a cheeky sod, Mackensie. Now push off and do your prep,’ the man said, giving him a gentle cuff.

Before the end of his final year, Vic’s future seemed assured: he would study physics at King’s College, starting the coming October. His father made a special journey from India to attend the final school speech day, glowing with pride as Vic was awarded no fewer than three tinny silver-plated cups: best scientist, best attendance record and the joke one for ‘greatest sissy at games’, earned for his habit of dropping the rugger ball and running away before anyone could tackle him.

After that, father and son took a month-long holiday touring Europe. The only shadow in the seemingly endless sunshine of that summer was the news that his mother, who had originally intended to share it with them, was suffering from some undiagnosed illness that left her weak and unable to travel. There had been no mention of this in her letters, which were still full of delightful and amusing reports about her visitors and observations of the wildlife around the bungalow.