They headed off.
My mother turned to Maud. ‘Can you run out to the front of the hotel, darling, and see if your father is there yet?’
She waited until we were alone before beckoning me to her and twisting my ear viciously until it couldn’t go any further. I bit my tongue to stop myself from crying out. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ she hissed, and shoved me away. ‘Do you want us to have a chance out here or do you want to ruin it?’
I pressed my palm against the ear, trying to stop it throbbing. ‘Why can’t we have a chance with Freddie and Sylvie?’
My mother started walking away. ‘You don’t understand people,’ she said over her shoulder.
My father hadn’t arrived yet, so Maud and I waited on the terrace. I sat with my head against the cool of a pillar, boiling with anger; Maud sat next to me.
‘Lady Joan’s a bloody old witch,’ I said.
‘I liked her.’
‘She’s got something against Freddie and Sylvie, and now Mother’s bound to stop us being friends with them.’
Maud turned her face to me, eyes serious. ‘Mother only ever does something because she thinks it’s right.’
‘She does whatever she wants at the time.’
‘But she loves us, Theo.’
‘I don’t –’
‘There you are.’ Our father appeared before us and I bit my tongue.
Maud was sent to fetch our mother. We piled into the Model T Box Body my father had hired and drove away from The Norfolk, down Government Road and into the centre of the town. After a while, it got too hot with all of us in the front seat, and I switched to standing on the running board, hooking my arm through the door to stay on. Some of the roads had been laid properly, but many were made of a type of crushed gravel and a slight breeze blew its dust into my eyes and mouth. Every time my forearm touched the scorching metal a white-hot pain went through me, but it felt cleansing. My mother wouldn’t look in my direction, and I dreamed of catching her attention somehow – throwing myself off in front of another car maybe – and forcing her to see me, apologise to me.
Nairobi reminded me of the frontier towns in the Westerns I’d seen, with hitching posts outside the buildings and troughs for the horses. Only the people made it clear we weren’t in America. I tried not to stare at the women wearing skirts and nothing else, carrying large earthenware jugs on their heads.
My father showed us ‘railway hill’, where George Whitehouse had built his first house. He’d been the chief engineer of the railway, and my father used his church voice when he spoke about him.
‘The town was founded as a railway depot,’ he said, ‘and now it’s the capital of British East Africa.’
We turned onto 6th Avenue at the corner where the Standard Bank of South Africa stood. Groups of white settlers were standing on the bank’s porch, talking and smoking, and thick blue clouds had gathered around their heads. As we drove past my eyes began to sting.
Further up the road was the post office, with a white flag hanging from the tall flagpole in front of the building.
‘A blue flag means the mail ship’s left Aden for Mombasa,’ my father said. ‘A red flag means overseas mail has been received. The white flag means the mail’s ready for distribution. Not very sophisticated, but the couriers will find you anywhere – even on safari.’
‘Can I send a postcard to Grandma?’ Maud asked.
‘Good idea,’ he said.
The car juddered to a halt in front of the building, and I stepped down from the running board, stretching my back and arms. The sun was almost directly overhead and my skin felt tender from exposure to it. My mother made her way to the shade of a gum tree, fanning herself with the two wide-brimmed, floppy hats that all the women wore out here. She was still ignoring me and I suddenly couldn’t bear to be near her.
‘Maud, choose a postcard,’ my father said, mopping his forehead. ‘I need to send a telegram to the Glasgow office, and then we’ll head back.’
‘Can I stay out?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t mind walking home.’
My father looked to my mother and I felt my heart sink. Out of the corner of my eye, her expression was impossible to read. I scuffed my shoe in the dirt.
‘Don’t walk in the sunshine,’ she said eventually. ‘Here, take some money just in case.’ She held out some coins and I stepped towards her warily. ‘Remember – stay in the shade.’
‘I will,’ I mumbled.
She surprised me by kissing my forehead. ‘And be back at the hotel by four o’clock, or we’ll start to worry. We don’t want to lose you.’
My anger dissolved into gratitude at how quickly my punishment seemed to be over, and I started down the road with no clear idea of where I was going, relishing the opportunity to explore. Leaving the main streets behind me, I ended up in a more residential area, where most of the houses were bungalow mansions with tiled roofs, smallish windows and verandas supported by brick pillars. Perfectly straight paths ran between veranda and white picket fence, where flowers bloomed in pinks, purples, blues and creams, and in front of each house immaculate green lawns lay like carpets rolled out for important visitors. The road was wide, and dappled in the sun. I thought of the red tenements in Edinburgh, five storeys high and always cold inside, and felt a smile forming on my face.
These streets were mostly empty, but after a while I started to pick up a buzzing sound and, turning a corner, I stumbled on an open-air market. Stalls had been set up displaying all manner of produce: carnations, violets, tomatoes, large brown eggs, limes, courgettes, green bananas, aubergines, sacks of flour and dusty potatoes. People were thronging the aisles, squeezing and weighing the vegetables, and swatting away the flies that hovered at face-height. I hesitated, overwhelmed for a moment, but when I finally ventured in no one paid me any attention until I reached a crossroads in the market and paused, trying to decide where to go. A few shoppers knocked into me, and I felt a tap on my shoulder and smelled amber and peach. ‘You’re a lone beast, aren’t you, Theo?’
It was Sylvie. She was wearing a loose-fitting black blouse with a plunging neckline that ended just above her bellybutton, and black velvet trousers. Roderigo was wrapped around her neck, nibbling her earlobe. I got the impression she was laughing at me in a friendly way, although she wasn’t actually smiling. I felt a rush of panicked excitement at being alone with her.
‘I see you’ve found Mr Sand’s market,’ she said. ‘Here every Tuesday and Friday.’
‘Oh?’ I cursed myself for being so tongue-tied.
‘And what are you up to?’ she said, with that bubble in her voice again. ‘Buying provisions for The Norfolk kitchen?’
‘Just looking.’
‘Mm-hmm?’
It was hard not to stare at the apricot-coloured skin stretched taut over her stomach. She was still watching me, her head cocked to one side. I tried for the most grown-up conversation I knew, ‘Would you like to have a drink?’
Now she laughed for real, throatily. ‘Are you asking me on a date?’
Blood thrummed in my ears. ‘I’m …’
‘I’d love to have a drink with you.’
She fell into step with me. My body moved automatically, steering a path through the crowds and towards a bar on the side of the square. Despite all the people around, it was empty, and several of the tables had dirty glasses or overflowing ashtrays on them.
She sat in a chair on the porch, and I sat opposite her. When she leaned towards me I saw that she wasn’t wearing a brassiere, and her small, firm-looking breasts had dark