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she was sure they’d send her packing from such a fancy place. But he took her arm and led her up the steps and aman in a black uniform hurried forward to greet them and called them ‘sir’ and ‘madam’ and even gave her a little bow, like she was the Queen.
    ‘I have to say it was a really hairy time, but, of course, there was bound to be conflict, sooner or later, since the Kikuyu were determined to grab the white settlers’ farms – and to use any means to do so, however barbarous.’
    He was eating while he spoke and sometimes little shreds of food sprayed onto the tablecloth, glistening with his spit. She didn’t like the food here and most of it she’d never even heard of. The waiter had brought them both a menu – a big one, with stiff covers, like a Bible – but the words inside were weird: things like bisque and grouse and whitebait and ceviche. And, in any case, she was used to big black letters, not squiggly writing with lots of loops and curls. So she’d pretended to be thinking and just sat quietly for a while. He had chosen the whitebait, which were tiny dead brown fish, with their heads and tails still on, and coated in greasy crumby stuff, a bit like Kentucky Fried, but with a nasty fishy smell. After what seemed ages, she’d seen a word she did know – soup – so she’d said she’d have the soup, please. But it wasn’t like the soup they had at Sunnyhill. They’d put a lot of cream on top, which turned it a funny colour, and also little bits of bread-stuff, hard, like leftover toast.
    ‘But, d’you know, despite the dangers, I never received so much as a scratch. I reckon I live a charmed life, Jo – always have, probably always will. I remember, once, when we were driving over the Aberdares, on our way to Naivasha….’
    She wished he’d go more slowly. A minute ago, he was in the Highlands; now he was somewhere else.
    ‘This is quite a tale, Jo! You’ll never believe what happened. And every detail’s crystal-clear, even after all these years. We were rattling along this dirt-road and a bloody great ant-bear comes lurching towards us and charges straight into the Land-rover.’
    You weren’t meant to say words like ‘bloody’, but important people always broke the rules. She wondered what an ant-bear was. There were ants in the Sunnyhill kitchen and she’d seen a bear, once, in the zoo, but ants were black and tiny and scurried everywhere,while bears were big and brown and sat around doing nothing in particular, so how could the two be both at once?
    ‘The driver was killed outright, poor devil, and Giles was badly bruised, but I escaped scot-free.’
    His deep, booming laugh surprised her. If the driver was dead and Giles was badly bruised, shouldn’t he be crying?
    ‘Whenever there was danger, Jo, I was the one who was spared – illness as well as accidents. For instance, everyone I knew in Kenya went down with malaria, at one time or another, but I managed to avoid it the whole time I was there. The other poor chaps were falling like flies, but I stayed as fit as a fiddle. I must have brilliant blood, I reckon!’
    ‘Your wine, sir.’
    One of the waiters had come up – a tall, scary person, all in black, who looked even more important than the man, and spoke in the same posh voice. He was carrying a bottle, wrapped in a white bandage, and the bottle had a picture on it, of a building like a castle. But the waiter was very mean with the wine and poured just a tiny drop into the man’s big glass. And the man took a sip and held it in his mouth and frowned and made a face. She was frightened he might spit it out but, all at once, he swallowed it and said, ‘Yes, first-rate, Piers.’
    Then the waiter poured some into her glass – a lot this time, not a tiny drop. She wasn’t allowed to drink, on account of all the pills. And when she took a gulp, it tasted sour and horrid, so she was glad it was forbidden.
    ‘Another time, when I was in the bush, I was bitten by a