The Girl and the Sunbird

by Rebecca Stonehill

Genres: Sagas; Women's Fiction; Historical Romance; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

A haunting, heartbreaking and unforgettable novel of a woman married to a man she can never love, and drawn to another who will capture her heart forever…

East Africa 1903: When eighteen year old Iris Johnson is forced to choose between marrying the frightful Lord Sidcup or a faceless stranger, Jeremy Lawrence, in a far-off land, she bravely decides on the latter.

Accompanied by her chaperone, Miss Logan, Iris soon discovers a kindred spirit who shares her thirst for knowledge. As they journey from Cambridgeshire to East Africa, Iris’s eyes are opened to a world she never knew existed beyond the comforts of her family home.

But when Iris meets Jeremy, she realizes in a heartbeat that they will never be compatible. He is cold and cruel, spending long periods of time on hunting expeditions and leaving Iris alone.

Determined to make the best of her new life, Iris begins to adjust to her surroundings; the windswept plains of Nairobi, and the delightful sunbirds that visit her window every day. And when she meets Kamau, a school teacher, Iris finds her calling, assisting him to teach the local children English.

Kamau is everything Jeremy is not. He is passionate, kind and he occupies Iris’s every thought. She must make a choice, but if she follows her heart, the price she must pay will be devastating.

A beautifully written and mesmerizing story that will captivate fans of Dinah Jefferies, Victoria Hislop and Lucinda Riley.

" This is a gorgeous book, filled with descriptions of what sounds like one of the most beautiful places on earth. After I read it, I had to go purchase the author’s other book, The Poet’s Wife, which I can’t wait to dive into." For the Love of Books

" The Girl and the Sunbird is a haunting, utterly heartbreaking story… the writing just takes your breath away as it is so beautiful, profound and poetic. It's clear there has been impeccable research into the writing of this book and Iris' story proves to be compelling and heartbreaking in equal measure." Shaz’s Book Blog

 

Release date: June 17, 2016

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 500

Sample

‘I shall never understand you, Iris. Nor why you have made this decision, but there it is.’

Mother stands a shoulder’s width apart from me outside The Old Vicarage as we await the landau. I ignore her and stare ahead of me. What kind of a choice is it truly? I fidget with my hat, my eyes drinking in the overgrown brambles, clumps of nettles and winding trellises of bryony that skirt the hedgerows surrounding the house and those wide, endless skies. In what feels like the blink of an eye, I have moved from debutante to would-be wife of a lord to a girl who will be flung unceremoniously across the seas into the waiting arms of a faceless stranger in East Africa.

A chaperone, Miss Logan, has been employed through The Lady by Mother to escort me to Mombasa. She arrived yesterday afternoon on the 1.20 from King’s Cross and was collected from Cambridge by Papa with her one small valise and chiffon parasol. I want to hate her, this woman who will take me far from all I know and love. But she has small, shrewd eyes and a look of suppressed humour about her that I cannot help being drawn to. Somehow her presence also comforts me, calming the anguish that racks my body in great, nauseous waves at the thought of leaving my beloved papa and brother Arthur with no idea when we may be reunited.

Farewells are brief. Papa looks exhausted, his thick, white dog collar accentuating the pallor of his cheeks. As he grasps both of my hands in his, he parts his lips to say something and then closes them again, simply shaking my hands with emphasis. How curious it should be, I muse, and how gratifying, if we lived in a world in which we were all permitted to say precisely what we were thinking rather than be restrained by convention.

As Miss Logan and I climb into the landau and the horses begin their gentle trot towards the end of the drive, I cast a final look back at The Old Vicarage, large and white and solid. All the staff have come out and I smile sadly as I see Cook waving a white handkerchief at me. How I shall miss her; her smooth, shiny face and the way she would always smuggle me small pieces of Welsh rarebit or lardy cakes when Mother punished me as a child with no luncheon for coming into the house dirty or answering her back. Mother holds her head in that high, imperious way of hers as she watches me leave, relief to see the back of her errant daughter painted in the squint of her eyes and the haughty tilt of her chin. As for Violet, only now that I am on my way do I see that she is crying. It is possible her tears are genuine, but somehow I doubt it. More likely it is for Papa’s sake. I feel the slightest pang, wishing, as I have done many times, that my sister and I had shared a closer relationship. Well, it is jolly well too late for all that business now.

Before pulling out of the driveway, I hear the sound of crunching gravel and a shout. Poking my head back out of the carriage, I see Father running after us, spidery black arms waving overhead. I call out to the coachman to stop and Papa approaches, panting.

‘Iris, I forgot to give this to you.’ He feels around in his pockets before pulling out a small velvet drawstring bag and hands it to me through the window. I stare down at my outstretched palm for a moment before opening the bag. It contains a tidy pile of banknotes, wrapped around something hard. Peeling back the money, I find a small silver medallion, bearing the figure of a saint holding a staff.

‘It is St Christopher. The patron saint of travellers. My grandfather gave this to me many, many years ago and it is right that you have it now.’

I close my fingers around the medallion, cool against my skin, and thrust my head further out of the carriage to kiss Papa’s familiar cheek and grasp his hand.

‘Goodbye, Papa.’

‘God bless you, Iris,’ he says before nodding to the carriage driver to proceed. ‘God speed you…’ His voice trails off as I am forced to drop his hand and he is left standing there, forlorn, a figure in black framed against The Old Vicarage. My head out of the window, I tilt it backwards, the cockaded silk hats of the coachmen fluttering in the breeze against the cloudless, blue summer sky.

Sitting on the train from Cambridge back to London, the air awash with swirls of tobacco and train smoke, I take up my thick, weathered volume of Pearl Rivers and flick through it. I know that my charge is curious about me – I sense her eyes flickering over me and my reading material – but I shall let her talk first, as I always do, in order to find out what kind of a girl she is.

Presently, Miss Johnson clears her throat. ‘Miss Logan.’

I look up, removing my spectacles.

‘Have you escorted any other young ladies to British East Africa?’

I laugh. ‘Heavens, no. Though I have chaperoned girls to other places.’

‘Which places?’ Miss Johnson asks eagerly, leaning forwards. She is not what one could call classically bonny, with her rather hawkish nose, high forehead and awkward teeth, yet there is certainly an attractiveness about her, soft brown waves of hair pinned up beneath her hat and navy blue eyes, penetrating.

‘To Switzerland, Austria. To Denmark.’

‘Where is the furthest you have been?’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘So many questions, Miss Johnson!’

She blushes and laughs a little, leaning back in her seat. I pause before replacing my spectacles and resuming my reading. Miss Johnson leaves a respectable amount of time before enquiring which book I am engaged in. I peer at my charge before once again removing my spectacles.

‘Do you like to read, Miss Johnson?’

‘Oh yes! An awful lot.’

‘And have you brought suitable reading material for this lengthy journey we are to embark on? Or can I expect you to interrupt me in my own reading at five-minute intervals throughout?’

‘No, I did not bring anything to read, apart from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, my favourite childhood book.’ She pauses and then adds, rather challengingly, ‘My mother does not approve of me using my mind.’

Somehow this surprises me not a bit. The reverend’s wife had that sour look of repression about her. I do not say anything, ensuring my face does not betray my thoughts.

‘I did try to find a book on East African birdlife but Mother was far more concerned with marching me around the dress shops and milliners’ in Cambridge, not the bookshops.’ She sighs. ‘You know, speaking of Cambridge, I had even made enquiries to study at the university several months ago. In secret of course. But–’ Miss Johnson breaks off and her face clouds. ‘Girls like me are expected to marry, are we not? When Mother found out about it… well, let us simply say that she was not happy about it.’ She bites her bottom lip and turns to stare out of the window.

I study Miss Johnson’s face in profile. A frown puckers her forehead. There is a great deal, it is clear, that she holds inside her and I feel an unprecedented stab of sympathy for her. Clearing my throat so that she turns back to me, I present the cover of my book so that she is able to read the name on the front.

‘Pearl Rivers! What a beautiful name.’

‘It is her nom de plume, Miss Johnson. Are you familiar with the writings of Eliza Nicholson?’

She shakes her head.

‘She was from the United States of America. A poet and a journalist.’

‘Was?’

‘Indeed. She is no longer alive, more’s the pity. Died of influenza some years ago. But this book is a collection of some of her poems and writings from The Daily Picayune.’

‘What is The Daily Picayune?’

‘It is quite a forward newspaper in many respects, from New Orleans.’

‘Forward. In what way exactly?’ Miss Johnson asks, leaning towards me. Her penetrating eyes are glittering and she appears almost breathless with excitement.

‘Miss Johnson. This excessive questioning. Has nobody ever intimated that it may be impolite?’

She leans back and smiles in a faux-demure manner that clearly requires some effort.

‘I am terribly sorry, Miss Logan. And yes, this has been intimated. Many times, I am afraid.’ Turning her face towards the window, she gazes out as the fields and pastures roll gently by, a landscape that will soon be a thing of the past for her. I cannot help but admire my charge for her forthrightness. Somehow I suspect she will be rather different from the previous young ladies I have chaperoned.

I feel curiously, deliriously happy, quite belying the reality of my predicament. I am being chaperoned by a woman of learning, not someone stuck in the staidness of Victorian Britain’s past. Mother, for example. After the death of Queen Victoria, she made Violet and I wear mourning bracelets for an interminably long time. Such bracelets, woven from locks of their hair, are customarily only worn if a relative dies. I detested the thing with a passion for, as Mother had failed to secure any of the late queen’s hair, it was fashioned instead from the mane of a horse and itched dreadfully, causing a rash upon my wrist. As for Mother herself, she wore black gowns well beyond the mourning period and would dissolve into fits of weeping at the slightest reminder of our late queen.

‘When I am not engaged with Pearl Rivers,’ Miss Logan says quietly, ‘perhaps I might permit you to read it. Is that something you might enjoy?’

I feel my corset tightening as my chest heaves out, wondering if I might burst with pleasure. ‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘Very much.’

Miss Logan has a small frame, a tiny waist and her face is narrow and angular. Her brown hair is pulled back severely and is liberally dusted with grey, but her lips are full and warm and those eyes, I noticed as soon as I met her, are full of a silent intelligence. I have never met a Scottish person before and it is a great pleasure to hear English being spoken in such a lyrical manner with the rolled ‘r’s and elongated vowels.

The following days pass in a tangle of shades, scents, sounds and birds I have never seen before as we travel through France, Switzerland and Italy. The night before we board the steamer at Naples, we lodge at a small albergo close to the harbour, where we dine on seafood fresh from the Tyrrhenian Sea and a glass of Italian wine. It affects my senses almost instantaneously, colour rushing to my cheeks as I fan myself furiously with my table napkin.

‘It is terribly hot in Naples, is it not, Miss Logan?’

‘Not as hot, Miss Johnson, as I should imagine we shall find it in British East Africa,’ she replies in that unruffled tone of hers. I notice that despite the dark, heavy clothes my chaperone wears, she appears quite unaffected by the temperature.

‘The heat does not bother you?’

‘On the contrary,’ she replies with a smile. ‘I am from Scotland, land of snow and ice, and to feel a warm wind on my face is rather pleasant.’

I am about to enquire which part of Scotland she is from, and what it is like there, but stop myself in time. It has become quite apparent that my chaperone is congenial only up to the point that I begin asking too many questions. She will then stop talking and purse her small mouth in final, though good-humoured, disapproval. There are so many things I long to ask her, about which other writers she admires or what she thinks about my attempt to study at Cambridge University. Yet I respect Miss Logan so greatly that I take care not to irritate her in any way.

Our berth upon the SS Juba is small, sparsely furnished and cramped, but I do not mind. I think, briefly, of my room back at The Old Vicarage, adorned with the most fashionable curtains Mother brought up from London for all our bedrooms, the wardrobe filled with fine dresses and accessories, and my seventeenth-century dressing table, ornate and austere in one corner of the room. I do not miss any of that, though I know I shall miss the garden and Papa and Arthur and the servants. But the truth is, I’ve scarcely thought of any of them since leaving.

I have never been on a boat before and on the first couple of days of our voyage from Naples to Mombasa, my stomach lurches as I rise in the morning to the rocking sensation. I drink plenty of fresh lime cordial, which is brought to us upon silver trays by white-gloved deckhands, and as I sip from the long, cool glass I lean over the deck with the spume of the ocean blowing up in my face and watch the edge of the wind catch the wings of wheeling seagulls as they chase behind the steamer.

At Port Said, the air redolent with dusty dryness and sweet, fetid smells, the ship docks to refuel. The ship is to remain here overnight and we are to sleep on board. An endless stream of cinnamon-skinned Egyptians come aboard, carrying upon their backs great baskets of coal, which they tip into the bunkers, chanting all the while. Whilst this is happening, a commotion erupts on the other side of the ship. Miss Logan and I hurry over and watch, wide-eyed, as scantily clad men are hoisted on board in large wicker baskets.

‘It’s the gully-gully men!’ I hear a child cry in delight from the deck beside me. The men jump lithely from the baskets, baby chickens clutched under their arms. They hold them out to us, and I see them as clearly as I see Miss Logan beside me, but before I know what is happening, the chickens disappear in a great puff of smoke before my very eyes! Everybody claps and cheers and they bow profusely before the enthusiastic crowd and then hold their hands out towards us. Miss Logan, as unruffled as ever, produces a coin and drops it into the outstretched palm of the nearest conjuror. He rewards her with a wide smile, teeth glinting in the sunlight.

‘Come, Miss Johnson. We are permitted to leave the ship.’

Dressed in white deck shoes and clutching my parasol, I feel quite sick with excitement as I feel dry land beneath my feet in a foreign country. I am plunged into sudden shadow as a vast-spanned vulture soars overhead, white against the bleached sky with black-tipped wings. It appears that a number of the passengers have already taken this voyage before, for they instinctively reach into pockets and purses and begin to throw pennies into the sea. At first, I have no idea what they are doing but then small, half-naked boys dive down to reach them, their small bodies gleaming slick as seals.

Miss Logan and I walk along the harbour wall, past numerous men wearing long blue or white gowns that look almost like nightdresses and others who are virtually naked, cloth knotted round their sinewy middles. They have laid out their wares of stuffed camels, fly whisks and scimitars with jewel-encrusted handles that wink at us in the bright sunlight. ‘Very cheap! Good price!’ they call out to us as we walk past.

We see that several of the passengers are drifting towards a vast, solid building opposite the canal quays with the words ‘Simon Artz’s Emporium’ emblazoned across the top of it. Local men swoop upon us by the entrance, asking if we wish for a quick tour of the Lesseps Statue or ‘Native Quarter’ in their horse cabs. I glance at the horses, miserable, bedraggled-looking beasts, and shake my head resolutely.

Upon entering the building, we follow the crowd up to the tea terrace where Miss Logan and I sit for some time, enjoying the view of the canal stretching out before us as we sip our refreshing tea. It is served to us in peculiar glasses, but I must say it is the best I have tasted since leaving England. Then we wander from room to room, past hats of all shapes and sizes, shelves of rolled and folded cloth, bottled and pickled eels, lipstick of deep purple hues and dark eyes that stare at us from hidden corners. A young, bare-footed Arab boy dressed in a grubby khaki uniform darts up a ladder at one customer’s behest to fetch fabrics from the top of haphazardly layered shelves.

It is terribly hot in here – only a few lethargic fans battling through the air and no windows – but I am so fascinated by all this that I do not mind. I try to picture Mother in this strange place, then swiftly push it from my mind. She would be horrified, yet this voyage is of her making and I care not a jot anyway. As I walk through the glittering hall, I glance at Miss Logan, who is peering with great interest at a cluster of peacock feathers in a narrow porcelain jar. I feel a great wave of affection for her. She is such a small, delicate-looking woman, with her tiny waist and pointed features, yet despite this she inhabits her space fully, so that the air around her almost moulds to her formidable presence. It is unlikely Miss Logan is even aware of it, yet I feel its potency even from the other side of the Emporium.

What a far cry this all is from my months of frivolity and parading as a debutante. How entirely unsuited I was for all that and how ill our family could afford it. Mother had to pull a great many strings in order to see me part of the great debutante debacle, or the Marriage Mart, as Lord Byron so aptly called it. Why could she not have just waited and seen her wish fulfilled with Violet – pretty, fussy Violet – who longed for the debutante season with the same fervour that I eschewed it? But no, Mother was determined to see me married off into a wealthy home. Of course she was simply living out her own frustrations that she herself was never granted the opportunity to come out in society, having to settle instead for being the wife of a provincial vicar rather than that of a naval captain or city lawyer.

Five days into our three-week voyage, I awake with a heaviness upon my chest. I have done so well during my passage, scarcely thinking of Mr Lawrence at all. But this morning, he slips into my mind like a dark shadow. I sit upright in my narrow berth as both he and my previous would-be suitor jostle for space in my mind. I shudder, sending a silent prayer out that Mr Lawrence is nothing like Lord Sidcup.

I am still bewildered by how it could have happened. But after one of those dreadful white-lace-and-taffeta society balls, following an exhausting week of teas and charity bazaars, I awoke in the bedroom of my aunt and uncle’s house in Mayfair to Mother bustling in with the news that a lord from the ball wished to call upon me.

‘I don’t know who Lord Sidcup is, Mother,’ I replied, leaning back into the pillow and closing my eyes. ‘He must be mistaken. Or you must be mistaken.’

‘No, darling.’

I had scarcely looked at anybody the previous day, let alone spoken to them. I stared straight ahead of me, summer light slanting through the window and landing on the dressing table, with all the paraphernalia from the previous day: hairpins, fresh flowers, gloves, rouge and lipstick, all tidied up and the surface left gleaming and bare. What did I think of that? I thought it was a terrible, terrible mistake.

‘Well?’ Mother pressed. ‘Is that not marvellous news?’

I stared up at her. She was, of course, in her element in London, wearing a matching blush-pink Eton jacket and full-flare skirt, with her fair hair pinned up in a peculiar sweeping style that was no doubt all the rage of the season. At that moment, she seemed more of a stranger than ever before.

That very evening, I was dressed up for dinner with the abominable Lord Sidcup. Mother pulled my corset strings until I was forced to turn round and cry that I might very well faint if she persevered. If he had kept his mouth firmly closed, perhaps all should have been well. But his discourse was bombastic, ill-informed and, frankly, unintelligent. He was concerned only with frivolous society gossip and chattered gaily and inconsequentially beside me throughout the entire meal whilst I remained silent.

By the time our dessert of ladyfingers with strawberries had arrived, I was exhausted. I could not have been more relieved when the gentlemen retreated to the smoking room for brandy and cigars, even when I had to listen to Mother scolding me for behaving like a petulant child.

Perhaps I was, for he encouraged such behaviour in me. And yet, despite all that, I was horrified to discover a few days later that he wished to call upon me back at home in Bourn.

It was a bright spring morning, one that in other circumstances should have made my heart sing. But the only thing that was singing was a sparrow perched upon a branch of an apple tree as I walked through the orchard with Lord Sidcup; or rather, I walked several paces ahead of him. But the moment I had been dreading came. He did not ask me outright, but told me he had a question he wished to ask me. I skirted around the subject, pointing out that I was not a young lady who enjoyed the gaiety of London society: tea parties and grand dinners and the like; and that surely he would feel more comfortable with a girl of this kind instead. But he seemed not to hear me, telling me about Dervish Hall where he resided, and how he would try to be a good husband to me.

I decided I had no other choice but to inform him, without further delay, that even should I accept his offer, I had every intention of going to university. Never could I have predicted his reaction, even from a man like him. For he stated, categorically, that such a notion was quite impossible and – I remember his exact words – that ‘young ladies do not go to university’.

I did not want to spend a single moment more in his company, and pushed past him, striding back towards The Old Vicarage. He hurried after me and caught the crook of my arm, swinging me round and pulling me close. I could smell his skin, cologne and garlic, and noticed the thick black eyelashes that fanned out across his cheek as he breathed down his nose at me. I was about to wrench my way free when he moved one hand up to my shoulder, grasped it roughly and pressed his lips hard upon mine. The feel of his moist tongue flickering around in my mouth was unbearable but when I tried to wrench free from him, he tightened his grip. I placed my hands against his chest and, with all my might, pushed against him. Lord Sidcup staggered backwards, tumbling with a great thump onto the lawn.

He stood up, brushing the grass from his trousers, and fixed his eyes upon me. To my great horror, he was laughing. ‘You see, Miss Johnson, that is what I like about you. You have spirit. Not one of those yes-Sir, no-Sir girls that can be found at every society event the length and breadth of this country. This is why we shall make such a formidable match.’

I had heard quite enough. I walked up to the house, went directly to my bedroom and locked the door.

I refused to leave the room for three days in a row. I would not come out for dinner or, indeed, any food at all; I would not come out to see my brother Arthur, who had been called back from Cambridge to talk sense into me, and I would not even come out for some fresh air. The offer of marriage to Lord Sidcup arrived nevertheless. And with it, an ultimatum.

On the fourth day of my self-imposed confinement, the waves of hunger overwhelmed me and I allowed Papa to come in with bread and soup. I gobbled it down and he called the maid to bring more. He stood by the window, staring morosely out at the front lawns and fields beyond them, before turning and telling me that if I did not agree to marry Lord Sidcup – a future that would ensure me a title and land and inheritance for my children – the fate that awaited me would be far less desirable.

‘What do you mean, Papa?’ I asked, bread lodging in my throat.

Without quite meeting my eye, he began to quietly speak. ‘Mother has found an advertisement in The Lady.’

‘An advertisement?’

‘Yes… for a gentleman who requires a wife.’

‘I see.’ I clasped my hands in my lap. ‘Where?’ I envisaged a far-flung corner of rural Wales or Cornwall, many miles from the nearest university where women were permitted.

Papa sighed and turned away from me, furrows interweaving across his brow. ‘British East Africa.’

I let out a shrill, high laugh. He was joking, of course. But he did not smile. He simply stared at his feet, grimacing.

‘Papa!’ I cried. ‘Tell me you cannot be serious. Please!’

‘I have never been more serious, Iris.’

I began to laugh again, bitterly. ‘To be fed to the lions or fed to the lord! How lucky I am, to be given such a choice.’

Papa’s face turned red and his eyes, the exact same shade as mine, narrowed. ‘You are behaving like a child, Iris. You are eighteen years of age now. You must face up to this.’ His words were quiet but I could see him quivering with rage in a way I had never before witnessed in my quiet, gentle father. For a single moment, I felt guilty that I had angered him, my beloved papa, who had always been my ally, for as long as I could remember. But then I felt myself responding with my own fury. I wasn’t going to accept it just like that, I simply was not! Of all people, from him I expected far, far more.

I jumped up from my bed. ‘I see that I am quite alone in the world!’ I cried. ‘You studied at Christ’s College in Cambridge, Papa! How can it possibly be just that you are afforded such an opportunity in life and I am not? Tell me!’

At that, Papa took a sharp intake of breath, clenched his fists and marched to the door. After pulling it open, he spun upon his heels and stared at me long and hard. ‘There has been quite enough melodrama, Iris. You need to make a decision, and make one quickly. Lord Sidcup or the East Africa Protectorate.’

And with that he was gone, pulling the door firmly shut behind him.

The following days were endless as I agonised over the choice I was required to make. Perhaps, just perhaps, in Lord Sidcup’s vast country manor we should not see too much of one another. But then, I remembered with what scorn and derision he had treated me that day he came to dine; how he had forced his large, wet mouth upon mine. I found myself physically shuddering, closing my eyes to steady myself. No, I thought, if he could treat me in such a way before we were even married, how much more of a bully would he be were I his wife?

And yet… East Africa. A vast, unknown territory, flooded with sunlight and… what else? I did not know. I could scarcely begin to imagine it. Papa had kept fantail pigeons for as long as I could remember and I spent far longer than normal in the pigeon house during those days, safe in the warm, musty gloom. There, I let my tears flow freely and one pigeon, as though sensing my distress, flew to my shoulder, where it perched, making soft cooing noises.

An entire week passed before we had that terrible conversation, the one that will remain forever seared on my memory. Mother sat primly at the head of the dinner table, informing me that I must give her and Father my decision.

‘You say, Mother,’ I began to say slowly, ‘that I have a choice; that I am lucky to be afforded this. Yet what you fail to see is that it is not really a choice.’ Mother opened her mouth, about to protest in horror, but I pressed on, determined to speak. ‘Am I to be married to an unrefined man whom I abhor, who I have no doubt should mistreat me, or am I to be married to a man I know nothing of – you have not, incidentally, even thought to tell me his name – in a place I know nothing of; a man who, potentially, could conduct himself even more deplorably than Lord Sidcup? This is what you call a choice?’

Mother’s face turned quite crimson at my speech and she opened and closed her mouth as though gasping for air. Clearly finding no words, she turned to Papa and dug him sharply in the ribs.

‘What is your decision, Iris? To marry Lord Sidcup or Mr Lawrence?’ Papa asked wearily, staring down at his half-eaten meal.

‘Mr Lawrence. So that is his name. My decision, not my choice, is that I go to the East Africa Protectorate. I have no knowledge of what to expect there. But at least it is a new life and I can hope that this man is kind and learned and possesses dignity, unlike Lord Sidcup.’ I pushed my chair back abruptly. ‘My decision gives me no pleasure, but the matter is now decided.’ I glanced at Papa, who appeared stunned, a genuine expression of horror framing his features. Mother, on the other hand? Her entire bearing softened and what I read on her face was unmistakable: relief.

I remember little of my last few weeks at The Old Vicarage. Cases and clothes and accessories were ordered for me, in which I took no interest, more arriving each day. I started spending longer and longer in the pigeon house and furiously knocking croquet balls across the lawn and, for once, Mother neither commented upon this nor called me in. My brother Arthur came from Cambridge to spend the day with me shortly before I departed. How I adored that brother of mine! We shared a different relationship to how it was between Violet and myself: a yawning chasm of indifferent misunderstanding.

His arm was linked through mine as we trod over the crisp grass. ‘I should imagine it will be thrilling being in Africa. In a way I envy you. Not –’ he added hurriedly – ‘the marriage business. I mean simply being there. It must be terribly beautiful.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Of course. It’s the wild, untamed continent. Miles upon miles of wilderness and animals: elephant, lion, leopard. How ripping to see all that.’

I bit my bottom lip. ‘Perhaps you can come and visit me,’ I said, with little conviction.

‘Perhaps I can,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘The East African railway that has been built from Mombasa into the interior sounds like the greatest of its kind anywhere in the world.’

‘Arthur,’ I said as I stopped walking, taking my arm from his to look at him properly. ‘Is there anyt