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ticket to get the Soft Focus lot goin’,” said Sir William.
    â€œBut would the Ethiopians be able to read the books if they’re in English?” I said.
    â€œAh, well, remember, the famine covers the whole of the Sahel. Your best bet might be to send them to the camps on the border between Abouti and Nambula. There are refugees from Kefti there who are highly educated. The Keftians have an excellent British-based education system,” said Eamonn.
    â€œWhere’s Kefti?” I said.
    â€œRebel province of Abouti, bordering Nambula, North Africa. The Keftians have been pursuing a somewhat bloody war for independence from the Marxist regime in Abouti for twenty-five years. Highly organized culture. The Sahel famine has hit them probably harder than anyone—it is impossible for the NGOs to get food aid to them because of the war and for diplomatic reasons. There is a major exodus from Kefti at present over the border into Nambula. Very, very severe malnourishment there.”
    â€œWhat about taking out food with a few books thrown in?” I said.
    â€œRuddy good idea,” said Sir William. “First rate. Good thinkin’, gel.”
    Fired up with unaccustomed zeal, I started organizing an appeal among the staff of the corporation for the food, rounding up remaindered books, looking into sponsored flights. I rang up Soft Focus and fixed up a meeting for a week’s time with Sir William, Oliver Marchant and me. A vision of Africa, with its tribes, drums, fires and lions, danced and twinkled. I thought of Geldof, I thought of purpose and meaning, I thought of relief workers being passionate, poor and self-sacrificing, saving the grateful Africans. But mainly I thought of Oliver.

CHAPTER
Three
    W here’s my Kit-Kat?”
    Henry was standing outside the cabana, looking around indignantly. The staff had finished breakfast and were wandering around the compound getting ready to go to the camp. Sian hurried over to Henry.
    â€œMy bloody Katerina Kit-Kat. I left it in Fenella Fridge and somebody’s Sophia Scoffed it.”
    Sian was talking to him in a low voice, soothing him.
    â€œHenry, you’re blind and stupid,” I called across. “It’s under the antibiotics. Go and have another look.”
    â€œDing dong !” he said, turning round and raising his eyebrows suggestively. “I do so love it when you get all strict,” and he sauntered back into the cabana, as Sian hurried after him.
    The sun was starting to burn now. The first trails of smoke were beginning to rise above the camp and figures were moving slowly along the paths and across the plain: a boy leading a donkey carrying two bulging leather sacks of water, a woman with a pile of firewood on her head, a man in a white djellaba walking with a stick balanced on his shoulders, arms hanging lazily over the stick. In a few hours’ time the light would be blinding white and the heat would become claustrophobic. It was easy to imagine you were going to suffocate and stop breathing.
    Betty came bustling across the gravel towards me. “I don’t want to intrude before you’ve started your day properly, dear,” she said, “though . . .”—she opened her eyes very wide and showed me her watch—“it is six o’clock. But I wondered if I could have a little word in your ear.”
    Betty was round and in her late fifties. I knew what she wanted to have a little word about: Henry and Sian. She wouldn’t be up front about it. She wouldn’t say, “I don’t think you should let your assistant behave promiscuously with the nurses.” What she would do would be to tell me a little story about someone I’d never heard of who had once run a relief camp in Zanzibar or, perhaps, Chad. This person, surprise surprise, would have allowed their assistants to sleep with the nurses—and guess what? It would all have ended in an AIDS outbreak,