The Waiting Time by Sara Banerji

During the Second World War Sara Banerji lived with her mother, brothers and sister in Oxfordshire while her father fought in the war. After the war she emigrated with her family to what was then Southern Rhodesia where they lived out in the African Bush in a single mud rondavel, with no electricity or running water.
Sara met her husband in a coffee bar in Oxford when he was an undergraduate at Christ Church. He was a customer and she a waitress. They spent their child rearing years in the high hills of South India where he was a tea planter and she painted in oils, rode as a jockey on the flat, and wrote her first novel. They returned to England in 1973 with £5 each. Sara borrowed some money, bought ponies in auctions and taught riding. Later she started a gardening business in Sussex.