CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Botswana, March 2014

The boy stops the car at the top of our drive; the house is dark, the door wide open. Have other thieves come in our absence? There is nothing left to take; how could it matter?

The boy gets out of our car and runs off. A light goes on in the house. Kabo stands on the veranda.

Adam stumbles towards us. In the headlights his hair is plastered to his skull. A patch of scum is smeared on his sleeve. He smells of sweat and stagnant water. His face is wet against my cheek. He shakes his head, his thoughts following mine. No, Sam wasn’t in the pond.

He lifts Zoë from the car. Alice slides out and runs up the steps into the house. Teko appears silently from the dark kitchen; Alice goes towards her, then turns to give me a deep, blank stare. She looks ill.

‘It’s all right, Ally.’

Her eyes close. She knows I’m lying.

‘I’m going to drive Adam to Gaborone police station.’ Kabo’s cheeks are streaked with tears and dust, the knees of his trousers caked with mud. He must have been crawling under bushes. He puts an arm around my shoulders. ‘The police haven’t arrived, so we’re going to them. Teko’s coming too. They’ll need to ask her what she saw.’

‘Has anyone talked to her yet?’ I catch Adam’s hand but he shrugs: he doesn’t know. I turn to Kabo. ‘Has she said anything?’

Kabo shakes his head. ‘She’s too shocked. The police will know what to do.’

Kabo speaks to her but Teko stares back at him. Her eyes shift to mine, then slide away. I want to scream at her but guilt fights with rage. If Teko should have been at Sam’s side, so should I. I am his mother, she a stranger.

The men disappear out of the door – Kabo touches my arm as he passes. Teko slips past me and follows the men into the night. Elisabeth appears from the kitchen and guides the children from the room.

There is silence. The stub of candle on the windowsill that someone lit gutters in a pool of wax, then goes out.

I put my hand against the wall. There are two realities. I can switch between them, on and off. On: this is a normal Wednesday evening – the girls have gone to bed, and in the room further down, Sam sleeps in his cot, breathing quietly, his small chest rising and falling in the moonlight. Off: he is not here; he is outside in the night somewhere, being held by someone I don’t know. He is screaming because his ear is hurting. I don’t know what they are doing to him.

I am not sure how I will survive from moment to moment.

On: he is here. Off: I am falling, tipping, turning into darkness.