Among the flowers and trees scurry squirrels and millipedes; bees and wasps buzz around; birds carry wisps of straw for nesting, butterflies rest on the thornless roses and caterpillars eat slowly into the leaf. Who can think beyond the here and now in this garden, the preserve of innocence where you can smell the earth and air, the plants and the ripe fruit, the mangoes, guava, jak and passion fruit. The golden orioles, yellow as the segments of ripe jak, flash on the branches. Mungo has so much patience sitting by the child hour after hour in this timelessness of childhood in which Janine never seems to grow up.

Mungo and Janine pick up small pebbles, place them on the back of their hands, toss them into the air, then catch them in their palms … ’Athuru, mithuru, dambadiva thuru’, they chant … ’athuru mithuru, athuru mithuru ….’ Or Janine tucks herself into the hammock of Mungo’s lap, into the striped cambaya cloth, and intones the incantation that she has learnt: ‘Kaputu kaa, kaa, goraka dain, dain, Ussi kaputa!’ and she springs up and waves her arms wildly to shoo away the crows that fly away, flapping their wings, crying raucously, to perch elsewhere, their purple black beaks tearing apart the carrion flesh of dead bats and maggoty flying foxes.

Rather than be separated from Mungo even for a moment, Janine would prefer that the whole world go up in flames. Fire. At the bali ritual it had sprung from the burning torches to surge skywards, the darkness slit by streaks of crimson like the blood-red winking eyes of the black cock bird slaughtered in the rituals that exorcise the demons that dwell all around you, your mind crawling with white-bellied snakes with black markings like the speckles on the trunk of the coconut palm. Dark brown snakes, black ones, snakes wreathing the head of the demon …

Mungo carries the night lamp in her hand shielding the flame, carries it into the bedroom, and it casts shadows on the whitewashed walls. Janine wants to hold her back, to take her by the arm and hold back night and dark, to still the sound of the bali drums, to lead her out into the garden and play games with her. But she cannot hold back time. Janine follows her, chases her round and round the house, overtakes her and grasps her by the hand; the lamp falls from Mungo’s hands and Mungo falls too. The fragile glass chimney splinters and the flame flies up, takes its last breath and is still.

So tonight there will be no night lamp. The room will be wrapped in darkness. Janine cannot run and hide from what she has done. She is punished for hurting Mungo. But no one can understand why she has done it—this whole game of keeping time at bay, of holding Mungo hostage, of wanting to possess Mungo for herself, to keep her imprisoned in the shadow of her childhood forever.