Sarah could hear herself howling like a desolate animal as she crawled into the pit beside him, trying with her one working arm to untie the thongs that held him to the ground. His blood was all over her as she leaned across him, talking to him incoherently, touching his hair and the ruins of his face and body. She was only vaguely aware of Anthony and the farm men lifting her from the pit, and the sound of Hannah’s high-pitched, petrified wailing. She knew they were taking her away from Piet, and she fought to prevent it, flailing out with her arms and legs, screaming her horror. Then she found herself vomiting into the bush, bile and rage and terrible grief that spilled on to the earth to mingle with the blood of her dead love. She staggered towards the path and took hold of Hannah who had fallen into a trance of shock, her lips drawn back into a silent rictus of horror as she stumbled away from the barbarous place where her brother had died.

Chapter 25

Kenya, December 1965

The night moved in a series of fractured images, like camera stills lit by flashes of jarring sound and light. At the farm Lottie was waiting for them, her face ashen. It was Anthony who had to take her into his arms and try to explain to her the unimaginable thing that had happened. He guided Sarah and Hannah into the sitting room and sat them down, beside the fire. There was a confusion of voices, the sound of agonised weeping. Mwangi and Kamau came and went, tears streaming unheeded down their faces. They brought tea and coffee, and small dishes of food that Hannah had loved since childhood, and sandwiches that Lottie had taught them how to make a generation ago. Kamau stood behind Sarah as she sat numb and silent on the sofa, and every few minutes he reached down his hand and placed it on the top of her head in a gesture of shared grief and love. Any slight movement of her arm sent a searing pain through her shoulder, but she scarcely noticed it. Someone was asking questions that she could not comprehend. Hannah sat on the sofa staring into a void, her body rigid. Lottie was holding her daughter, murmuring something over and over. Anthony went to the telephone, and after a period of time, the police appeared and Jeremy Hardy was talking. Then the phone rang again, and Lottie was clinging to the receiver, sobbing into it, Anthony supporting her. Jan. They must be talking to Jan.