There was no sign of Viktor when she came to breakfast and she was glad. For the rest of the week she worked with Allie, listening to her advice, learning something with every passing hour, impatient to be out studying her own group of elephants. She said nothing about Viktor’s visit to her hut, or the reason for his precipitate departure, but somehow, she thought Allie knew.

‘I’d like you to pick up a package and collect the mail today,’ Dan said to her one morning. ‘You can spend some time using your social skills in the Game Department at Isiolo, so you don’t forget them as Allie and I have done.’

When she collected the parcel and a bundle of letters her spirits lifted. There were two for her, from her mother and from Tim. She resisted the temptation to open them at once. It would be better to read them in camp and savour them there. Allie had left a note pinned to the door of the rondavel. Grateful if you could type up Dan’s notes. Left them on the tray in the Mess Tent. Good luck with his chicken scrawl. See you later. A. Sarah poured a cup of tea out of a Thermos and sat down to digest the family news. The first page of her mother’s letter was in bold print. Tim and Deirdre had decided to get married. They were planning a quiet wedding immediately after Easter. Sarah must come home, if only for a week or two. Raphael could send the money for her airfare. It would be wise to take a little time off, to step back from the trauma of the last weeks. They longed to see her, to hold her close, to help ease the pain that she lived with, day and night. The practice and the house were coming on well, and she would not believe how great the garden looked already, and the stables. Tim’s letter, in his illegible shorthand, was typically brief. It was unthinkable that he should get married with his little sister half a world away. Maybe he was crazy, he said, but Deirdre loved and needed him, and he was taking the big jump. And he wanted, above all, Sarah to be there.