His eyes were full of pain and accusation. I moved away from him and gave the ball a hard kick. He called my name once and when I didn’t answer, walked away without looking back. I threw myself down by a tree and watched the leaves swaying overhead, the dappled and shifting light. It seemed that part of my freedom had been snatched away, and I was facing a new phase of rules and constraints. I wept bitterly because I had never felt so torn.

Later, I looked at myself in the mirror. A thin, grave face stared back at me. Fine, mousy hair straggling down to my chin. My gaze travelled to my body. It was neither one thing nor the other. My legs were still boyish; narrow and bony. They joined with a curving torso, on which breasts were starting to bud.

After Mufaro had fastened the bracelet on my arm, he’d held my eyes until the sweetness and pain became so unbearable that I had to look away. Then, I felt his lips against the corner of my mouth. A fleeting touch, a butterfly’s soft brush. Thinking of it now, a shiver unfurled deep in my belly and I turned from my reflection in shame.

It was around this time that the noises coming from my parents’ bedroom at night stopped. I had hated those sounds – grunts and gasps that made them sound like animals. Yet I was troubled by their absence in a way I couldn’t quite describe.

17 Ginie, Rhodesia, 1950s

17

Ginie, Rhodesia, 1950s

The weeks that followed Eliot’s death were hot and wet. The garden was lush and deep green, but there was something violent about its growth. The lawn was pocked with puddles. Several times a day, banks of heavy cloud rolled over the property and doused everything in a grey downpour. When the sun came out again, the ground would steam and smoke, the foliage shimmering through waves of humidity. The roads were churned to mud, making the weekly trip to Umtali more dangerous than usual, and it was malaria season. The garden was full of baby mosquitoes, squirming in the hollows of trees, in their leaves and in patches of long grass. Ginie and Stephen started taking quinine every night on doctors’ orders. The pills were huge and made their ears ring.

Strange things were happening in the days after the rains began. Dixon had found several snakes in the house. Stephen explained that it was because their holes were flooded, but the servants’ old fears were fully re-awakened. One of the gardeners reported seeing a small girl wandering in the Dell, clutching a teddy bear. When he tried to speak to her, she hid behind a tree. ‘We’re living in a time of bad omens,’ he said.