He and Clare had been in the kitchen, preparing supper. Clare wished her mother had waited to tell him when her parents were alone. Michelle walked out without replying.

“There’s no chance of a delay,” she said when she reappeared, heels exchanged for flip-flops, minutes later. She spoke as if she’d never left the room. “Clare can go in my place.”

Her daughter and husband stared at her.

Michelle took a bottle of wine from the fridge and smiled at Clare. “Why not? Your interviews only begin the following week. It’ll be good . . . fun.”

Clare knew her mother had almost said, “good for you.” She looked away.

Geoffrey handed Michelle a glass. “So you’re certain?”

She bobbed her head. He blinked and turned to Clare. “Come with your old dad and his friends. We’ll remind you how lucky you are to be young.”

There was no one in the cabin when Clare slipped in to take a mattress from one of the bunk beds stacked against the walls. She dragged it onto the lawn, stopping mid-yard to look around.

The space that had been cleared for the lapa, hut and bathroom, all of which were fashioned from river stones, wasn’t entirely level. To her left, Clare saw an area buttressed by a short wall. The earth had been flattened as if someone planned to turn it into a flower bed but was beaten to it by the relentless tentacles of buffalo grass. The spot would do. Not only was it flat enough to sleep on without rolling or sliding off the bed, but it was also out of earshot of her father’s snoring. Neither was it too close, she hoped, to the low bush on the edge of the forest to pique the curiosity of any creatures that might mosey by during the night. She hauled the mattress into position.

“What do you mean?” Geoffrey had asked when, during the long drive from Cape Town to the mountains, she told him that it was one thing to hike through the Tsitsikamma National Park with her parents’ friends, but she wouldn’t share the dormitory-style sleeping quarters with them. “That’s how it is on these hikes. We’ll be sleeping in the same room; not together. You know, like that.”