Chapters (39)
- Cover
- Title
- Author’s Note
- Glossary
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Acknowledgments
The forest was noisier by night than Clare imagined it might be. The shushing of the rain and shuffling of the leaves made her think of childhood holidays on the coast. She recalled the thrill of waking to the crashing of the waves and the way they hissed as they swept the sand. Back then, the sound carried the promise of hot, grimy hours of play with Angus and Linda, of learning to body surf with her father and the unusually carefree tinkle of her mother’s laughter as she lined up her brood to apply sunscreen. Now, with the foliage sticky and warm beneath her bare legs and her parents’ friend lying beside her, Clare felt damp and queasy with dread. She hoped the two painkillers Faye had given her would expedite sleep but pain and discomfort prevailed. She shifted her hips.
“Warm enough?” asked Faye, who’d insisted on covering Clare with her space blanket, maintaining that she, in a jacket and trousers, would not need it.
“Yes. Thanks,” said Clare, wondering what other ingenuity Faye might conjure if she’d said otherwise. The older woman’s resourcefulness had surprised her. Clare hadn’t pictured Faye as someone who would know how to erect a shelter in a forest with nothing but what nature offered. Yet, within half an hour, she’d created a refuge that not only held off the rain and wind, but was also relatively comfortable. Clare couldn’t imagine her mother being as inventive and capable under similar circumstances.
They spoke simultaneously.
“How did you—”
“I didn’t tell you—”
“Go on,” said Clare.
Faye went on. “About the visitors to the lapa this morning.”
Her descriptions of the baboons at Heuningbos, particularly the large male with the muesli and the little one licking the lid of Michelle’s showy cooler box, were amusing. Clare wished it wasn’t excruciating to laugh.
“It ended well but honestly, the alpha male terrified me,” said Faye. “Those fangs. That roar. Even though I told myself he wouldn’t attack me if I didn’t approach him, I was petrified. I hadn’t realised how large they can be. He was magnificent. Terrifyingly magnificent. But afterwards, when they left and my knees stopped trembling, I felt I should thank him for taking that awful cereal with him.”