The Drowning Lesson (16 page)

He pulls the bag from his pocket and shows me. Sam's little elephant is inside, the body looks a little larger as if it has absorbed water. One ear is missing, perhaps torn by the dog.

I hold out my hand, my fingers trembling, but Kopano slips the bag back into his pocket. ‘Evidence,' he says.

Hours later, Adam still hasn't returned. Peo's friends have gone back to the village and the house is quiet. I fall asleep on the sofa but am woken by dragging footsteps outside, fumbling at the handle. My mouth dries. There will be weapons I can use in the kitchen: a knife on the draining-board, a bottle in the fridge. Before I can edge halfway across the room the front door opens and Adam stumbles in. His bloodshot eyes stare blankly at my face, as if he doesn't recognize me. He sinks heavily into a chair; my heart slows as I kneel next to him. He shakes his head. His cheeks are the colour of putty; even his lips look bleached, like those of a patient who has been bleeding for a long time.

After a few moments, Elisabeth brings warmed-up food and a glass of water; she must have been waiting patiently in the kitchen all this time. Adam balances the plate on his lap as he explains what happened.

‘Finding the hospital was easy.' The hands on the knife and fork tremble; I doubt it was easy. The roads
would have been difficult to navigate, the signposts few and far between.

‘The deputy manager told me the mission had been discontinued. She remembered Megan's parents and the younger man, David, who worked with them.' Adam pushes food around his plate and swallows a mouthful of water.

‘When they died, David took charge of an orphanage but she had no idea which one. There were three. I went to them all. A disused church, a bungalow and some huts, just out of town. None of the staff in any of them had heard of Teko. I ended up looking in cafés and shops, showing Teko's photo to everyone I could. No one recognized her.'

People would have been discomfited by a wild-eyed European, begging for information. They might have even been frightened.

‘I got your text about you scaring Teko away.' He puts his plate down and stares at me. ‘Were you that angry? I don't remember.'

‘I was furious. We'd trusted her. If she'd been with Sam, he would still be here.'

Was that fair? Would I have been hovering next to the cot all the time? The attackers might have broken in and stolen him in seconds, while she made a cup of tea.

I shouldn't have shouted, I see that now. ‘According to Elisabeth, she was terrified she might go to prison.'

‘So she ran away,' Adam says slowly. ‘I can understand that.' He gets up and pours wine at the sideboard. He drinks quickly and sits down on the sofa next to me, his face paler than ever.

‘We still need to find her, Adam. Even if she's innocent, she could know something. She might have seen a car, heard voices or glimpsed a figure.'

Adam leans back without replying and closes his eyes. His face slackens and he starts to breathe heavily. Behind him, through the window, sheet lightning flashes green in the blackness. It's been one and a half days since he had my milk. I dig my nails deep into the skin of my arms. Megan hasn't got back to me yet – what the hell is taking her so long?

Megan.

The name scribbles itself across the darkness of my mind, and images start to unfurl faster than thought: Megan's glance as it rested on the photo of our family the first time she came to the house, the hand open on the table; I'd thought even then she was waiting for something. The way she looked at Sam.

It could be someone known to the family
…
driven by jealousy
…

Did Megan envy me the handsome man she worked for, the beautiful children she saw in that photo? Or did she want to punish me, the competitive wife, a mother whose daughter was unhappy, the careless woman who left her baby in a shop? She'd
suffered for her appearance: had my response to Sam's birthmark lit some vengeful flare? The tumbling mug, the falling mousse: trivial retribution compared to what she might have been planning.

I crouch beside Adam, twisting memories into new shapes: Megan persuading me to come to Botswana, then offering to find us help. Had she begun to plot even then? Did she deliberately procure someone young, distractable, smoothing the way for thieves to creep in unnoticed and steal our son for her? She organized my certificate: it would be easier to steal a baby whose mother was at work.

‘Adam, wake up.'

He is deeply asleep, snoring heavily.

‘It could be Megan.' I shake his shoulder.

His head jerks upright and his eyes snap open. He looks confused, glancing round, as if she might be in the shadowy corners of the room. ‘Megan?'

‘She could have planned the whole thing. She might have Sam now.'

‘What?' He rubs his face rapidly, as if trying to rub away my words. ‘Have you gone mad? How do you make that out?'

‘She lived in Botswana before. She has contacts here. She could have organized the whole thing. It makes sense.'

‘No, it doesn't.' His eyebrows draw together. ‘This is crazy talk, Emma. You need to calm down.' He
stares at my face closely. ‘Have you eaten anything today?'

‘You don't know what happened to Megan in the past.' I stand then and pace back and forth, twisting my hands as needling suspicions light up other thoughts that had been buried in darkness.

‘She knew a witch.' Adam looks blankly at me as my words tumble out. ‘The girl who bullied Megan at school was murdered, and they found the bones. Megan said the witch did it for her sake. The same witch could have Sam now.'

‘Witches and bones,' Adam repeats incredulously. ‘Emma, this is insane. How could Megan possibly do this? Why would she? She's a friend, she's very fond of us –'

‘Of you.'

The first time I'd seen her, scented and groomed, the thought had flashed through my mind. At our dinner party, her hand had rested on Adam's sleeve. She had blushed when he kissed her.

‘That's it, of course. She's in love with you.'

‘What can you mean?' The lines between Adam's eyebrows deepen. ‘Megan's married to Andrew.'

‘That's the problem. They have no children.'

…
women who become desperate … childless women who take children belonging to others
…

‘She'd want a child. Yours. It all fits.'

‘I can't listen to this any more.' Adam's voice is
flat. He pushes himself out of the chair. ‘I need to sleep.'

‘She got the certificate for me on purpose. That way I would be away from the house.'

‘How the hell would she smuggle him abroad?' Adam interrupts, as he walks to the door. ‘If we're going to find Sam we have to remain sane.' He disappears into the corridor.

The kudu head stares into the distance. The necklace of dried pods has vanished. Unadorned, he looks wilder, the horns capable of carnage.

Adam's words percolate through the silence. Could he be right? Am I going mad?

In the quiet I can feel the throb of my heart as it slows, and after a while the pictures in my head shade into others: I see Megan's head bowed as she listens to my worries; I hear her voice consoling me. I remember that she trusted me, sharing her past. She'd stepped in to look after the girls; she'd read them stories. She'd knitted toys for them, looked after me and made me rest. She'd told me to love Sam. She got through to Alice when neither of us had been able to. Her sanity had kept me going.

Which set of memories tells the truth?

I find Adam in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, unlacing his shoes.

‘Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm mad to think it's Megan. I know she's my friend, it's just that …' It's
just that there's roaring emptiness where we need answers. There's an answer somewhere; someone has Sam, even if it's not Megan. ‘There's something else.' I speak to his bent head. ‘Something worse.'

He straightens. His face, flushed and swollen from bending, looks unfamiliar. His eyes search mine impatiently. ‘What?'

‘Goodwill mentioned trafficking.'

‘I don't think babies get trafficked,' he replies. ‘Men, women, children, yes.' He pushes his boots off and lies back on the bed. ‘Not babies.'

‘Goodwill wants to give both of us more information about it tomorrow.' I lean against the door, too tired to move. ‘He wouldn't tell me much. He thought we should be together.'

‘I won't be here,' Adam says, closing his eyes. ‘I phoned the consulate – I've got an appointment.'

If I went, too, it might dull the anguish for a few minutes. I might feel I was doing something useful.

‘You need to stay here,' Adam continues, guessing my thoughts. ‘The girls … the police …'

He's right. Even without those responsibilities, a knock on the door might come at any time and Sam could be there, held out to me by the stranger who found him by chance. Sam, bouncing with eagerness, his mouth wide open in a smile. My throat aches with longing.

‘I told the police about Teko on the way home. I
sent them the picture of her that I took at the game park on Christmas Day.' Adam's voice slurs with tiredness. ‘They'll find her … ' He falls asleep again, in mid-sentence.

The window bangs, followed by the soft, rushing sound of rain. After a moment, the scent of wet earth leaks into the room. Then I catch the sound of footsteps shuffling along the veranda. It could be someone returning Sam, just as I'd thought. I run back down the corridor and into the sitting room. I struggle with the heavy front door, twisting the handle this way and that. Finally it swings open.

The veranda is empty.

Rain blows in my eyes; a blurred figure moves into the circle of light from the door. It's Josiah on his nightly round; keys glint in his hand. He nods, pulls his hat lower and steps into the darkness again.

I crouch; my hand spread out on the wet wood. The rain pours onto my back, but I stay where I am, bent over the space where I'd imagined my son to be.

When Sam was newborn, I brought him into our bed every night. He'd burrow against me, nails softly scraping, face pushing into my breast, small mouth latching on while I drifted in and out of sleep. It was easier that way, though the health visitor disapproved. Sometimes I'd wake later to find him moving on my abdomen, wriggling and elbowing as if he were still inside me. As I wake on the second morning without him, my skin feels the imprint of his body, as though he had just that second been lifted away.

Adam is up already, his pale face empty of expression as he downs coffee in the kitchen. He hasn't shaved; his hair is still flattened on one side by sleep. Today he will recount our loss to strangers and may have to listen to horrors we haven't thought of. Megan's name isn't mentioned. My suspicions have faded in the night, taking on the quality of a nightmare, disturbing but unreal, sliding away into the shadows.

Before he leaves, I tell Adam that Sam's knitted elephant was found in the pond.

‘Who could have done that, Adam? Why would they?'

He stares at me, as if he's forgotten that Sam even had such a toy.

‘It could have been there for days,' he replies after a few seconds. ‘Dropped in the garden, then kicked into the water by accident. Zoë drops toys all the time.'

But Zoë picks her toys up – they're precious to her; and, apart from that concert, the children knew not to play near the pond again. Adam shuts the door, without saying goodbye, and my thoughts circle round and and round, going nowhere.

I take the girls with their books and a rug to the lawn under the trees. Alice hunches over her maths, but her eyes are closed, her hand rests on the cover. The book remains unopened. Zoë lies on her stomach beside her, sighing. She opens a nature book, settles tracing paper over the outline of an elephant and makes a start, breathing deeply. Peo sits close, hemming a green linen cloth, her long legs tucked under her skirt. Her eyes move constantly, registering Josiah sweeping the veranda, the van that flashes white through the trees as it passes, and the way the shade falls, so that the children keep inside its grey edge.

Sam was there, under the tree, three days ago, the day before he was taken. The leaves had been reflected
in the blue of his eyes; his arms and legs were moving. He was intact. Leaving the children with Peo, I walk back to the house, my heart banging, eyes and throat burning. I feel ill, as if anguish itself were a virus, growing and multiplying in every cell.

Megan still doesn't answer her phone. Sam's image springs out at me on the screen when I bring up the news on my laptop. His passport photo has been magnified, the birthmark clearly visible, a brighter scarlet than it is in reality. I touch it through the screen. His eyes meet mine, their gaze hopeful but solemn. The text is garish.

Baby Sam, only son of English doctors on a mercy mission in Africa, has been missing for forty hours
.
Torn from his …

Dr Jordan returns from doctoring to find her son Sam has vanished
…

Successful couple robbed of only son
…

Tragedy for Brits
…

The media industry recycling our despair.

None of the articles mentions trafficking. When people read these pieces, will they think to look in the places where traffickers hide their goods? I take the laptop to the window-seat, the better to watch the girls in the garden. Alice is kneeling now. Zoë has rolled over onto her back and is holding her tracing paper above her face, waving it about.

The rewards for traffickers must be vast to make the risk worthwhile. Who has the money to pay
them? ‘Politicians,' Esther had said, and businessmen buying power for the price of a pot of medicine.
Eyelids or hands or testes
, she'd whispered. I lean my face to the window, smearing the glass with sweat.
Arms and legs.

Outside, Alice is standing on the rug, as immobile as a little statue. I start tapping quickly:
Human medicine.
The page comes up immediately, as if searching for this could be something people often do, like looking online for a dress you might need, or where to go on holiday.

…
taking of human beings to excise body parts to use as medicine or for magical purposes in witchcraft … since 1800s, increase in times of economic stress … topic of urban legends …

In 1994 in Mochudi, Botswana
,
a fourteen
-
year
-
old, Segametsi Mogomotsi, was selling oranges by the road to raise money for a school trip. Men bought all of them but had no change. She waited all day. They came back, gagged her, dragged her into the bush, and cut her into pieces … No one was charged … police corruption suspected … student riots … Scotland Yard involved.

The horror seems to leak from the screen into the room until the air vibrates with it, so it takes a while for the shouting outside to reach me. When I look through the window there are only two people on
the rug instead of three. Peo, standing, with Zoë by her side, is calling loudly for Alice.

I push my laptop onto the seat and run. All the rooms are empty. Behind the house the pond is coin-flat, reeds untrodden. Pounding down the drive, I glimpse cars in the road through the trees As I round the last sweep, Alice comes into view, facing towards the gate. Sick with relief, I slow and walk towards her as a man leans over the bars, calling to her, microphone in hand. Surrounding him are vans, satellite dishes and a forest of tripods. Dozens of cameras click in unison. Where has all this come from?

The man's head jerks in my direction as I approach: he has white skin stubbled with growth, brown hair frothing at the neck of a T-shirt and small eyes that dart over me. Next to him, a young Motswana girl lifts her camera in the air, aiming it at me. There are others behind her, a mass of faces, brown and white, looking towards me. I turn Alice round very gently and we start walking back. Loud voices call after us.

‘What happened, exactly?'

‘What did you see?'

‘How are you coping?'

‘Where's your husband?'

‘Who do you think did this?'

‘How do you feel?'

I want to shout that I feel like dying; that death
would be better than the torment of wondering every second if he's suffering, screaming. Dying. That I want the earth to open and swallow their cameras and the cars, their terrible, intrusive questions.

Zoë flings her arms around Alice, crying noisily. Peo pats her head, then folds the rug, collects the books and her needlework, and they walk back to the house.

We need these journalists. We need anyone with a camera, a microphone and a notebook. I return to the gate. Speaking above the flurry of clicks and questions, I force myself to thank them for their interest and tell them the police will let them know more. Cards with numbers and email addresses are pushed through the bars; more questions surge up the drive after me.

The silence in the house lies like a cool sheet. Elisabeth takes the girls into the kitchen, the door closing quietly on the scent of baking. Five minutes later, Kopano and Goodwill arrive. They emerge from their car looking calm; they must have negotiated their way through that scrum with no effort. They do this all the time. Kopano strides into the garden, but Goodwill follows me inside. Wedging himself into the same seat, he pulls out his notepad. He flicks it open and looks up, unsmiling.

He has read the email Adam sent him about Teko, and wants to know everything about her. I explain
that we think she absconded out of fear, not guilt, though we don't know anything for sure.

‘Where does she come from? Surname? Family? Village?'

I know none of the answers. She has slipped away like a shadow, as insubstantial and silent as she'd been when we met her.

I trace the train of events that brought her to our door: Megan, David, the orphanage that Adam couldn't find. Goodwill takes Megan's number and goes outside to phone her. He comes back, his mouth set. So he can't reach her either.

‘It is important that we find this Teko,' he says, sitting down with his notebook. ‘She may have seen something. Experience tells us, however, that young girls do not commit these crimes. It is unlikely she was involved. She didn't disappear with your son, which I would have expected, and someone had to break in through the doors in your room. If she'd been helping, she would have unlocked them.'

‘She didn't know where those keys were. I'd removed them,' I told him. ‘But the front door is unlocked in the daytime. If she'd been helping an accomplice, she would have shown them in that way.'

‘As I said, I think her involvement is unlikely.' Goodwill sounds irritated.

The criminals must have crouched in the bushes, watching the room as Teko stood, stretched, yawned,
walked out to the kitchen maybe. It would have taken only moments to shatter the glass and snatch Sam.

‘Where is the key now?' Goodwill asks. I find it in the bedroom drawer where I left it and drop it on the table. He looks at it, nodding. ‘Why did you lock those doors in the day but not the others?' he asks.

‘There are marks on the wall by the doors. I thought the children had made them …' Then I get up quickly and hurry to the bedroom. Goodwill follows but the marks have gone. Elisabeth is summoned. She cleaned the walls, she says, looking frightened. Four days ago. She thought the children had made them dirty.

‘She is doubtless correct,' Goodwill says, sitting down in his chair again. ‘Is there anyone else who works for the family,' he asks, ‘who might also accidentally have slipped your mind?'

‘You've met Josiah and Elisabeth.' Then my eye is caught by Alice's exercise books, still neatly stacked on the table. ‘There is someone else or, rather, there was. Simon Katse. A tutor for the girls. He left before this happened.'

‘When?' Goodwill starts writing in his notebook. ‘Why did he leave?'

Why did he? For a moment I can't remember when or why he went, or even what he looked like.

Goodwill waits, tapping his red pen against his teeth impatiently.

‘He left because of his wife.' It comes back to me gradually. ‘She has a new job in Serule, so they had to move. They have a child so he –'

‘When exactly did your Mr Katse leave?'

‘Monday. The day before Sam was taken. Four days ago.' Another lifetime.

‘And the new job that is so important?' He is writing quickly now and doesn't look up.

‘Something to do with a development committee. Simon told me she was up for election …' The word seems to hang in the air of the sitting room.

‘We will need to speak to this Simon,' Goodwill says slowly. ‘Have you an address?'

‘No. Kabo knows where he lives.'

‘Anyone else?' He clears his throat impatiently. ‘Anyone at all you have met or been in contact with since you arrived in Botswana?'

I've hardly met anyone since we've been here. Esther's frightened face floats across my mind's eye, Claire's broad one. The smiling rangers at Mokolodi. Esther will be scared, Claire could be annoyed, but Goodwill may find his way to them anyway. While he is writing down their contact details, I text Esther and Claire a rapid message, hoping they'll understand.
So sorry. Police checking all our contacts; might even visit you
.

Hearing me text, Goodwill frowns. Does he think I'm warning my friends? He closes his notebook and
walks out, closing the door behind him. Soon he is striding up and down the veranda, the phone clamped to his ear.

Simon is a good man, but what might she be willing to do, his ambitious political wife?

Kopano appears in the doorway. ‘The cages,' he says.

A statement or a question?

‘They belong to the children, for their zoo.' How could this be important?

Zoë must have been listening from the kitchen because she comes into the room at this moment, walks up to Kopano and holds out a bowl of plums. He takes one from her, but puts it down on the table. ‘It's a zoo, for lizards and a frog.' She tilts her face up to his, a dark ring of chocolate around her mouth. ‘There are two lizards, called Josiah and Simon. They're best friends. There's only one frog so far. We call him … Sam.' She flushes and, glancing at me, lowers her voice to a whisper: ‘Because he hiccups.' Then, putting her bowl down, she runs quickly to me, burying her face in my skirt.

Kopano looks at her, then at me, his deep eyes flickering with an emotion that is difficult to read, though I register unease. Loosening Zoë's fingers, I take her back to the kitchen; and am caught for a moment by the ordinariness of the scene in front of me, the colour in it: orange nasturtiums in a green
glass, a plate of mauve plums besides Alice, who is reading a book at the table. Elisabeth puts a blue-striped mug beside her, the steam twisting up. Zoë takes a muffin from Peo. I want to stay for a while, watching, unnoticed, but Alice has noticed, she slides from her chair, the book in her hand, and, still reading, shuts the door in my face.