The Drowning Lesson (24 page)

I hold him closer, the soft pad of a nappy crinkling under my hand. Halfway to the gate, a door opens
behind me. The girl from the bus steps out of the house. She is still wearing the red and green print dress but the dark glasses, the hat and the wig have gone. Her face is a little fatter, but her eyes are the same, the same nose, the same mouth. Dark hair neatly braided around her head. Teko. Though I tracked her down, I'm frozen with surprise.

Sam makes a sleepy protest as my arms tighten. Teko sees me and stops dead. We stare at each other, waiting. Will she scream for help? Summon the dogs? There is a whimper: one of the babies in the cot wakes. The noise widens into a cry. Teko gives an almost imperceptible nod; her left hand moves a fraction. She is telling me to leave. Now.

I take a step backwards, turn, and run the last yards of garden and through the gate, kicking off my sandals as I go.

The taxi isn't there. My hands clench around Sam as I search the track. Has Bogosi lost his nerve and absconded?

Then red metal glints from overhanging shade further along: the car has been moved and is tucked close to the wall. Bogosi is inside, hunched over the wheel. I stumble towards him, gasping for breath. He is out and round to the side, opening the door.

‘I moved the car … Less obvious … Cooler … Sorry,' he says breathlessly.

He pushes me inside; Sam is jogged against my
shoulder and makes a small noise. Bogosi, back in the driver's seat, turns the key in the ignition.

As the wheels spin on the rutted track, two great dogs bound from the gate, barking and springing at the car, their muzzles hitting the window; saliva dribbles down the glass in a thick bubbling trail. As the car jerks forwards they fall back, and a burly figure emerges from the front of the house: a Motswana man in a cowboy hat. He catches one of the dogs by the collar. He has something in this hand – a stick, a gun?

A woman comes to join him. Her arms flash white as she grabs the other dog in a practised movement. She is talking and looks half amused, half irritated, blonde hair tumbling around her broad face.

Recognition hits, like a smashing punch to my mouth.

Claire.

How can it be Claire? Her orphanage is in Gaborone. The impossibility clashes against the reality: the blonde hair, the thick arms, the wide face. She hasn't noticed me, so focused on the dogs she's scarcely looked at the car, let alone who is inside. She has no idea I've taken back my son.

We are moving faster all the time. Disbelief coalesces into white hot anger, scalding my face and arms. Claire is the criminal we have all been hunting. The truth flashes like fire along every nerve and into
my brain. I want to stop. I need to get out, take her by the shoulders, scream my questions into her face.

Why? Why choose Sam? Why choose us? Why drag us all to the brink of hell for a year?

Even as I am leaning forward to ask Bogosi to brake, we are already round the corner and Claire has vanished from sight.

The car settles on the road, gathering speed.

‘You have your son,' Bogosi announces, his voice breaking a little.

Yes, I have my son. He is saved, I am, we all are. Anger must be trodden down, every second savoured. I lower Sam carefully to the seat, where I can look at him and he can sleep stretched out comfortably.

His eyelashes are longer – they sweep in a curve to his cheek, silky as a girl's. His skin is translucent. The birthmark, I touch it with my lips, feels the same.

‘… worried for a second there …' Bogosi is saying. ‘I thought something might have happened to you.'

Something has happened to me. Life has started again: I feel as though I'm drawing breath for the first time in a year. I cup my hand over Sam's foot; in sleep, he pushes strongly against my palm. He could be walking now. I hadn't thought of that.

‘The dogs got out through the gate at the back but those guys came from the front. They had no idea
he'd been taken. Did you see the gun?' There is awe in his voice. ‘They would have shot us, if they'd known.'

Sam's fingernails have been neatly cut. I close my hand carefully round his satiny fist. The image of severed hands in the dust fades, then disappears.

He'll be frightened when he wakes – he'll have no idea who I am. He won't know Adam or Alice or Zoë. Two bereavements in one short life, though he's older now: it will be worse. We'll have to be very careful, very patient. I lay my hand lightly on his chest, letting it move up and down with his breathing. That's fine: we have all the time in the world.

We are passing the last houses of Tshabong when three police cars speed by us, heading in the direction we have just come from. In the mirror, Bogosi's eyes are shining. ‘I phoned them from the garage,' he says happily. ‘To put them on the alert. I gave them the exact address once I saw the house. I didn't know you would find your son, but I thought they'd be interested in the woman we followed.' He glances at his watch. ‘It's been five minutes. Once they see your son has gone, those guys will know the game's up. They'll be packing their car very fast. At the speed the police are going, they'll catch them before they reach the end of the drive.'

Five minutes. Is that all? But it doesn't take long for lives to change. It took a moment to conceive
him, another to lose him. I put my face next to his, the small rubbery ear is cool against my cheek.

Bogosi, humming, glances back. He wants to carry on talking. ‘So, that woman who opened the door, she wasn't smiling …'

‘I know her.'

‘You do?' His voice lifts in surprise.

‘We met by chance. She's called Claire. We'd just arrived from England and stayed overnight at a hotel.'

But we needn't have broken our journey at all: we could have carried right on to Kubung. Claire would have taken her group of children home again after their swim and Teko would never have come to our door.

‘She was with a group of orphans by the pool. She was friendly.' The memory is bitter, like vomit in my mouth. ‘She seemed interested in my husband's research.'

Though, of course, it was Sam she was after.

‘We didn't talk long. She left before we did.'

That would have been so she could instruct Teko and begin to lay her plans. She might even have driven Teko to Kubung herself early the next day, leaving her to walk the last mile to wait for us, removing her shoes as she went, fooling us all.

The tiny hairs on Sam's temples glint, gold dust. His mouth opens and his thumb slides out, puckered with damp. The frilled edges of new teeth gleam.

‘… didn't say much. She asked who I was so I told her about my taxi services,' Bogosi is continuing. ‘She was holding the dogs back. Then the man appeared, wanting to know why I picked on them. I said I was visiting all the houses in the area, but he didn't like it. He started shouting for someone to check the back garden. He thought it was a trick. He was quite right there.' Bogosi chuckles. ‘When he saw me looking over his shoulder, he shut the door in my face.' He turns to grin at me. ‘I could hear him swearing inside.'

‘Claire's South African, I think. Was he?' They might have friends just over the border. They might still get away.

‘Hard to tell. He didn't have an accent.' Rummaging in his shirt pocket, he pulls out a packet of gum, bites a piece off and starts chewing. ‘His English was perfect.'

‘English?' Surely he would have called out to Teko in Setswana: she doesn't understand English.'

‘Even better than mine.' He winks in the mirror.

‘Did you hear a reply?'

‘A girl called back, said she was on her way.'

‘And that was in …?'

‘English. Does it matter?' He sounds puzzled.

Yes, it matters. It means Alice was telling the truth. Teko spoke English as Alice had told us, though we didn't believe her. Teko, hovering at the edge of
things, head inclined, must have been listening all the time.

The car is moving steadily on through the landscape. It all looks the same but everything has changed. An earthquake has broken open the familiar shapes of the past. What was hidden has been exposed.

Alice didn't lie. If we'd listened, we could have worked it out. My mind jumps back a year: Teko, understanding English, must have known in advance about Adam's conference, passed it to Claire and the abduction was planned accordingly.

Sam curls towards the back seat and I slip my hand between his face and the leather. Teko would have let the kidnappers in through the front door but, blocked from escaping by Adam's return, must have shattered the glass doors, aping a break-in. It would have only taken minutes.

Alice didn't lie.

Sam's breath is hot on my fingers. He is sleeping as deeply as if he's been drugged – perhaps he has been. Sedated babies are less trouble. I check his heartbeat and breathing, both normal. He'll sleep this off. I put my lips against the soft curve of his cheek.

She wasn't psychotic. The whispers and footsteps that frightened her must have been real: Claire's men, closing in, leaving fingerprints on the wall. We
ignored all Alice's warnings. When she snapped, we thought she was psychotic; instead she was anxious, alone and afraid. Tears start. Will she ever forgive us? Bogosi's face in the mirror softens but I am crying for more than he knows: joy that I have my son safely back, and joy that Alice was never psychotic, tears of shame that we thought she was.

Sam's hair is shining in the sun; it glints in the same way as Zoë's. His skin is immaculate. They looked after him well but what kind of return were they expecting?

‘There were other babies, Bogosi. African, younger than Sam. What should we do about them?'

He shakes his head. For a moment he looks unhappy. ‘The police are there now. They will know what to do.' He leans forwards and turns the radio louder.

He doesn't want to discuss it. His head bobs up and down in time to the music. The unfairness may trouble him: the white baby of rich parents got the world's attention, but no one spoke for the other babies, or if they did, no one listened. Where was the media when their parents needed a voice? Other explanations hover, dark wings of the monsters we've escaped; baby trafficking, witchcraft, possibilities that Bogosi wouldn't dare name. I cup my hand over Sam's sleeping head. He is safe.

It's time to tell Adam. Past time. He picks up immediately and his voice is so loud it hurts my ear.

‘Jesus Christ, Emma. Where the fuck have you been? I'm waiting in a queue in the police station to report you missing.'

‘The police know exactly where I am. They passed us not long ago.' I start laughing and for a while I can't seem to stop.

‘What the hell are you talking about? Have you gone fucking nuts? It's been hours and hours of hell. I've been out of my mind with worry –'

‘I've got him, Adam. I've got Sam.'

Adam says nothing. I can't even hear him breathing.

‘He's fine. He's beautiful. He's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.'

There is silence for so long that I think he must have decided I've really gone mad and is wondering what to do. Then a soft gasping sound breaks into the quiet: he has started to cry. I stay on the phone because it feels like I'm holding his hand and I want him there with me when Sam opens his eyes.

We're building a den in the loft for the girls. I went up last week to clear it out before the builders start. I'd expected a mess but I'd forgotten the boxes, shoved in and stacked high. After my father died we emptied his study into tea chests, put them in the loft, closed the hatch and left it all for years.

I walked around them; the air was sour with dust, dead flies crunched under my feet. This was Dad's stuff: difficult to touch, worse to throw out. I drank tea, turned on the radio then began: the papers at the top were crackling with age. Tidy piles became toppling heaps: old research documents and published papers, committee reports, academic prizes. No letters; the ones from my mother were already in a box in his desk. In the last tea chest there were hundreds of bank statements and insurance documents. Files. The receipt from the sale of his boat. At the bottom my fingers, scraping plywood and tea leaves, closed on his passport. He'd renewed it the year before he died.

He looked unfamiliar. Not sad, not smiling, just different. The light from the casement was too bright but, tilting the page in the half-shadow, I got what it was. I'd seen it before: it was the look Josiah had, the look of an old man who was content. I sat on the edge of a chest. He'd got there, then, without my help; he'd found it on his own. It occurred to me that he might have felt like that for years. When I went downstairs to put the passport in his desk my body felt fluid, as though I was floating, as though a hand had let me go.

I stuffed everything else into bags, haphazard armfuls packed in and trodden down, though, when it came to it, I kept the receipt from the boat sale. It took three trips to the dump – the bags tumbling over the edge of the containers landed with a soft crash. When I drove away, the empty car seemed to swing round the corners more quickly.