Black Dog Summer (20 page)

“No,” agrees Bryony vociferously. “It isn't.”

“Thanks for letting us know about this, Bryony,” says Mr. Silverman.
“If this woman is running a consulting practice here in Cortona Villas, we'll put a stop to it, don't you worry about that. That sort of behavior just isn't on.”

“Please don't tell her I told you,” Bryony pleads, her eyes welling up again. “She scares me and she comes to me in my nightmares.”

“Good heavens, Geoff, we can't have someone terrorizing the kids like this . . .” Mrs. Silverman begins, guiding her husband out of the room so that they can continue their discussion in private. Dommie looks at Bryony and Bryony looks at the new beige Band-Aid on her toe. The kitchen is quiet except for the ticking of the large clock on the wall beside the fridge.

“Are you OK?” Dommie asks at last.

“Ja.”

“You should've told me that all of this sangoma stuff was going on.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“Did that lady really curse you?”

Bryony takes a big, shuddery breath and nods her head.

“What a bitch.”

Bryony is not sure why she feels so nervous. It is Gigi's brand-new school uniform that's hanging on the cupboard door, not her own, but she's all squirmy and jittery as if she is the one who has to start at a new school in the morning.

“I hate first days,” she whispers, and, across the dark bedroom, Gigi's bedding rustles.

“I'm not scared.”

“That's good, then,” Bryony says. “I guess you've had scarier stuff happen lately than a stupid first day at a new school.”

“Ja.” They lie in silence for a while. “I am kind of nervous, I suppose,” Gigi says, and Bryony stares hard into the gloom, trying to make out her cousin's features in the dark. At any moment, Gigi might remember that she's a zombie, and Bryony doesn't want that to happen. It's nice having someone to talk to in the dark.

“It sucks not knowing anyone,” Bryony says.

“Ja. But it's just for a little while, until Simone comes back.”

“Well, if the people at the school are horrible to you, you can just think of that.”

“Yeah.”

“When's she coming, again?”

“Tonight on the phone she said she's going into the travel agent tomorrow to book her flight. So it might be this week, even.”

“Does Mom know you're going to go back and live with Simone, then?” Bryony asks, thinking of the brand-new uniform and school shoes that Adele just bought for Gigi. They will probably just hang in the cupboard for ages until she's ready to start high school herself.
Hopefully the tunic won't be quite so loose over the top when I wear it
.

“Don't know. It's kind of obvious, though, isn't it? I mean Simone is sort of like my other mother.”

Bryony is so thrilled to have zombie Gigi responding like a normal person that she finally has the courage to ask the question that's been plaguing her for weeks: “Hey, do you remember me from under the table that time at Granny's place?”

“Of course. The tablecloth was like a tent.”

“Exactly.”

“And I had that jar of peanut butter,” Gigi says, and Bryony giggles.

“You ate the whole thing; I can't believe you weren't sick.”

“I was. That night I puked up a whole load of disgusting nutty puke.”

“Gross!” Bryony says, and Gigi laughs. Bryony begins to drift towards sleep. “Good night, Gigi.”

“ 'Night.”

The first night I went to Johan, the moon was full, and the patch of earth between the main house and the cabin where he slept on the far side of the lucky bean tree seemed to be lit up like a football pitch. It illuminated the baggy sleep shirt and hiking boots I was wearing (in case of scorpion and snake encounters) and leached the color from my skin. I knew that I looked nothing like a sultry enchantress, but I continued on, pulse beating hard in my throat.

I didn't really know what had finally propelled me from my
sleepless bed, but ever since Johan had confronted me by the fence the previous day, I'd felt as if a door had opened inside me and a draft of cool fresh air had rushed in, displacing stale old stuff that had been sitting there for years. Earlier that evening, as Simone and Gigi had fussed around the kitchen laughing over the ludicrousness of trying to create an egg-free, dairy-free lasagna, I'd kept glancing over to where Johan and Seb had been standing by the open door, deep in discussion about the gang of vervet monkeys who'd started stealing food from some of the rescues. At first, when he caught me looking, Johan had gone pink and looked away, and I'd quickly returned my attention to the carrots I was peeling, but then I'd looked again, and he'd looked back, and each time our eyes met, we grew bolder, held the gaze longer. My heart was thundering. I felt silly and young and just a little bit drunk.

“Come on, Mom, hurry up with those carrots,” Gigi had barked from her post at a pot of simmering lentils.

“Hey, who's the kid here, and who's the mom?” I had grinned back, but my daughter had just glowered at me before turning to ask Simone's advice on something lentil-related.

I knocked on the wooden door of Johan's cabin. Despite the chorus of crickets and cicadas, it sounded too loud.

“Yes?”

“It's Sally.” I heard shuffling noises, and then the door opened. Johan stood before me in a pair of boxer shorts. Wide-shouldered and lean and silver-skinned in the moonlight. He rubbed his eyes, blinked.

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” A long pause. “I wanted to . . .” Behind him, I saw the messed-up bedding of his single bed through the gauze of the mosquito net. He saw me looking. He looked back at me. His eyes widened.

“Sally?”

“I wanted to say sorry. For yesterday. For being . . .” I trailed off. We stared at each other. I felt something loosen deep in my abdomen. My face was on fire. “I would like to—” He reached out and touched my jaw, just below my ear. I closed my eyes, swallowed. “I would like to try.”

His hand, large and very warm, cupped my chin. My traitorous skin remembered Liam's hands on my face, so many years ago. I forced the memory back by stepping forward, into the cabin. Johan took my hands and pulled me towards his body. The cabin door closed behind me, but I couldn't be sure I'd truly left Liam outside.

The next night, I crept across the yard once again, and then later, as Johan fell asleep beside me on his narrow bed, I lay and watched the shadows of the flying ants crawl on the outside of the mosquito net. My body hummed with release, but my head? I couldn't shake the feeling that I was betraying someone.

“You OK?”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“With a naked goddess in my bed? Are you kidding?”

“Oh, please!” But I smiled and turned towards him.

“I know I'm very likely about to blow this by asking, but I need to know . . . Are you here to scratch an itch, Sal, or do I have permission to hope?”

I sat up and wrapped my arms around my legs. The bed suddenly felt too small. “I don't know.” I rested my forehead against my knees. It was close and hot inside the mosquito net. Sweat coated my skin.

Neither of us said the name
Liam
, but both of us were thinking it.

Simone had once said to me: “You're scared that if you let go of Liam, if you stop seeing him, you'll lose the only remaining connection you've got with your sister.” I'd thought she was crazy at the time, but Adele's absence was still a vast, hollow cavern in the center of me. I thought of her swinging on that damn garden gate, looking out into the road, always beside me as we waited for Dad to come home from work.

“Well, whichever way the cookie crumbles . . .” Johan said. I waited. He raised himself up on his elbows and kissed my shoulder before flopping back down again. “I'm here now.”

I turned and slid my hands along the moonlight-colored skin of his belly. “Me too.”

THE SCHOOL
grounds look as though they're covered with immaculately ironed, tightly tucked-in green blankets, and Gigi has to step on it to check that the grass is real.

“Stay on the path,” an older girl with a prefect badge pinned to the center of her blazer lapel barks as she strides past, and Gigi is so surprised at the authority of the command that she does a daft little skip from the lawn to the paving.

No wonder the grass is so perfect if no one is allowed to walk on it
, she thinks as she rejoins the brown-blazered, faceless throng that surges towards the white school buildings.

To avoid turning round and running in the opposite direction, Gigi forces herself to imagine describing every moment of today's experience to Simone.
The girls look like a herd of impalas
, she silently explains,
all brown coats and slender ankles with long hair to flick instead of tails. They know that I am not one of the herd and look at me with little sideways movements of their eyes like my coat is not quite the right brown, or my ponytail is tied up wrong. Maybe they think I am a jackal in disguise or something. Up close, they stink of ten different kinds of deodorant and shampoo and sweat all mixed into a horrible stew.

Gigi breathes through her mouth as the press of girls increases at the entrance to the school building. She now wishes that she hadn't told Adele, who had offered to accompany her, that she could find the school office on her own.

“All right. If that's what you prefer. Just go to the office and tell them who you are. They're expecting you, and they'll have someone to show you to your class and everything,” Adele had said with a worried smile. “I'm sure they'll look after you very well.” She'd glanced up to the school insignia welded onto the iron gates, and then slid her sunglasses back down over her eyes. “It's a very good school.”

“I'll be fine,” Gigi had lied, desperate to be left on her own so that she could take a moment to absorb all the strangeness and get her breath.

But now, in amongst the perfumed herd, with white walls and corridors and chattering noise in every direction, she's starting to feel faint. She slips round a corner, away from the crowd, and finds herself alone in a little dead-end passage that seems to be used just for storing extra desks. It's gloomy and smells of dust. Gigi's head swims. She drops down to her haunches, the uncomfortable hard shoes digging into the tops of her feet as she does so, and cradles her head in her hands. Maybe if she just stays here until home time, no one will notice.

“What are you doing?” says a stern voice. “Everyone's going into assembly.” Gigi glances up to see that the voice belongs to another impala with a prefect badge; how many of them are there? The prefect frowns and takes a step closer. “Are you feeling all right? You look a little sick.”

Gigi shakes her head, unsure if she can speak without throwing up. “Come with me to the office,” the prefect says, and holds out her hand as if Gigi is a small child.

Gigi slowly gets to her feet, holding on to the wall to help herself up.

“I don't think I've seen you before. Are you new?” the girl asks, and Gigi nods. “Oh, no wonder you're feeling faint,” she says, marching purposefully towards the office. “It gets better, don't worry. First days are always hell.”

Gigi sits motionless and silent in her stiff school uniform. Bryony glances across the backseat of the car and is pretty sure that her cousin has not moved a millimeter since they picked her up from outside the high school gates. Bryony notices that Gigi's fingernails are bitten down worse than they were that morning. There is a thin tracing of red around a few of them from where hangnails have pulled and bled.

“How was it?” Bryony asks, but Gigi just lifts her shoulders in a single shrug.

“Were the peanut butter sandwiches I made you enough for lunch?”
Adele asks from the front seat, but Gigi doesn't even bother to offer a shrug to that one.

Zombie Schoolgirl
, thinks Bryony, making a mental note to tell Dommie:
You'd better hope she's packed a lunch, or she'll spread your brains on bread.
The thought makes Bryony feel queasy, and it's not because Dommie's Gigi-inspired movie title inventions are somehow always funnier than her own; she's remembering how nice it was to chat to her cousin while they were in bed last night.
Maybe the zombie only comes to life in the dark.
She shudders and turns away from the motionless Gigi to look out of the car window.

The black dog!
It can't possibly be the same one because they're still streets away from Cortona Villas, but Bryony is suddenly icy. The dog is standing on the pavement by the side of the road; its pelt is coal-dark and polished-looking, and it has the same kind of sticking-up ears as the one she saw yesterday. It turns its head to watch the car pass, and Bryony's stomach heaves. Have the Silvermans told anyone on the Body Corporate board about Lesedi yet? Does the sangoma know she's been betrayed? Is she planning some terrible revenge? Bryony shuts her eyes, leans back into her seat, and clutches her frozen fingers in her lap.

The role of
Zombie Schoolgirl
will now be played by Bryony Wilding
, she thinks. But it's not funny at all.

I rise up until Adele's car becomes just one of many bright spots of metal moving along the gray ribbons of the suburban streets below me. From up here, I can see succulent, purple storm clouds gathering on the southern horizon as they prepare themselves to move in for the evening rains.

I can smell the lightning, and tiny static charges feel as if they're sparking beneath my nonexistent skin. I am ozone breath and rustling movement in the blond grass as small creatures prepare for the impending storm.

I am also not alone.