The Art of Unpacking Your Life (16 page)

Gus spoke. ‘It's fine to talk, eh? Jane, will you tell the guests about the meerkats?'

The sweat pooled around the base of her neck, as she struggled to get started.

Jules wasn't the most patient person. Why should he be? ‘Jane, where are the rest of them?'

Matt normally chided Jules when he was a little abrupt. He said nothing. He was unusually quiet. He looked absorbed by some private joke known only to himself. Katherine looked concerned. Lizzie wickedly wished that they had had some sort of row. She was ashamed.

Jane stuttered. ‘You see, the one here. He's the one left.'

‘And then there was one,' Sara intoned.

‘Mmm…' murmured Jules.

Gus jumped in. ‘Okay, Jane what you should explain is that it is an extraordinary achievement for us to be a few feet away from this meerkat. And it is the result of weeks of you sitting here, talking to them, even singing, I believe.'

They laughed.

Jane scratched at the acne on her neck. ‘They seem to enjoy it.'

Gus laughed. ‘Well, she is from England…' He waited for the protests to die down. ‘This meerkat has been left here on purpose. He is a “sentinel”. He is looking out for danger, while the others search for food, particularly scorpions, which they love. He will sacrifice his life for the group, eh?'

‘We love a little self-sacrifice, don't we campers?' Jules smiled.

Lizzie spoke without thinking. ‘Well, that's Connie's department.'

There was silence. She panicked. She hadn't meant to say that. She often thought Connie was a martyr, obsessed by her domestic life and children, but never said it aloud. Her own words shocked her. Connie was such a generous friend to her. She reached over for Connie's arm. ‘Oh Connie, I was joking. God, with kids you have sacrificed a lot.'

Connie gave that infuriating unreadable smile. What did it mean? Her self-possession unnerved Lizzie. Why couldn't she say what was on her mind?

‘Too right.' It was Luke, which made Lizzie feel uneasy. She had no wish to revisit that day in Harley Place. She wanted to remember the good times.

Matt sighed. ‘What do any of us know about sacrifice? We lead such safe, little lives.'

Connie moved beside him and gave his arm a squeeze. Luke moved round to his other side.

Lizzie had had enough. They were getting too intense. She was left out of whatever drama was unfolding around her. She had an idea. One that she knew Jules would love.

‘This meerkat moment calls for a tune.'

Lizzie had a great voice. She didn't have her own flat or a good job or a man, but when she sang in a bar or on a train people stopped what they were doing and listened. She had once sung for the group on the way to Connie's house in Oxfordshire and a man had moved from the next carriage to listen to her. She had sung for Jules late after that first lunch in her cousin's flat.

She gave a quick cough, raised herself up and swung out her arms. Her throat roared low, long. ‘
Summertime
.'

‘Lizzie, you could make it big as a singer,' Alan called out.

She sang deliberately slowly.

‘Yes,' said Jules. ‘Go for it Lizzie,' he turned to Gus. ‘She has a superb voice.'

She was excited. Vindication, recognition. She raised the volume. Singing out across thousands of kilometres of desert. Singing across a continent. Singing to Jules. She wanted to remember every breath.

‘Oh, Christ almighty. They are coming out,' said Sara. ‘Don't stop, Lizzie. You are the Pied Piper of the Kalahari.'

Lizzie glanced sideways. Four meerkats had popped out of several previously invisible holes. They stood, looking alert, looking at her. She lowered her voice slightly. Two more appeared. The group was more transfixed by the meerkats than her. She couldn't help sucking in a huge gulp of air and belting the next two lines. She was singing to Jules, to her best friends, to the meerkats, to the horizon. She was invincible. Nothing could stop her now.

When it happened, it was unpredictably violent. Like a quiet couple nobody noticed in the corner of a bar until the man calmly stood up and shot the woman in the head with a silenced gun. Then everyone retold the crime from their own standpoint, some having predicted it, others not.

The Black-chested Snake Eagle dived for the smallest meerkat. Its chocolate head and chest covering its white belly as it descended with chilling accuracy and swooped up its supper in one clean, faultless move. Down, down, up, up and seamlessly gone from sight. The eagle didn't falter, it didn't stop, it didn't make a sound. Nor did the meerkat. It hung from the eagle's mouth, limp, possibly already dead. Its lack of protest added to the horror.

No one said a word. Lizzie stopped singing. It was the first time she had ever been silenced mid ‘Summertime'.

Traditionally, a boma was a circular enclosure for livestock, created out of tall reed stakes. The same encircled space had provided British colonial officers with makeshift offices, and more recently sheltered tribesmen from the wind. Gae had converted this boma into a private outdoor dining area, where the roof was a navy sky sprinkled with stars. An open fire pit flamed with uninhibited craziness in the centre of the fiery red sand. Tall torch lanterns danced shadows round the reed stakes.

Their table was majestically alone in this seductive space. Sara sighed, a peaceful exhalation. This was the most beautiful dinner. The reserve's own springbok charred over the fire, the pumpkin delicately infused with rosemary, the lamb skewered with the same herb and the traditional pap – a light baked couscous – alongside the Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon was deeply satisfying. As she reached once more for the black earthenware pot of springbok, she was suddenly aware she was happy. Was she ever this happy in London?

She couldn't answer that question. Of course, she was stressed and unhappy after what had happened. Everything she had worked for her whole life was threatened. The question was when would it ever end? She hadn't thought about Joanne Sutton since this morning. She was physically far away. She had to move the same mental distance. It was the joy of a holiday that was alien. You could forget everything else,
peel away the layers of your daily life. Only in her case, Sara wasn't sure what would be left.

Connie rose to her feet. Julian tapped his glass with his spoon in that annoying, pompous way of his. The group stopped talking, clattering.

‘Pray be silent for my beautiful wife.'

‘I'm not going to give a speech,' Connie was beaming, which made Sara even happier. ‘I wanted to say that I will never ever forget being here with you, my dearest friends. Thank you for coming. From the bottom of my heart.'

They were moved to shout, even Dan.

‘You know I'm no good at this public-speaking business,' Connie held one hand to the side of her face. It reminded Sara of Luke's gesture when he was shy. ‘I've asked Gus to share the plans for the rest of the week.' Connie grinned.

Gus stood up. He was blushing. Sara smiled, imagining him cross-examining in court.

‘Well, Connie should be filling you in, but here goes. Unfortunately, there's a storm coming in later tomorrow. But we should get you out riding in the morning.'

Matt shouted, ‘I'll pay good money to see Julian on a horse.'

‘What do you mean?' Julian snapped in mock umbrage. ‘I was born in the saddle.'

Dan interjected. ‘Julian, please. Gus, do continue.'

‘Connie has booked the sleep-out deck in the middle of the dunes. It's incredible. Newly built. It's for a maximum of three people and she was hoping to tempt Sara and Lizzie out there.'

‘A girls' night out,' Sara laughed, surprised by her excitement.

Gus immediately turned to her. ‘Yes, it is incredibly beautiful sleeping out on the dunes. And extremely luxurious, eh?'

‘I should hope so, Gus,' she teased gently.

He blushed again, which amused her. ‘Well, then we are going to track that black rhino.' There was a cheer from Julian. ‘Hopefully find you some cheetah and wildebeest along the way.'

He paused and fumbled in his pocket for a piece of paper folded into repeated, neat squares. He took his time, laboriously unfolding the paper. He was surprisingly secure and confident.

‘Oh yes and then dinner out on the dunes,' he looked at Connie. ‘And the finale… Do you want to say?'

Connie shook her head.

‘Hopefully, if the wind's right, you will end the week on a balloon ride over Gae with John. He is a great balloonist from Jo'Burg.'

‘Connie, that is amazing,' Luke said.

Sara stood up. ‘To Connie. Without you we would never have been dragged kicking and screaming to the Kalahari.' She was overwhelmed by her feelings for each one of them. ‘You are such important friends to me. I don't know why it's taken so bloody long for us to be together again.'

She sank back down. She felt the glow of friendship and, yes, even contentment. Julian got up abruptly and moved round the table in her direction. She tried to catch Luke's attention to avoid Julian's eye. She didn't want to engage with his
snappy sarcasm. Luke tried to move his chair back in the sand, but ended up tipping it over. He struggled to right it. Connie moved to help him. They both stood up awkwardly and wandered towards the bar.

Sara sighed. Julian took Luke's place to her right, leaning in to her, smiling. ‘Sara, you need a good shag.'

She rolled her eyes at him to show she could take the joke. ‘What? Are you volunteering?'

Normally, Julian would have batted it back, but he frowned. ‘On a serious note, Sara, I am worried for you.' He gently prodded the tablecloth to make his point. ‘That crime reporter Alistair Bent has waded in. It sounds serious to me. You are following it, aren't you?'

She yawned elaborately, but her heart was accelerating. ‘Alistair's a prat. He's only tweeting because
The Times
will never print his rubbish.'

‘I'm not sure. He insists that new evidence is going to come to light.'

It needs to be a serious piece of evidence, Mrs Sutton
.

‘Has he got any ideas?' She feebly batted back.

Sara could see Joanne Sutton's cool eyes when she first took her through the sequence of events that early morning when Jade disappeared. By then Sara had been briefed, the Suttons were charged, Joanne Sutton was on bail and her story sounded highly rehearsed, even scripted.

Only Sara didn't see it. Her gut told her the exhibits were weak: her DNA on the teddy bear in the Range Rover boot and a signed witness statement from a neighbour who saw the Suttons leaving in Nigel Sutton's Range Rover the previous
evening without Jade. The neighbour would buckle under cross-examination. It was a dark night, there was no street lighting on their lane; and there were tall poplar trees between the two houses.

How can you be sure of what you saw?

Of course, there was the risk the jury would believe her, but it was tiny. They had the best Scenes of Crime Officer, Lee Pattinson. He had scrutinised the Suttons' house, her Mini, his Range Rover. After twenty-five years, nothing escaped him. He only came up with a minute blood clot on the side of the Suttons' bathroom. It was Jade's blood. What did that prove? Pattinson's inadmissible opinion was Jade hadn't slept in her bed for several days, before the morning when the Suttons reported her missing. Of course, the large quantity of sleeping pills in Joanne Sutton's bathroom cabinet was noteworthy. But there was no proof that they gave them to Jade.

The jury would be in line with Sara's junior, John. How likely was it that a middle-class couple living a comfortable, happy life in shiny Pangbourne would murder their only daughter? If they had, where was the body? The police had done an extensive, repeated search, the most intense ever carried out in the UK. They had combed West Berkshire and all the surrounding counties, followed up on every lead that Jade's beautiful face had prompted.

Julian cut across her thoughts, persisting: ‘He predicts a high-profile retrial.'

‘Does he?' she said automatically. ‘He's wrong about the Jade Sutton case,' Sara continued. Arguing always gave her confidence. ‘What new evidence could come to light? Look, you would need the bloody body in their garden.'

Sara was unavoidably pulled back to that day in their garden. Joanne Sutton didn't eat any cake. Sara could have told that from her figure. She waited for Sara to finish her second slice to the point of pressing down the last crumb with a forefinger and licking it bare. When she had finished, Sara was forced to return to the seriousness of the situation. She ate desperately to buy time to figure out Joanne Sutton.

Had she lured Sara to Pangbourne under false pretences?

After his massage, Luke had made a conscious decision to avoid being alone with Connie. It was the best solution. When his chair slipped, she suggested they went to the bar. He hesitated, but she touched his arm and pointed to Matt, who was already there on his own. Luke relaxed and followed Connie through to the bar. Matt was balanced on the nearest barstool.

‘Luke, Connie.' His face brightened.

‘Where's Katherine?' Luke asked instinctively.

‘Hit the sack. It's stressful.' Matt groaned. ‘For her and for me.'

‘It will be worth it, Mattie,' Luke insisted.

‘Luke's right,' Connie added.

Luke glanced at her quickly.

Matt didn't seem to notice. ‘Can we collapse on those sofas over here?'

They slumped down. Luke consciously took the end of Matt's sofa, leaving Connie alone on the beige one. Connie said nothing. She had that dreamy, faraway look.

Matt lurched up from the sofa and touched her lightly on one knee. ‘Penny for them?'

She shrugged. ‘Nothing. A little drunk, a little tired. But Matt, I am worried about you and Katherine. It's hard on both of you.'