The Drowning Lesson (23 page)

The girl turns right again at the fifth junction, but when I follow, she has disappeared. I lean against the wall of a building, blinking sweat out of my eyes, scanning the crowds. Then I catch sight of the red and green dress on the opposite side of the road, she's in a queue by a yellow coach just beyond the taxi rank.

I cross over and stay out of sight, hidden in the crowds milling around the taxis; the blonde girl is intent on the phone in her hands, her package by her feet. Under the hat, her hair swings forward in an unfamiliar movement. I should stop this, go back to the hotel, join Adam, prepare for the press – any of these taxis will take me – but at the exact moment I turn, the girl's free hand flutters up to touch her neck and, though she isn't wearing a necklace, my heart begins to race.

Backing against the door of a stationary red car with a ‘Taxi' sign in the window, I find the handle by fumbling behind me; opening the door I turn and sit down in the back seat. The taxi driver looks round,
startled, a man in his early twenties, mouth working on gum, tight yellow T-shirt, dark glasses pushed up into oiled curls. There is an unsmiling moment as we stare at each other, he in surprise, while I assess him: too good-looking, too young. An older man, a father, would be better, tougher, if necessary. I nod an apology and am about to slip out when I catch movement, a blur of green and red, up ahead. The girl is boarding the yellow coach.

At that moment the young man gives me a smile of such luminous sweetness that I feel warmed through. ‘I am glad to carry you today, ma'am. Where to?'

‘There is a woman on that yellow coach. I need to follow her.'

He smiles at the cliché and, without asking further questions, starts the engine, then pulls out behind the coach.

I'd forgotten the way Teko's hand would reach towards her neck. Even if I'd thought to tell Goodwill, it would have been hard for anyone else to spot that fragmentary movement. I should call the police, but if the girl is Teko, the sight and sound of police cars would warn her. She could slip from the coach when it slows and melt into the suburbs, disappearing for ever.

‘Do you know where the coach is going?'

‘Tshabong, non-stop.'

Tshabong: the name is familiar. A town in the south. Adam went there last year to pick up medical supplies trucked in from South Africa. ‘How long will it take?'

The smooth shoulders rise in an elaborate shrug. ‘Seven hours, maybe.'

Seven hours. Can I really let myself travel miles across country after a girl in a coach just because of the way she touched her neck? What shall I tell Adam? If he knows I've started following strangers again, he'll talk about abnormal grieving and antidepressants; on the other hand he might send the police after Teko and we'll lose her. There will never be another chance like this. I have to take it.

I quickly punch a message to Adam:
Encountered old colleague. Possibly helpful. Back later.

It's not a complete lie, after all. I turn off my phone. ‘Are you all right to take me all the way there and back again?'

‘As long as you pay me.' There is anxiety under the smile: he is taking a risk.

‘I will pay you whatever you ask.' In my bag I have the cash we took out at the airport for car hire to Kubung, and for presents to give Elisabeth, Josiah, Peo and her husband. Adam has more at the hotel. I don't care what it costs.

The driver turns, flashing another smile. ‘My name is Bogosi, and you know what? This is my lucky day.'

We have reached the suburbs of Gaborone. The road has widened, the houses are larger and more spaced out; trees show above garden walls. The coach has picked up speed and is lurching along rapidly, swaying slightly from side to side. Ten minutes later we are in open country, flat and sandy, with thorn trees; this is how it will be for hundreds of miles.

I feel a sense of calm, of being carried forwards irrevocably into the next few hours. It could be Teko just ahead of me, jammed up against the window, eyes closed, unaware that soon she will be tipped back into the past. In a few hours, we might have answers that will help, even if they close down hope.

The car speeds silently on. Sedated by heat and the steady motion, I feel myself drifting into darkness.

I am woken by the car slowing down. My head thumps, my throat feels dust-caked. Wet lines of sweat have accumulated in bent elbows and knees. Bogosi is pulling up behind the yellow coach in a roadside garage forecourt. The driver, a short man with thick grey hair, is stretching and yawning by the petrol pump, his large belly filling his blue shirt like a beach ball. A young boy refuels the coach for him. Bogosi gets out and puts petrol in the taxi himself, waving away another boy waiting hopefully to help: no one touches his car. He disappears into the shop, emerging after a while with bottles of water, packets of chewing gum and nuts. He exchanges words with the coach driver, clapping him on the back and laughing. The driver laughs too, nodding and spreading his hands wide to illustrate a point.

Bogosi gets into the car, handing me a bottle of water and some peanuts. ‘My aunt's first husband,' he says, still smiling. ‘He does this journey twice a week. People come to town to see relatives, meet up with
friends and so on.' He settles in the seat, stripping the cellophane from the packet of chewing gum with his teeth.

‘You didn't tell him we were following someone on the bus?'

His eyes meet mine in the rear-view mirror as he shakes his head. In that moment I understand two things: he knows who I am, and he is on my side.

‘Do you want to get out?' he asks. ‘I'll go between you and the bus to the toilets.'

I'd been wrong to think an older man would be better. Bogosi is lending himself to this with the joyous enthusiasm of a boy. I pull the hat lower over my face and we walk together as far as the shop. He waits outside while I use the pit latrine at the back of the building. I look dishevelled in the fragment of mirror that's wedged between the basin and the wall – strands of hair stick to my skin with damp – but there is a difference in the set of my mouth. I look as I did in the scrub-room mirror before a difficult operation, summoning determination. It's working. I feel stronger. The headache has receded.

When I emerge, Bogosi is leaning against the wall, talking on his mobile – cancelling customers, maybe, or appeasing a girlfriend. This journey must have disrupted his routine but he smiles when he sees me, putting the phone away. He's bought a newspaper, and as we walk back side by side, he spreads the
printed sheets wide to screen me from the coach windows.

‘Put your feet up, ma'am. It will be better for you,' he tells me, as we get in. He starts the car, following the coach as it swings out onto the road again. I settle, spreading his newspaper on the seat. He is right. when I lift up my feet, resting them on the paper, I feel more comfortable immediately.

‘
Ka a leboga.
' I smile at him in the rear-view mirror, pulling off my hat. ‘It's the only thing I know. I wish I could speak your language as well as you speak mine.'

‘My auntie taught me.' He smiles back modestly. ‘She worked in England. I watch American films on television also.'

‘So what kind of place is Tshabong?'

‘It's a border town, small, very boring.' He looks out of the window at a group of teenage girls walking along the verge towards the garage, smiles and waves. Most ignore him, but one girl giggles and glances away. Bogosi looks gratified.

‘So what do they do, the people who live there?'

‘Some work in Kgalagadi game park to the west. There's a couple of car-repair centres. And there's crime, of course. Plenty of criminals.' He lowers the window, spits his gum into the road. ‘You can escape to South Africa just by stepping across the street. Stuff gets smuggled. There are border controls, but in
time they get used to you …' He leaves the sentence hanging. His fingers tap the wheel. ‘It's quiet. Not many people. No one goes there much. Camels wander through sometimes.' Bogosi turns on the radio and the car fills with the strong beat of drums. If the girl on the bus is Teko and she's part of some gang, they may have guns to guard what they have stolen. I wipe my hands on my trousers, leaving a sweaty smudge on the linen and wrench my mind to Alice and Zoë. They looked happy on Skype today. Dr Harnham may have been right and they needed this break from me. Who knows what depth of sorrow I've infected them with? My mobile shows ten missed calls and four messages from Adam.

I text:
I'm fine. I'm safe.
My watch reads five p.m.
I'll explain all in two hours.

Despite the fear that seems to pulse in time to the music, my eyes start to close.

I wake to a quieter light: the car is slowing and pulling in behind the coach as it draws into a bus stop. Around us there are small concrete houses with yards and little dirt tracks running between them; a powdery haze of orange sand hangs in the air.

The clock on the dashboard reads seven p.m. exactly; the first passengers disembark, mostly women with baskets and carrier-bags, stepping stiffly down. Handclasps and goodbyes are exchanged with the driver; the blonde girl is almost the last to step out.
She ignores the bus driver's cheerful nod and sets off, carrying her package, walking quickly up the road.

I am about to open the back door of the car to follow her when Bogosi turns. ‘The blonde lady with the hat, right?'

‘Yes, but –'

‘Wait here. She will notice you, but not me,' Bogosi says, with authority.

‘I'll come back when I've seen where she lives.' He gets out and slams the door, puts his head back through the open window, says, ‘I am enjoying this,' and is gone before I can object, pacing fast up the street with an easy stride. I watch until the girl turns right by a group of trees, Bogosi following after a few seconds.

The minutes lengthen. Putting on the hat and dark glasses, I climb out of the car. My back aches as I stretch. The hot smell of desert has a dark undertone of meaty decay, as though an animal has died and been left to rot in the heat. The quiet is immense but gradually the screech of cicadas and frogs seeps into the silence, bringing back the evening garden at Kubung, and then my mind is flooded with the kind of memories I've learnt to keep at bay: Sam lying on our bed, kicking his fat legs in the sunlight, crowing with delight at Zoë; Sam in the cot, his face soft with sleep; Adam holding him as he walked around the garden playing hide and seek with the girls. The
empty road blurs. I shouldn't have come here. I shouldn't have come back to Botswana at all. There are memories everywhere I look. I want to go back: this has been a useless escapade. The girl isn't Teko. I ought to go home.

No one is about. Where have all the people gone who got off the coach a few minutes ago? Two hours have passed since I texted Adam. In the car, I punch in another quick message:
All fine, nearly done. Bear with me. Will explain v. soon
.

Five more minutes pass, ten. In the silence, whispers start in my head, telling me I should have called the police, that I don't know Bogosi at all. He might have caught up with the girl by now, warned her that I'm round the corner. If it's Teko, she would be easy to blackmail: he knows the story from the press. She will be called to account for negligence, he might say, unless she gives him money. Buying time, she'll start counting notes into his hand –

‘I've seen where she lives,' Bogosi gasps. He is by the car, bent over, holding the doorframe and dripping sweat on to his shoes. ‘We can get closer.'

The imaginary scene disappears. Bogosi registers my congratulations with a smile. After a moment he gets back in, starts the engine and drives slowly down the road, turning right up a little track.

‘It's not far,' he says, still out of breath. ‘But she stopped once or twice to rest – I had to step out of
sight.' He smiles but his fingers tighten on the wheel: he's warming to the chase.

‘We'll get near enough to describe the house, then tell the police. They can check it from then on. Let's leave that part to them.' It could go wrong if he becomes too involved: he might scare them off.

The track ends. He turns the car round to face the road, nodding as he does to a wooden gate in a high wall behind some trees.

‘She went in that way,' he says. ‘I saw her unlock it with a key from her bag, but she was carrying something so maybe she forgot to lock it up again.' He smiles. ‘It might be worth taking a look.'

‘A look? Are you mad, Bogosi? Even if the gate is unlocked, there could be people in the garden or dogs. I'll be seen straight away.'

‘The front door is further round,' he continues, as though I haven't spoken. ‘I'll go and knock, then whoever comes, I'll keep them talking while you check out the garden.' He is playing a part culled from a film: I'm to case the joint while he provides the distraction.

‘What will you talk about that could possibly be convincing?'

‘My new door-to-door taxi service.' He waves a hand nonchalantly. ‘Cheap rates for special customers. I've done doorstep advertising before. People like it.'

‘In Gaborone, perhaps, not in a tiny settlement in the countryside, miles from anywhere,' I hiss. ‘We ought to phone the police. They'll deal with it.'

‘Trust me,' he says, with a grin, getting out of the car quickly. Before I can stop him, he's walked towards the corner of the wall, swaggering a little. Just before he disappears he turns and points exaggeratedly at the gate. Quick, the gesture says, I'm buying you time.

A distant bell rings, answered by the deep bark of dogs. I was right. In an isolated place like this, people have dogs. Fifteen months ago, I thought I'd known better than to follow Kabo's advice. Regret washes over me, receding slowly.

Voices drift towards me in the still air: Bogosi is talking to a woman; another voice joins in, lower-pitched. Bogosi doesn't reappear. Perhaps he's charmed his way in after all. A minute ticks by. Another. My scalp crawls with tension. The dogs went to the bell: it might be safe to chance the gate. I could take photos for the police. Slipping on my sandals again, phone in hand, I run to the gate before I can change my mind. The handle turns smoothly. Bogosi guessed right, the gate is unlocked.

Another world opens up. A striped square lawn, shockingly green after the dull browns of the bush; red flowers in a stone urn, a couple of teak sun-loungers, angled parasols. The still water of an oval pool shines in the sun but the house is forbidding: all
the windows are closed and barred. There are large empty kennels at either side of the back door.

Inside the gate, and keeping close to the wall, I photograph everything I can see. The house, the windows, the lawn. A door slams somewhere inside the house. Turning to go, I catch sight of four cots with their sides up, pushed into the shade near a little path running along the side of the house. Is this, after all, simply an orphanage? If so, where are all the children? Orphanages should be noisy places full of children and toys. Unease prickles. There are only moments left.

In the first cot there is a sleeping baby of a very few months, lying on his side, the dark skin of his cheeks flawless against the white sheet. The baby in the second is awake, the brown eyes watching the pattern of light and shade above him, his open palm pink as a shell. The child in the third cot is a little girl, older than the boys. There are pink ribbons in her hair and her lashes curl against her cheeks as she sleeps, a tiny thumb in her mouth. I photograph them all. Fighting the urge to leave, I risk a glimpse into the fourth cot.

My heart jolts. The boy in this cot is white, sleeping face down. For a second I can't breathe, but in another I see it can't be Sam: this child is too old, too big, so tall his legs are bent, feet jammed against the end of the cot. Does this orphanage take white
children, then? I take a photo but the click disturbs him: he is turning his head, rolling on to his back.

The world stops turning. Colours fade. A dull beating sets up in the pit of my stomach, rising to my chest, thumping so strongly it could knock me to the ground. My vison narrows and the only thing I see is the birthmark: it covers most of his right cheek; the edges are crenellated like the edges of a map.

Even as I'm reaching in and carefully, quickly, lifting him out, I can tell he is perfect, both exactly the same and different. I settle him against me and instantly I am complete. I press my cheek lightly against his hair, gold still but darker, thicker. The shape of his head is exactly the same. My arms are full of him. He has grown more than I would have thought possible. He's a boy of fifteen months, not a four-month-old baby. I knew that, of course, but I hadn't felt it. He'd stayed unchanged in my heart.

He's heavy too. Hot and heavy with sleep. I've dreamt this often but he was tiny in my dreams, a pale, cold baby, lifeless in my arms, as I called for help, running up and down empty corridors. Never this beautiful child, this breathing boy, flushed with sleep, a dried line of mucus on his chin. My heart is banging strangely. I mustn't die, not now. People don't die of joy, of thankfulness.