The Art of Unpacking Your Life (25 page)

‘Both.'

They laughed.

‘Christ, we're a fine pair,' Matt ruffled his hair. ‘Here's the thing: you never stopped loving Connie. What are you going to do about it? Jesus, I don't know.'

Luke smiled.

‘You know, she's fair game now, considering the circumstances, but not considering how vulnerable she is feeling. Am I making any sense?'

Luke nodded.

‘You've got to grab happiness. I did.' Matt squeezed his hands together.

Luke loved Matt. He was down to earth, solid and reliable. A great bloke. A great friend. He lurched forward and gave him a bear hug across one shoulder. ‘Why don't we see more of each other, Matt? When we're back in London, can we meet up soon?'

‘I would really love that, Luke,' Matt nodded back. ‘You're a great mate. I've missed you.' Matt lurched up. ‘But if I don't go to bed now, I'm going to fall over.'

Luke laughed. ‘Lightweight.'

Matt fell against the bar as he climbed down from the stool. ‘Whoops…'

‘Okay, wait, let me help you.'

With one arm round Matt's waist, Luke directed him across the bar and out towards the path. They were both giggling and shushing each other as they approached Matt's house.

‘You better go,' said Matt in a dramatic whisper, ‘Or Katherine will blame you for leading me astray.' He prodded him lightly on the chest, ‘It's all your fault.'

They both laughed.

‘Listen,' Matt looked at him. ‘About Connie: go for it, mate. What have you got to lose? Nothing but your pride, which is worth shit. You said that to me all those years ago. You were right. Count to three.'

Matt shoved open the heavy door and shouted over his shoulder. ‘Julian's leaving tomorrow morning. Actually, this morning. Night, night Luke.'

Everything made them hoot. They ate the rest of the puddings in bed, careless of chocolate on the duvet. Sara remembered Gus had shown her a stash of chocolate. They handed round the bar as they had done with other substances in the past. Lizzie mentioned she was on the Dukan Diet, which made Sara laugh until she complained she had a stitch. Lizzie exacted her revenge by repeating her claim that Gus fancied Sara, which exacted a long list of animals she would rather shag first. They taunted Lizzie for snoring and Sara for hogging the duvet, until they were asleep, bar Connie.

Lying awake with her stomach warmly lined, Connie had the kind of clarity that only comes to you in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. She reached into her rucksack, felt for her torch and her grandfather's book. She opened the cover. It didn't look as if he had written in it. The first eight pages were blank. Then
Connie discovered his scrawled notes. They weren't in a diary form. More thoughts scattered at random angles over different parts of a page.

She read:
Dr Livingstone set off from the nearest town on his Moffat Mission into ‘deepest Africa'
.

She turned the book sideways to read the other note on the page:
Kalahari comes from the Tswana word, kgala, meaning great thirst
. Perhaps, Connie thought, a bushman had told him that, and he had written it down. Not to forget it.

The ink had washed into the next page, but Connie could just about make it out:
Bushmen have been in the Kalahari 20,000 years. Imagine! BUT farming livestock impossible. Which is why it is the last great wilderness
.

Connie looked up, knowing the vastness was around her yet still darkly invisible. A wide, wild range of beautiful, even rare and endangered, species would be waking up in this safe haven, magically far away from the destructive nature of the human world. All because of her grandfather's understanding and commitment.

Connie knew exactly what she wanted to do. She went to see if Gus was still awake. He was dressed and sitting in the vehicle with a coffee. ‘Hello. It is amazing out here.'

‘Hello, Connie. Yeah, early on the reserve, it's something else.' He glanced towards the bed. ‘The other two asleep, eh?'

‘Lizzie would probably worship you if you make her a coffee in about five hours,' she paused, wondering whether to say anything. ‘Listen, I absolutely love Sara. She is one of my dearest friends. But she can overstep the mark.'

Gus waved an arm dismissively, before looking up with the gentlest of smiles. ‘Well, out here, we allow fires to rage, eh? We just keep an eye.'

Connie watched his expression curiously. In it, she read someone who wanted to know Sara, to truly understand her. Someone like Gus would be great for her. Calm with an understated intelligence. Connie sighed. She couldn't think of anyone remotely like him in London.

Connie paused not sure how much Gus knew of her situation. ‘It's terribly early.' She looked at her watch to confirm that it was four in the morning. ‘But I was wondering if you wouldn't mind driving me back to Gae, and then coming back to pick up the others later.'

They hardly talked on the way back. It was black around them, which made it easier. Connie was nervous about what she was going to do, half-wishing she was still buried under the Egyptian cotton duvet. But she had been a coward for too long. When they got to the path, Gus stopped the vehicle.

‘I'll get back to the others.'

‘Thank you, I'm sorry to drag you back here.'

‘Connie, no worries. You take care, eh.'

Connie walked along the path. She pushed on the door, wondering whether he would have locked it. It was open. The wood scraped against the floor. The sound echoed into the silence. Connie waited to acclimatise her eyes to the darkness, before moving into the bedroom. He was asleep with one arm and the top of his shoulder visible over the duvet. Connie walked quietly to the side of the bed. She crouched into a squat and then sunk to her knees. Luke had always slept on his back. Now he slept on
his chest with the abandonment of a child. His narrow head was tucked to one side. She had intended to wake him, though she didn't allow herself to think what would happen if she did. Now he was in front of her, she wanted him to stay asleep. She didn't want to have to articulate her thoughts. She raised her arms until her fingers touched the edge of the duvet closest to his shoulder. She gently lifted it up like a tent and folded it carefully down to the base of his back. Her breath was laboured. At first, she could only see the outline of his back, but she bent over, scanning it carefully. She knew the risk she was taking of waking him angry and hurt, maybe even disgusted by her tremendous invasion of his privacy. What gave her the right? Yet she had this irresistible urge to see his back. She stared at the raised scar crossing his lower spine and ran her little finger along it. He didn't wake. She got bolder. She ran her forefinger up on to what looked like a burn. His skin was shrivelled and whitened. Luke stirred. Connie instinctively removed her finger. He rolled over on to his side. As if he sensed his body's sudden coolness and exposure, he opened his eyes.

Connie stood up quickly.

He didn't move. He stared at her. Connie was terrified – she was totally in the wrong. What was he thinking? For once, she didn't know. She realised how much she cared about his good opinion, even after all this time. He said nothing. He would put it down to her grief over Julian's baby, if she could get out of here. She didn't move.

‘What are you doing here, Connie?' he said quietly.

‘I'm so sorry. I don't know, Luke,' she mumbled, looking away. ‘Please go back to sleep, I'm going now.'

‘Where are you going Connie? Back to Julian?'

She shook her head. ‘No. I'm going to make him move into the basement flat, where Sally used to live. It's over in that sense, that much I know.'

He sat up, exposing his chest and leant sideways to turn on his bedside lamp. His movement, nakedness and the light all startled her. She stepped back, aware of the sensuality of the situation.

‘Would you grab my T-shirt?' Luke pointed at a white one over the chair at the end of his bed.

Connie held it out for him across the bed. He couldn't reach it without leaning forward. He hesitated – he clearly didn't want to expose his back to her again. She moved round the bed to his side. For a second, they both held on to it and then in the next, Luke was holding the T-shirt in one hand and Connie's free hand in the other. His touch made her eyes water.

His face spread into a smile. ‘Who would have thought we would both have ended up in such a mess?'

She was thankful. He was giving her a way out. She nodded, ‘Yes, it's mad.'

He readjusted his hold of her hand, pulling it gently towards his chest. Connie had a choice: she could follow her hand or let go of his grasp. She briefly considered her response to Sara's question about having an affair.
I couldn't go through with it
. He spotted her reaction immediately and moved her hand back into her lap.

She pulled him towards her, running one hand gently over his back. She ran her fingers along each one. She knew exactly where the scars were.

They were in the vehicle for their early drive out to walk into black rhino. According to a message laboriously relayed by Matt, who was looking rough, Luke wasn't feeling well.

Julian appeared dressed in safari shorts and shirt. He had some front to tip up for a ride with the group. What were they supposed to say to him? He looked anxious with a dramatically penitent expression. Connie completely ignored him. She was studiously reading an old exercise book. She was strangely calm since their night on the deck, as if she had come to some decision. She had left in the night. When Sara questioned Gus about it, he was surprisingly reticent. Was she intending to have a heart to heart with Julian? He insisted he didn't know.

Thankfully, Gus didn't stop talking. Sensing their awkward silence, he padded out rhino info. ‘We have one third of the world's black rhinos in South Africa here, at Gae. We try to stop the poachers by putting notches in their ears, and microchips under the skin at their neck.'

Normally Sara would have dug into a discussion about the legal laxity of the South African government and their failure to protect their endangered species, but she was too concerned about Connie.

Getting no response even from her, Gus continued for his imaginary audience. ‘You know, they are irascible, temperamental animals.' He ruffled the front
of his hair. He was attractive in a boyish way. ‘We think that the black rhino are more aggressive than their white cousins, because they are smaller, eh?'

The silence set in, deepened and widened. The vehicle was too cramped for all of them. Matt shifted irritably; Connie and Julian stared out in different directions.

Julian turned to Lizzie and Sara. ‘Did you three have a great dawn breakfast?'

Sara noticed Gus glancing at her in the mirror, but she quickly diverted her attention to Lizzie. She gave her a warning look she prayed she would understand.

‘It was amazing. The colour and the light. We all had such a fantastic breakfast cooked by Gus. Thank you, Gus. I was saying to Connie, I can't believe how much I ate,' Lizzie said.

Sara squeezed Lizzie's hand. Where the hell did Connie go? She had a pretty good idea. She glanced over to her, expecting Connie to be studiously admiring the view, but she turned to look at Sara. She smiled at her. It was how she always thought of Connie, before Julian and her pile of kids. Serene and dreamy.

‘They have a strong sense of smell. They can pick up human scent up to eight hundred metres away. Most of the recorded cases of rhino charging show that they stop a few metres away from their quarry. It's strongly believed by rangers that it's a form of curiosity, eh?' Gus nodded at no one in particular.

‘Right, Gus.' said Sara. ‘Curiosity might kill a tourist or two surely.'

‘Not on my watch, Sara,' Gus said back. ‘If they do charge, which is highly unlikely as we will be down wind, don't move, eh? Stay absolutely still.'

‘Forgive me if I completely ignore you,' she snapped but then remembered Connie's reprimand about not torturing the ranger. ‘And climb the nearest tree.'

‘That would be a stupid move, Sara,' Gus intoned without his usual sheen of politeness. ‘You can't outrun a rhino.'

‘You should see me try,' she pipped back.

‘They can charge at fifty-five miles an hour.'

‘We've got a lot in common. That's me charging down Westbourne Grove.'

Gus ignored her. ‘I would be forced to shoot, which, as I've told you, is a final resort.'

She tried to catch Connie's eye but she was staring out at the veld, Julian watching her intently from the other side of the vehicle.

Sara, quickly spoke to fill the silence. ‘Gus, what would you do? Sling me over one shoulder with your rifle over the other?'

Lizzie joined in, ‘The idea of any man getting away with carrying you anywhere. Sorry, that's a picture.'

Gus stopped the vehicle. ‘Listen, guys, this isn't funny. It's about basic survival. I want to take every one of you back alive, eh?'

‘If you leave one behind, we won't ask for our money back, I promise.' Sara said without thinking.

Silence descended again, even Gus took the hint. They drove seemingly on and on. The heat was unbearable. It fought to get under the canvas roof, striking Sara as they turned the corner. She was sweaty. Gus explained the temperature was higher after a storm. She was craving caffeine but she was dreading their coffee stop. She couldn't bear the idea of getting trapped with Julian or trying to make sense of
Connie's behaviour. She could hardly ask her outright where she was last night. The whole situation was quite maddening.

When it felt like the journey might never end, Ben made a signal with his right arm and Gus veered off the track. Sara squeezed the bar, preparing for the lurch, which took them up and down into a small, shaded waterhole.