Only We Know (26 page)

A jeep she doesn’t recognize is parked
in front of the house, and beyond it, on the veranda, Jamil stands deep in conversation
with a man in a white suit whose face Sally cannot see. Her pace quickens and her heart
beats a little faster. Jamil catches sight of her and points towards her. The man turns,
a big man, his dark face shining under the sun. He squints and raises a hand in
greeting, a smile broadening his features as she leans her bicycle against the post and
climbs the steps to greet them.

‘Mrs Yates,’ the man says, a
deep voice, a ready smile, eyes that seem bright with interest as he goes to shake her
hand. ‘I’m so glad I’ve caught you.’

‘Hello,’ she says, attempting a
smile as she takes his hand, feels the cool dryness of his skin against her sweaty palm,
and laughs apologetically. ‘Do forgive me.’

‘Not at all.
It’s a hot day,’ he says warmly. ‘And you have been
cycling.’

His suit, though crumpled, has a sort of
elegance. At a guess, she imagines him to be in his early forties. His English is
perfect, his accent cultured, and there is an air of quiet authority about him, a gleam
of intelligence in his soft eyes, and Sally knows, somehow, that for all his charm, the
visit is official. This man is police, and she knew, all along, that this was
coming.

‘Jamil, could you get us some iced
tea, please – I’m dying of thirst.’

Jamil nods and turns, and it is only when
the two of them are left alone on the veranda that the visitor introduces himself.
‘I am Inspector Atabe of the Rift Valley Police. I am the officer in charge of
investigating the death of the little girl.’

Even as he says this, she feels herself
drawing away, a kind of heave coming over her whenever she is brought to the brink of
remembering. Hearing it again: ‘Hello, lady!’ in that sing-song voice. That
girl, freckles on her nose. A rabbitty face.

‘I see,’ she says, nodding,
taking on a serious look. ‘Such a tragedy. We’re all still in
shock.’

‘I can imagine,’ he says kindly,
adding, ‘I have children of my own and it is my worst fear. That something like
that will happen to one of them.’

‘Indeed.’

‘I was hoping you might be able to
help me with my investigation.’

‘Of course,’ she agrees quickly.
‘We gave a statement at the time to one of your colleagues …’

‘Yes. Thank
you. It has been very helpful. There are just a few small things that I would like to go
over with you.’

‘All right,’ she says, feeling
the sweat on her body, her face flushed. ‘My husband is at work in the city, but
I’m sure he could come home if you need –’

‘No, no. That won’t be
necessary. I have only a few questions that I’m sure you can help me with. If
there’s anything further I require, I can always go into the city and meet your
husband later.’

She directs him to the cane chairs on the
veranda, then asks him to excuse her for a moment while she freshens up after her
ride.

‘Of course.’

She smiles like a gracious hostess, but once
inside the house, she hurries to the kitchen and finds Jamil setting the glasses and jug
on a tray. ‘Where are the boys?’ she asks, keeping her voice low.

‘Upstairs, Miss Sally.’

‘Let me take that. You go upstairs and
stay with the boys – keep them in their room until our guest is gone.’

If he’s surprised by her request,
Jamil doesn’t show it, and when she adds, over her shoulder, ‘And keep them
quiet, Jamil, okay?’ his face doesn’t betray a thing.

Outside, the inspector has turned his chair
to face the garden and he sits with one leg thrown over the other in a louche manner,
slouching a little in his seat. Bougainvillaea spills over the roof of the veranda, long
tendrils trailing down the wooden posts. In silence, he watches the whirling spray of
water from the sprinkler on the lawn catching the sunlight in a flurry of sudden stars.
He accepts the
glass of iced tea she offers
and compliments her on the garden.

‘So lush and green!’ he remarks
with pleasure.

‘A small reminder of home.’

‘Ah, yes. Although I have never been
to your country. The United Kingdom is the closest I have come.’

‘Well, that’s very close,’
she says, sitting opposite him and sips from her glass, trying to calm her nerves. She
wonders how long he will be there, and strains to hear any noises from the boys in the
house.

‘I’m always glad to return home,
though,’ he continues, in a relaxed manner. ‘Even coming here to Nairobi – I
cannot wait to leave and get back to Narok.’ He flashes her a smile, then fixes
his eyes on the garden again. ‘But that is just me. I’m a home-bird. Some
people love to travel, don’t they?’

‘It’s true.’

‘Like the Gordons, for
example.’

‘Who?’ she asks, and he turns to
her, still smiling, although his eyes seem more serious, as if he is looking at her
properly for the first time.

‘The family of the little
girl.’

‘Oh,’ she says, and feels her
cheeks flush.

A flash of memory: that woman in the water,
clutching those hair ribbons, anguish contorting her face, making her deaf and blind to
everything except her one need – to find her child.

‘The worst thing to happen to a
parent. My heart goes out to them,’ she goes on, but he makes no answer, just a
slight inclination of his head. She feels as if she has failed the first test.

His body has grown
still now that he has arrived at the reason for his visit.

‘Did you know them?’ he asks,
and she tells him, no.

‘They have been living in the valley
for a while, now,’ the inspector says. ‘They have kept mainly to themselves.
Looking for a simple kind of life, I suppose.’

‘We saw the lights from their hut in
the evenings, across the river. But we never saw them, never spoke to them. Except the
children.’

‘The children knew each
other.’

‘A little. They played together a
couple of times over the course of the few days we stayed there. God, I still
can’t believe that poor girl drowned.’

‘Cora.’ He says her name, and
Sally lifts her head.

‘Yes, Cora.’

He holds her gaze for a beat or two, then
turns his gaze back to the garden once more. ‘She was eight years old. The same
age as your son, Nicholas.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they home, the boys?’ he
asks casually, as he reaches for his glass and takes a drink.

‘No. They’re at a friend’s
house.’ She tries to make it sound relaxed, fears her own voice will give her
away.

‘And the girl, their friend –
Katherine?’

‘Katie.’

‘Yes.’

‘She and her mother have gone home,
I’m afraid.’

He pauses, his smooth face frowning just a
fraction. ‘That is a pity. I would have liked to speak to her.’

‘It was the end of their holiday. They
were only here for a few weeks.’

‘Ah. Well
…’ He allows a silence to drift in, while he gathers his thoughts.

From their perch behind her, Sally can hear
the twittering of a pair of starlings in their cage. Automatically her thoughts go to
Jim. A memory comes to her: the two of them lying together in that great raft of a bed,
the hardwood frame that groaned, the cloud of the mosquito net billowing out, like the
lazy inflations of a jellyfish, whenever a breeze passed through the open window. With
the tip of his index finger, he traced the brown curve of her nipple, the gentle ridge
of the areola like a ring of tiny blisters. Her hand stroking the hairs on his arms. The
two of them lying there, in the swamping, limb-draining fug of this strange new love,
worn out by the long months of resisting temptation, and the radiant explosion inside
her once she had surrendered to it. She had felt as if that great bed were floating out
on a body of water and never wanted to touch land again.

Inspector Atabe has lost interest in the
garden. He turns his chair so that he is facing her. Reaching into his inside jacket
pocket, he takes out a notebook and pen, and asks: ‘Will you humour me a moment,
Mrs Yates, and take a look at this?’

She acquiesces and he opens to a page where
he has drawn a map. Examining the neat marks, the careful and deliberate strokes of the
pen, she can see that he is a fastidious man, with a certain neatness, despite the
crumpled suit.

‘This is a little map I have made of
the area where the death occurred,’ he explains, and then, using the nib of his
pen as a pointer, he goes on, ‘This is your camp, and
over here is where the Gordons have their hut. And here,
between the two, is the river. You will see here this little X I have marked on the
river – this shows where Cora’s body was discovered. And over here, you will see
another X I have marked to show where the children were playing.’

She leans over the page, following the
movement of his pen, wondering where he is going with this.

‘In the statement that your sons gave
to my colleague in Narok, they said that they were playing here – the boys and their
friend, Katie, and the two little Gordon girls.’

‘That’s right,’ she
agrees. ‘I saw them there myself.’

‘And, according to the statement, they
were splashing around in the water, playing some game that involved holding their
breath?’

‘Yes. It’s a game they sometimes
play. They hold their breath under the water. Whoever stays under the longest is the
winner.’

He smiles and nods, but she feels the
undercurrent of danger.

‘Then they say that at some point they
noticed one of them was missing.’

‘Yes.’

‘Strange, don’t you think? That
they didn’t notice she hadn’t surfaced, that they weren’t paying
attention to her – as if she wasn’t part of the game?’

‘Well, no … I mean, they had been
playing it for a while. It was a hot day, they were tired, probably a little
light-headed from holding their breath for so long …’

He watches carefully as she offers this
explanation, his face giving nothing away.

‘So when they
couldn’t find her in the water,’ he goes on, ‘did they look for her
along the banks?’

‘I think so. For a little
while.’

He watches her. Waits for her to go on.

‘They were tired from the game, the
heat of the day.’

‘So when they couldn’t find her,
did they come and tell you?’

A beat. A slight flash of panic. She tries
to put herself back to that day, to what she said in the police station, the statement
she had made.

‘They assumed she had gone
home.’

‘Oh?’

‘The younger sister had already
disappeared. When they couldn’t see Cora, they thought she must have followed her
sister home.’

‘So they didn’t come to tell
you.’

‘No.’

‘What did they do?’

‘They went back to the field. Resumed
their game there.’

She says it as lightly as she can, holds his
gaze. But her heart is beating fast, and she is living it all over again – the moment
when she found them. Three heads close together in the tall yellow grass. Relief going
through her like a flash of pain. They had turned when they heard her approach and the
expressions on their faces had made her stop. Fear mingling with guilt. And that was
when she had heard it. Another scream. The word ‘No!’ carried on the air.
Felt her breath catch in her throat, understanding what it meant. When she had turned
back to them, all three children were staring at the ground, not at her, not in the
direction of that cry of distress. Heads bent, they
refused to look her in the eye, as if they knew what had
happened – as if they had been expecting it.

‘And that is where you found
them,’ Atabe goes on.

‘Yes.’

‘How long had they been
there?’

‘I’m not sure. A while, I
think.’

‘They didn’t hear you calling
them? They didn’t hear Mrs Gordon crying out Cora’s name?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t find that
strange?’

She shrugs. ‘Water in their ears –
from the river. My son, Nicky, still can’t hear properly since that
day.’

‘I see.’ He smiles, but
fleetingly. ‘And when you found the children, what did you do?’

‘I brought them back to the camp. My
husband had just returned, along with my friend, Helen.’

‘You didn’t go back to the
river? To see if Mrs Gordon had found her child?’

She hesitates, panicked and uncertain as to
what they had agreed upon – Sally and Ken – when they had gone over the story together.
They only talk about it at night, when the boys are asleep in bed. Each night since it
happened, the pair of them have picked away at the scab, whispered conversations
hampered by grief and shock, this awful cocktail of fear and a disappointment so bitter
she can taste it.

‘Not straight away, no. But it was a
few minutes later.’

‘Why did you wait?’

‘I wanted to tell my husband what had
happened.’

Again, the lightness of her tone, working
hard to keep hidden from him that frantic conversation at the camp,
Ken’s eyes widening with alarm, the urgency with which
he had walked away from her, his stride quickening to a run, through the field, down to
the river, from where the howls were rising.

‘Of course. Forgive me,’ he
says, and she realizes how defensive she must have sounded, despite her efforts.

He looks down at his notebook, flicks on a
few pages, glancing at notes she cannot read. ‘And just to go back. All the time
the children were at the river, you were at the camp?’

‘Yes. I was packing up, preparing to
leave.’

‘And you knew the children were by the
river?’

‘I did.’

‘You weren’t worried? After all,
this is the Masai Mara we are talking about. There are hippos, crocodiles …’

‘We were told that part of the river
was safe.’

‘I see.’

He flicks the pages of his notebook again,
finds his little map, runs a finger along his brow, and nods. She senses, with a degree
of relief, that this interview is coming to a close.