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could feel nothing, not even towards Mum, the beneficiary of this last letter. I was beyond that. My movements had reduced to the automatic, my mind finally made up, and my body ready to accept what only the truly desperate or uncaring ever contemplate. Those last few minutes had drained me to the point where I simply wanted to get things over. As quickly and cleanly as possible. My heart was devastated and battered and now it was telling me what my head had been saying for weeks. I was useless; no good to anyone, least of all myself. The blackness of the night matched the blackness in my soul and my activities were reduced to little more than the mechanical as I moved about the room. There was little to do, little to prepare. Only the method produced any uncertainty. Not the fact of my decision. With an ego so battered, so appalled at itself, little was needed to tip the balance. Just a word or a gesture. No more. And certainly not the monstrous tirade still ringing in my ears from a father who, despite everything, I had still loved, deep down, as only a child could. Until now. Now hate and despair hovered at my shoulder, goading me on, whispering to me of revulsion and self-loathing, misery and heartache. Articulating the malicious lie so easy to believe – that it would serve my father right to know he had been the cause of his own son’s death. How much had changed in so short a time. Just one ill-fated, chance encounter and my whole future, whatever it might have been, was over. Gone forever. I was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    â€œMum,” the terse note began, penned in what was to her a familiar, barely mature hand that was nevertheless beginning to display the strong curls and loops of a natural extrovert. “By the time you read this it will all be over. Don’t come looking for me. Dad’s right. I’ve let you both down. There’s no excuse for what I’ve done or what I’ve become, so it’s better for everyone that I end it. I’ve nothing to live for. Please don’t blame yourself. Please tell Roz I’m sorry, but to forget me. I can’t get away from Matt, so I’ve decided to join him. Forgive me. I love you, Paul.”

Chapter 9

    And so began the real story. The soft blackness of the African night cocooned me in its comforting embrace as the last engine note stuttered off the surrounding trees and died swiftly away. A subdued wind sighed out of the east, stirring just the tops of the yellow-barked fever trees in the grove ahead. There was no menace for me in the dark shadows, no fear in the open spaces, and no dread of the wild. I was a young man who had grown to love its solitude, learned to respect its unforgiving yet strangely predictable nature. The incessant croaking of bullfrogs in the nearby pools stopped momentarily as they sensed my presence. Woodenly, and feeling as if I was moving in a deep sleep, I stepped away from the shelter of the old van my father had so recently raced into the driveway and to which, with the passing of midnight, I had slipped out, knowing the keys would still be in the ignition.
    The house had been quiet. I knew Mother would be lying rigid beside her snoring husband, careful even in sleep not to arouse or antagonise him. Too terrified even to defend her son. So I had let the van roll quietly down the hill away from the house before firing the ignition.
    â€œ
Oh, Mum, why do you have to be so afraid of him?
” I had tilted my head back as so often before, letting my eyes drink in the incredible beauty of the Milky Way, spread out in its familiar swathe across the star-lit tropical sky. The pale silky light of a million stars almost, but not quite, sufficient to read the sighting calibrations on my rifle. I had always loved the night, navigating so often by the Southern Cross, familiar with the starry clusters from Orion’s Belt to Sagittarius A and now, at the end, I wanted to hold them