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severe blue eyes.
    ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be here to welcome you.’
    ‘That’s fine. I was welcomed.’ She smiled.
    ‘We’ll take you sailing this weekend, how about that?’
    ‘That would be wonderful.’
    ‘You must have seen some terrible things up north. We’re all very proud of what you’re doing up there.’
    No one ever said such a thing to her, except perhaps at diplomatic receptions. ‘Thank you,’ she said. They smiled at each other.
    He was older than Julia, much older , she can remember her mother saying, her eyebrows raised, voice arched. Even then, at twelve or thirteen years old, she might have understood this was a comment about money. Her mother must have told her that Bill had been a farmer, but not of a common cow and goats variety, rather an owner and director of a vast plantation. Then, after he sold his farm to the government, a property developer, then a financier – that was the word her mother had used and her twelve-year-old self had hoarded it away. It sounded debonair, French, as if raising money might be a sublime event.
    ‘We’re so glad to meet you,’ her uncle said, ‘after all these years.’
    She found she did not know what to say.
    ‘So how have you been keeping yourself busy?’ her uncle asked.
    ‘I’ve had time to read for the first time in years. In the mornings I’ve gone running. It’s a pleasure to be able to put one foot in front of the other again.’
    ‘You can’t do that in the north? Are there mines?’
    ‘No, the mines are over the border. But there are bandits. Lions. Stray RPG fire from over the border. Plus I’d probably be kidnapped and held to ransom.’
    Her uncle’s gaze stayed on her. He might have been expecting her to laugh, to say it was all a joke.
    ‘Hey Dad. When did you get home?’ A sleepy voice, the yawn still in it, reached them from the stairs.
    Storm walked towards them. Again she had the impression he only had eyes for his father. Sleep clung to him. His eyes were huge and glistening. He looked very young, like a child.
    ‘I was just telling Rebecca we’ll take her sailing.’
    Storm drifted to the refrigerator. On the way he stopped to give his father a kiss on the cheek. She had to look away. How long had it been it since she had seen a young man kiss his father? In England, never. The young injured men she treated at Gariseb would cover their eyes with their hands when they spoke of their fathers, who had stayed at home to tend their goats or who had been killed in rebel assaults. Tears would emerge from between their fingers.
    ‘How did your meetings go, Dad?’
    ‘Fine, but I had to drive all night to get home.’
    ‘You should have waited, or flown.’
    Her uncle’s smile was quick and rueful. ‘This is what happens at a certain age, Rebecca, your children start nannying you. You don’t have any children, do you?’ The expression in her uncle’s face was mild, but some note in his voice made her heart beat faster.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, there’s still time.’ He turned to Storm. ‘What are you up to today?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Storm yawned. ‘There’s a party Evan and I want to go to.’
    ‘Why don’t you take Rebecca with you?’ Her uncle turned to her. ‘Would you like to go?’
    She saw Storm’s body reach the pool and falter, almost imperceptibly. Then he kept walking.
    ‘Ah, he didn’t hear you.’
    ‘That’s fine.’
    ‘No,’ her uncle gave her another kindly, open, yet somehow manufactured smile, ‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll go sailing, if not this weekend then the next. As a family.’

 
     
     
     
    The sands of the beach were warm, even though a layer of high translucent cloud hid the sun. You have to keep an eye out. Don’t go too far from the house. The tide comes in quickly. When it comes in there is no beach. You don’t want to be swimming home. The undertow will take you down. Julia’s many warnings – about the tide, the motorcycle taxis, the mini-buses squashing