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glanced up at him. God, she thought, he looked even better now than he did when he was nineteen. Patti hated the way she felt right now. So distraught over Miranda, so devoted to her second husband, but still captivated by that sandy hair and those blue eyes. It was the way he fixed her with them like she was a butterfly pinned to a board, helpless around him. She’d had the courage to move on with her life when Miranda was still young, and given Miranda and her other children a great life with Rob Lewis, but there were times, like now, when she wondered if she shouldn’t have stuck it out a couple more years.
    ‘Here’s Rob,’ Jed said. ‘I should be going.’
    ‘Stay a while.’ Patti wiped her eyes again and waved to a handsome man in chinos and loafers and a blue button-down shirt. A gangly ten-year-old boy loped along behind him and the man carried a three-year-old girl, Louise, in his arms.
    ‘Hi, Jed,’ Rob Lewis said. ‘I’m so sorry about Miranda. It’s good you can go over there at such short notice.’
    ‘I had a ticket booked.’ Jed didn’t dislike Lewis. He was a nice enough guy, for a lawyer. He supposed he envied the normality of the relationship he and Patti had – the very domesticity he had turned his back on nearly two decades before.
    Patti stepped between the two men and took Louise in her arms. ‘Jed, find her, please.’
    Jed picked his green beret up off the coffee-stained table and put it on. He shook hands with Lewis and turned to face Patti.
    ‘Be strong. You know I may find nothing.’
    She nodded, tears welling in her eyes again. ‘God, Jed, I just want to know for sure, even if it’s …’
    Jed knew enough about death and grieving to understand that the recovery of a body gave closure, allowed relatives to grieve, services to be said and life to go on. He hated to think he was going to Africa in search of the mortal remains of the one good thing he had given to this world.
    ‘I’ll bring her back with me, Patti. I promise. I’ve got to go check in. They’ll be calling my flight soon.’
    He kissed Patti on the cheek, smiled down at her son, who had been too shy to talk to the uniformed stranger, and shook Rob’s hand again.
    ‘Travel safe,’ the lawyer said.
    Jed reflected that he had never travelled anywhere safe in his life.
    In truth, he still had forty minutes until his flight boarded, but he wanted some time alone, to think. He didn’t want to be reminded of the family life he had forsaken.
    He walked the length of the terminal and stopped at a bar. He ordered a beer and took it to an internet work station on the other side of the lounge. He popped some change into the slot and sipped his beer while the browser loaded. His life was governed by planning and routine and he was about to travel halfway around the world with the benefit of neither. All he knew of Zimbabwe and South Africa was what he had seen on the Discovery Channel or read in tattered copies of National Geographic while waiting for dental appointments.
    In the browser’s search field he typed in Mana Pools National Park – the place where Miranda had been doing her research. He clicked on a site that boasted maps. The park, he learned, was in the far north of Zimbabwe, in the Zambezi River Valley, below Lake Kariba and the dam of the same name. Mana Pools was a World Heritage-listed area, valued for its scenic beauty and abundant wildlife. Mana was a local word for four, referring to the number of large pools of water which were cut off from the river after the dam was constructed. Jed was surprised to learn from his web surfing that tourists were allowed to walk freely without an escort around the park – something that other national parks did not allow. Miranda had told him that she was accompanied by an armed guard when she did her research. He wondered now if she had lied to help convince him she was safe.
    The four websites he investigated were all run by private safari companies and offered