Animated by Bekker’s threats, dressed in the filthy, blood smeared clothes of yesterday, Turner emerged from the cottage into the lacerating light of African late morning to find his bike lying on its side in the driveway. Struggling to get it upright, his acid sweat thick in his nostrils, he kicked the Kawasaki to life and took off, his head throbbing. His next recollection was sitting at a light at the wheel of the HiAce in an ugly suburb, window wound down, a yeasty, fermented stink reaching out to him from the open doorway of a liquor store, tempting him to leave the van and buy a bottle of booze. The changing light rescued him but as he drove away he trawled the pockets of his jeans and found the stub of a joint, tendrils of weed wagging from its mouth, and fired it up on the crop circle coil of the van’s cigarette lighter. The spliff dropped him down a wormhole and the next thing he remembered was standing hidden by the swollen leaves of the willow tree, watching the girl emerge from the pulsating green foliage and take her place on the bench by the stream, just like the day before.
