Zintle shrieked and scrambled on all fours towards the door.
Sunshine slowly braised Vee’s forehead in sweat. Eyes shielded, she estimated the peril of venturing out unprotected and shrank back indoors.
She dragged her tiny suitcase across the baked mud floor and dug through it for her straw hat. Above her head, bouts of vigorous rustling emanated from the roof thatching. The mice usually did the rustling, especially at night, but she looked up to find a sizeable lizard languishing in a patch of sunlight on the wall. She made a half-hearted throw at it with a tissue box and missed. The lizard twitched a mere centimetre, turning its neck to stare at her. Vee went back in search of the hat. Dusty and mashed, she pulled it from under the rickety metal bedframe.
As she crept out of the chalet, she paused by the second bed. Spread-eagled in underwear and tangled in a sheet, Chlöe lay conked out. Her hair, a spill of rooibos tea brewed strong, had shrunk into a mangled halo of frizz. Her pale skin looked like blue-veined cheese, if there existed a kind with veins that appeared to throb in high heat. A few welts of a hateful indigo were blossoming in patches on her limbs. Paintball was a game unsympathetic to delicate skin, especially if you found yourself on a team of losers who couldn’t shoot worth a damn or even recognise their own team-mates.
Vee, who’d been on the winning team, twinged with guilt. Grotto’s idea of boot camp came off more like a softened version of boarding school, but its rustic appeal was kicking Chlöe’s pampered backside. Right out the gate, the cracks had turned into gaping fissures. After arriving early Saturday morning, Chlöe realised she’d done the unthinkable: forgotten her bag of magical hair and skincare products. Before they’d even settled in properly, her whingeing had begun. The chalet was cramped and overrun with gleefully scampering critters; the mattress was too thin and lumpy; the shower spat freezing bullets. Vee didn’t have the heart to point out they were supposedly under military conditions, especially after watching Chlöe stink at almost every activity. She’d fallen on her butt during rope-climbing and hadn’t had the guts to tackle the swing bridge. Bishop the wildcat, picture perfect of a frontier woman unbridled on open prairies, had even flunked horse-riding. Who knew there existed any white girls who were scared of horses.
She ripped the top sheet off her own bed, wet it under the bathroom tap and draped it over Chlöe, shifting and muttering in her sleep. Don’t worry my lil Vanilla Princess, Vee thought, we’re out of here first thing tomorrow.
And on their return, Nico had better do a stellar job of explaining why they were marooned in hardship headquarters instead of, as she’d expected, lavishing in mod-cons in the valley. Not that he still needed to. By now his point had been made loud and clear – stay in line, or I deploy my myriad ways of making you miserable. No way in hell had she agreed to a weekend of roughing it for the sake of writing the review, no way in all nine circles of Dante’s hell had Chlöe agreed. But they’d been assured by Grotto’s management that their boss had insisted his journalists be ‘fully immersed in the true boot camp experience’ in order to get a unique and unindulged taste of the lodge’s facilities. Another Van Wyk blindside. Well played, bossman, Vee thought with a wry smile. She cast a longing eye downhill to utopia, her saliva slowly thickening like drying cement. The colourful Cape Dutch estate, complete with twinkling pool, sprawled in laughable contrast to theirs. The luxury guesthouses were solely for those ‘who truly got away to get away’. Their section, well … left a lot to be desired was putting it kindly.
Hat low, she snuck past the makeshift kraal that was the cooking area, snatching a bottle of warm mineral water on the way. The morning regimen began at the crack of dawn and broke at seven-thirty for breakfast and showers, lasting an hour and a half. Most of the team members were still lounging about after the meal, waiting for a camp instructor to kick the day’s activities back into gear. If ever she ran into them in the city, Vee would’ve walked right past them. The women were filling pots with water and loading them back onto glowing coals to soften up the pap-caked insides before they were scrubbed. Perched in a loose circle on the rocks around the fire, the men rested near huge barrels, their labour complete. After every morning’s workout, they walked over a kilometre off base to a water pump, filled the barrels, and hoisted them back on their shoulders, four men at a time.
She shook her head pityingly. White people were incredible. The toils others shouldered as a part of daily life, they paid good money to get whipped up about. Had anyone volunteered to spend a weekend in a real village with either of her grandmothers, the only thing they’d feel excited about was drowning themselves in the nearest river.
Outside the thatched fence, she hit the footpath and skirted the periphery, avoiding the main gate. None dared breach that iron curtain, and the security guards had superb radar for breakout guests. She scaled the fence at the lowest point, landing with a soft thump on the grass. Even the air felt cooler, lighter on the other side. Popping open the mineral water, she splashed dust and grass off her feet, face and elbows before tucking the bottle underarm, certain she looked shiny enough as she trudged down.
“Good morning, madam,” beamed the man at the front desk. “How’s been your day so far?”
“Oh excellent, thank you. I’ve just been to the spa …” Vee caught herself. Presentable she was, true, but her face (parched and tense) and hands (clean enough, but glaring brown moons of dirt under the fingernails) were hardly spa-fresh products. “Just for a massage. Can’t sit up long enough to endure anything in this heat.”
The concierge returned a polite half-smile. ‘Trevor Davids’ read his name tag. She broke eye contact and scanned the reception area, then through the glass double doors to the first, smaller dining area. Even for a post-breakfast crush, the vibe was dead.
“Where’s everybody gone?”
“They’ve reconvened for the final session of the conference. Today’s the last day of seminars and discussions; tonight we host the closing festivities. Although some have bunked off earlier and gone for this morning’s tour of the churches in Oudtshoorn and the nearby ostrich farms.” He coughed. “Aren’t you part of the convention?”
“No I’m, uhh … It must’ve slipped my mind.” She quickly plucked a free advertorial off the desk and fanned herself, forcing a smile. “You know what, I wanted to order a drink at the bar, but maybe I’ll just do that from my room.”
“Which would be room number … ?”
Maybe she could just walk off like she hadn’t heard, and scurry like hell once she was out of sight. The heat didn’t encourage that kind of energy burst though, and the concierge looked pretty damn fit. His eyes lasered her with open suspicion. His one hand bunched into a fist, while the other glided almost involuntarily toward the reception phone.
She cleared her throat. “Listen, Trevor. I’m with my boyfriend in a … um, private capacity. He’d hate for it to become widely known that we were here together, it’s rather delicate.” She made a woeful face that hopefully screamed ‘kept woman in precarious position’. “Management is well acquainted with our intimate situation, I believe,” she closed wildly.
His stance loosened, arms dropping to his sides. “Of course, madam. Room service will be glad to fill your order from your room.”
Vee muttered thanks and slunk off. The coast was clear as far in as the second dining room. Near the kitchen, a gaggle of female staff had congregated. She lingered near the commotion, watching one of the younger girls wind her waist in tune to the local house music playing. The rest of the group peeped through a cubbyhole at the widescreen television in the adjacent room, cheering and loudly comparing the girl’s gyrations to DJ Cleo’s background dancers. Snickering, she snuck past them.
The kitchen yawned, mercifully deserted. The first huge, upright fridge concealed nothing impressive but swirling plumes of icy air. The next one was kinder, offering colourful pinwheels of fruit arranged on silver trays. She carefully lifted the clingfilm and swiped chunks of watermelon and kiwi on toothpicks, giving a throaty moan of joy when