Shock and confusion tied a knot inside Janine’s stomach. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, gaze fixed on the open front door through which she spotted her intruder, a khaki-clad park attendant sprinting across a perfect kikuyu lawn. He was waving his arms, shouting: ‘Madame-Docter! Mister Mark!’ The man ignored the front gate like it didn’t exist, and cleared the four feet fence with the grace of a long-distance hurdler.

Janine blinked as if the man’s shadow had been etched into the yellow wood fencing. She tugged at the bed sheets. ‘Get up, Ames; it’s time to go.’ What was he doing in our rondavel? Where the hell is my husband? ‘Come on, babes. We’ve got to get out of here. Let’s go find Mister Mark.’ Who is this Madame-Docter?

Janine’s left shoulder started to throb, each pain-pulse creating an image of a contorted face that hovered like a ghastly mist over her head. The phantom face was female; she wore dark glasses and had a dark blemish on her right cheek—she grinned, and waved a thick needle in Janine’s face.

For a split-second, flashes of a game show—Janine felt the urge to call it What’s That Name with a big neon green question mark—pirouetted through her mind like a drunken, foul-mouthed male ballet dancer as she, once again, had to think of a name to match with the face.
The buzzer went, and contestant number three’s name lit up like a Christmas tree. It wasn’t pretty, though, and its little lights dripped with fear. ‘Doctor Shepherd,’ Janine whispered.

Like water molecules, fractions of memory attached themselves to each other, oozing into the gaps which Janine imagined punctured her mind like the holes in some sort of rusted kitchen appliance—a strainer, or a cheese grater, perhaps. Though flooded with relief, she soon realized that it was in no way going to be a pleasant experience. Remembering her family’s arrival at the Phalaborwa entrance gate to the national park the day before, her bottom lip started to tremble; she felt the heat in the Land Cruiser, and was staring back into the milk-yellow-eyed park attendant who stared at Amy—who made her daughter sick; the smell of Baby Wipes triggered images of Mark’s face, Mark’s disappearance through the aluminium sliding door of the office booth, accompanied by the taller park attendant who dabbed at his forehead with a leopard-motif hankie. The intruder!

Discomfort melted away faster than candle wax, and molded itself into ball of terror that rolled around in the pit of her stomach, lining it with Amy’s words: ‘Uncle Mark always plays doctor with me when you go to the psychotrist’ and ‘Are you really as sick as Uncle Mark says?’

Janine reached for Amy. When her fingers sunk into one of the doll’s stuffed legs, a galvanizing shock sizzled through her veins, which triggered that part of the brain that stores long-term memories:

‘Do you want to feel what it’s like touching a dead body?’ Tommy asked, holding up her forefinger in front of her chest as if hesitant asking the Sunday school teacher a question, ‘Here, hold up your first finger—like this.’ Tommy grabbed Janine by the hand, and pulled Janine’s finger towards her own. ‘Not a word, Janine Wilkinson. And don’t pull that face; it doesn’t hurt,’ she whispered. ‘Put your finger against mine. There.’
‘It doesn’t feel like—’
‘Not a word. Now use your other hand, and rub with your thumb and forefinger. How does it feel?’

Janine jumped off the bed and fell through the ceiling hung mosquito net; the strings attached to the roof beams exploded in puffs of dust as they snapped, and the cotton mesh wrapped itself around her like a magical cocoon as she rolled across the floor.
She stumbled to her feet, and almost made it to the door when she tripped and fell, face forward, hitting her chin on the hard wood threshold. Blood bubbled over her taste buds as Janine, now eyelevel with the start of the kikuyu lawn, looked up and noticed through he gaps in the fence (and haze of perforated concussion-colours) a cloud of red dust that seemed to push forward a Ford Cortina station wagon at high speed.

Janine came round at about noon. When she opened her eyes, it looked like the world was flying by—she sat up in the backseat and reached for her bottom lip, which hurt every time the safari jeep hit a bump or pothole.
Mark had his arm around her, and between legs ‘stood’ Amy, angel-silk hair dancing in a hot Lowveld breeze.

‘Just look at this picture, J; it’ll cheer you up!’ Mark said, ‘Took it this morning while you were sleeping. Just look at it!’ He showed her the picture of a cheetah at a waterhole at dawn. With yellow eyes looked up at the camera; ripples had formed on the water where it was drinking, and the reflection of the sun gave its eyes hazy look. ‘It would make a great postcard, don’t you think?’

Janine tried to answer but found it impossible to speak—she ran her fingers over the stitches in her chin where she had hit the threshold. She placed her head back on Mark’s shoulder, and stroked the doll’s hair. Blood trickled down her forearm from the spot where Doctor Shepherd had inserted the needle for the second time in forty-eight hours. Drool spilled from her mouth when she mumbled Amy’s name.

‘Look at the camera, J. This nice fellow over here wants to take a photo of us.’ Mark leaned over and tapped the park ranger in the passengers’ seat on the shoulder.

The last thing Janine saw before she hit the ground was the Polaroid’s flash and the man’s eyes that looked exactly those of the cheetah on the photo Mark had waved in her face.