The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini

Author:Irene Sabatini [SABATINI, IRENE]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780316072076
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

8.

“This is it. Sikato Bay Camp.” Ian turns round and whistles to David, who’s asleep at the back. “Wake up, my boy. We’ve landed.”

I get out of the car, stretch out my legs. What I wouldn’t give for a nice, firm bed, clean sheets, a duvet, a warm bubble bath. I look at the dirt clearing before us, the campsite. A few meters back, the ablutions block. There are three tents pitched and a group unloading from a minivan. I can smell boerewors on a braai.

Ian sniffs.

“Great, huh?”

I look around me, buttoning up my jersey.

Ian’s been building this trip up, going with David to the National Parks office, then off to an odds and ends shop downtown to get a secondhand tent, army-style sleeping bags, gas cookers, torches, fishing rods. Back to his Boy Scout days. He’s been showing David how to fit the gas cylinder under the burner; he caught me with my wry smile. “Relax now, wait till you have to cook on this thing, girl,” he said. He teased me about black chicks and camping, and then he must have remembered my postcards and his face tightened and he said, “Yah well, it’ll be lekker.”

I don’t know how I can let him know, see, that I’m not comparing him with anyone or keeping tab of things.

I found him this morning, sitting outside on the veranda, putting some pictures away in a cardboard box. When he heard me, he got up, the box in his hands, kissed me, and asked me what I was doing up so early. I said, “I missed you in my sleep.” “You’re a poet,” he said. He put the box on the crate we’re using as a side table, and he lifted his T-shirt, that I was wearing, off me. Later, when I looked, the box was gone.

“Are you sure it’s safe out here, Ian? It looks so open.”

What I mean to say is that I’m cold and would like to get back in the car and go home.

“Man Lindiwe, relax, there’s maybe a rhino or two, tops.”

David wakes up and Ian gets busy working on the tent. One of the men from the minivan comes over.

“Hi mate, need some help?”

“No, cheers, thanks for the offer.”

“We’re setting up a braai. When you’re ready, join us, plenty of beers. We’ve got some kids, the boy can muck around. You can bring your girl if you want her to keep an eye. Where’s the old lady?”

“What, yah, thanks.”

When he’s left, I look at Ian.

“What?”

“‘The girl,’ Ian, the girl.”

“What, oh that. Lindiwe, I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t get what he was going on about…”

“Ian, you just let him. He assumed I was the maid, of course.”

“Lindiwe, I’ve been on the road for what, close to five hours? I’m knackered, I wasn’t listening to the guy… why do you have to always suppose the worst from me? You want me to go there and tell him you’re my chick? Fine. You want me to shout it out? Okay.

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