Free The Art of Unpacking Your Life by Shireen Jilla Page A

relaxed enough at the kind of events Julian endlessly circled in London. The buzz of being with her true friends in Gae made her overeager to reach for her glass. When Julian and Connie swayed back to their house, she was desperate to get horizontal and sleep. She stripped off her clothes and left them in the cone shape they made on the rug beside their bed. She struggled to find the opening to the mosquito net. She lay down flat on her back, her body spinning on a roundabout with her head tipped back to feel the breeze. She heard Julian on the phone in the sitting room, but it didn’t matter. For once, she was drunk and truly happy.
    â€˜Connie, darling, are you awake?’
    â€˜Mmm…’
    â€˜It was really fun tonight,’ he bent down to whisper in her ear. ‘The whole holiday was a stroke of genius. Well done you.’ He kissed her on the lips. ‘Sleep well.’
    There was no sign of Sara, who was sleeping, according to Lizzie, who appeared wearing her sunglasses, before removing them dramatically to display weeping, red-rimmed eyes. Gus pronounced it was hay fever caused by the flowering Kalahari sour grass. The lemon scent of these swaying, hip-height grasses had been fragrant in the air. Gus went in search of another guide, who had wrap-around sunglasses that would seal Lizzie’s eyes from the pollen adrift in the air.
    Connie was shifting off the bar stool to wake Sara, when Matt sidled in on his own. She automatically asked about Katherine, sensing the answer was going to be another knock to their first early morning drive.
    Matt looked forlorn. ‘She’s not going to make it, I’m afraid. She needs to rest.’
    She made a soothing sound that stuck somewhere deep in her dry throat. She touched Matt’s arm, because she couldn’t come up with anything more concrete.
    â€˜Phantom pregnancy?’ Sara appeared in ivory thick-rimmed Chanel sunglasses and a khaki safari dress with a narrow cream belt. She was clutching a thick olive wrap.
    How could Sara be so sharp after a late night? Connie wondered. Matt paled, running his fingers through the front of his thick hair. ‘A migraine. It’s the stress of it all…’
    â€˜Migraine?’ Sara snapped back. ‘What – not a common headache?’
    â€˜Are we a woman down?’ Julian interjected from the other side of the bar, where he had been hunched over his BlackBerry. He was checking it out here morethan he usually did, or maybe she was more conscious of it on holiday. ‘Has delicate Katherine abandoned us for the comfort of the chaise longue?’
    This morning was going to be challenging. They would be tetchy, snapping at each other until their hangovers lifted. She could predict it as surely as she could her children fighting the morning after a late night.
    Luke strode up to the bar in a grey tracksuit. ‘Morning all.’ He looked buoyant. Connie wondered what had changed in the last ten minutes. He reached for the water jug, poured a glass right to the rim, and drank it in one continuous gulp.
    Julian lifted his head up from his BlackBerry, ‘Have you already been self-flagellating on the perambulator?’
    â€˜I love it,’ Sara laughed. ‘I must write that down.’
    Connie gave a compromising smile, hoping that Luke didn’t notice.
    â€˜I was out running in the bush.’ There was no mistaking the uncertainty in Luke’s voice.
    Kimberley, the girl who had met them at the airstrip, appeared in a doorway. She stood, legs slightly too far apart. They politely stopped talking. Sara eyed her critically over the edge of her coffee cup. Julian was staring at her.
    â€˜Luke, I’ve got a slot at 10.30. Doesn’t that work for you? You’ll be back by then, eh?’
    â€˜Perfect. Thanks Kimberley.’
    She smiled for too long as women did in front of Luke, before turning back outside. Connie couldn’t believe it. She swivelled