Free Shilo's Secret by Judith Stephan Page B

inferior being… of her being better than anyone else,” Stratt replied.
     
    “Don’t worry about her,” Michaela said. “She is just like that. It will wear off once she gets to know you a little better.”
     
    “Why, though? … What is she trying to prove?” Stratt asked.
     
    “I really can’t tell you … let’s just say it’s a front to prove to herself that she’s worth something. Something terrible happened to her when she was a child … something which she has never got over and probably never will,” Michaela sighed.
     
    “Has it got something to do with those nightmares she has?”
     
    “God, is she still having those awful recurring dreams?” Dorianne chipped in from a back seat, “I thought those had stopped some years ago.”
     
    “Well, yes. Maybe it was the fever that brought it on, but she had one the night of the camp fire … I was there,” said Stratt.
     
    “You were?” laughed Michaela with a twinkle in her eye, “And what may I ask were you doing in her bedroom while she was sleeping? Is there a little holiday romance starting here?”
     
    “No, it’s not what you think. I went to wake her up for a pre-dawn game drive I had promised her and she was feverish and thrashing about and screaming ‘No!’” mused Stratt; “It was quite awful to see. The terror, the unadulterated fear … I had to physically restrain her as she became very violent and supernaturally strong for such a tiny woman.”
     
    “She’ll have to tell you, not me. I’ve been sworn to secrecy … but just remember … the horrible Shilo you see is not the real Shilo. She’s really a lovely person. I hope you’ll understand one day.”
     
    “If I knew, maybe I would understand her better,” he said.
     
    “I gave her my word. She’ll tell you when she’s ready.”
     
       And then Stratt took a group of Americans out on an overnight trip to a mini-camp at the other side of the lake. Shilo spent her time reading and writing letters and postcards to her friends and family back in England. Her stupid cell phone had no reception and she wished she had brought her laptop, because emailing and texting would have been far quicker – and she could not remember the last time she had actually taken pen to paper and written a letter. She wrote quite a long, rueful epistle to Charles Lambert-Carr … but as she was considering how to end it (either with mush and gush or formally) she realised that she really was not missing the man at all. She thought of his thin, pasty legs; his dark, dead straight, always neatly combed hair; his thin, impeccably trimmed moustache and the fact that he thought he was really slumming it if he didn’t wear a tie, and she smiled to herself. Her letter contained nuances at how awful Africa was, with references to the uncomfortable heat, her bout of sunstroke and the brusqueness of their guide. She rambled on for pages, in her neat feminine print, about the animals they had seen: the experience with the lions, the elephants and the crocodile … but at its closure it dawned on her that Africa was not as awful as she was making it out to be: It was actually exhilarating! Africa was exciting and although she hated to admit it, she was having the time of her life. She had experienced more fun and excitement in her brief sojourn in the African wild than she could ever remember having before. It made her feel alive. And Stratt … she kept on comparing him to the men in her circle of friends. He was leagues ahead of them in every single way except that he was not one of them. She just wished she would see him again so she could apologise. Maybe try and explain why she had insulted him. She ended the letter with the word “Regards” … it was a conscious decision to cool it with Viscount Lambert-Carr.
     
       On the fourth day, after a boring morning watching cable television while Stratt went out to see to an injured blue wildebeest, Shilo decided to go for a sauna. In the