‘What would you think if you saw me here now, Ting?’ she whispered to the luminescent picture of her lover on the screen in her hand. ‘Now that my principles have finally been tested by fire, I’ve found myself … lacking. Human, all too human, I’m afraid to say. I’m more selfish and cold than I ever thought possible. God, I miss you so much; you’re all I care about, all I can think about. It’s like a part of myself has been amputated without having you by my side.’
Margaret watched with cool indifference as a Congolese woman hobbled past her tent, battling with the weight of a full twenty-litre water jug. She stared at the woman’s stick-thin legs and her low-drooping breasts that shifted and wobbled beneath a grimy pink tee shirt with every weary step. The garment was emblazoned with colourful, smile-beaming Disney princesses who were at complete odds with the woman’s waif-like appearance; her sunken cheeks, tight-drawn lips and yellow-tinged eyes had more in common with the macabre gloom of a Goya canvas than the saturated artificiality of American cartoon characters. Margaret found as she observed this scene that she was lacking almost entirely in empathy for the struggling, hunch-backed female, and an arctic shiver coursed abruptly down her spine.
‘I don’t know what this place is doing to me, Ting,’ she whispered, with hot tears stinging suddenly at the corners of her eyes, ‘but everything I thought I was, everything I thought I stood for, it was all … God, I can’t even say it, but I have to. It was all … lies. At least that’s what it feels like to me now. All I want is to leave this, this, this shithole, there, I said it out loud, this awful shithole and its poor people, and return to our house by the lake. I wanted to make a difference all my life, and now that I’m finally making one … I just want to get the hell away from it and climb into our king-sized bed with you and the puppies and share some red wine and chocolate. I feel so guilty for saying this, but I can’t keep it bottled up inside anymore.’
She thought of using the satellite phone to call her lover, but realised that due to the time difference Ting would be asleep now. She sniffed and wiped a solitary tear from her cheek, forcing herself to swallow the sob that was inching its way up the inside of her throat.
‘I can’t do this anymore, I can’t Ting, I’m nowhere near as strong as I thought I was, and—’ Her hoarse whispering was interrupted by a noise that reverberated loudly across the hills and echoed in waves around the bowl of the jungle valley. ‘What on earth is that?’ she murmured. She sat bolt upright and stuffed her phone into her hip pocket. ‘Private, what is that sound?’ she repeated, speaking to the closer of the two Ghanaian soldiers.
The man turned to her, and she saw both puzzlement and anxiety splayed across his broad, acne-scarred face.
‘I don’t know, Dr Green. It’s like … drums. But there are no other villages up there in the hills. I don’t like the sound of this.’
His tone and the look in his eyes caused shivers of dread to scuttle in swarms across the length and breadth of Margaret’s skin. From all over the hills more drumming was starting to echo, growing steadily in tempo and volume. The soldiers glanced at each other, and the consternation etched across their faces was plain to see.
‘You better go inside the tent, Doc,’ the other Ghanaian soldier grunted, cocking his assault rifle.
Margaret needed no further encouragement, so she shuffled back inside the tent, which offered protection from stray bullets due to the walls of thick sandbags around it. The drumming was growing in volume now, and it had become loud enough that the villagers had stopped what they were doing and were now looking around and muttering in frightened tones.
One of the soldiers pulled open the tent door to speak to Margaret.
‘Stay in there until we know what’s going on, Doc. Also, I’m going to need to take the satellite phone to call headquarters and report this.’
‘The satellite phone? But—’
‘I don’t know why, but our radios have just gone dead, so the satellite phone is the only means of communication we have right now. Don’t worry, I’ll bring it right back. If you hear any firing, get under the cot and stay down until it’s over.’
The soldier took the satellite phone and then stepped outside. He zipped the tent up behind him after he left, leaving Margaret in a bubble of dread-laden gloom. The drums were starting to beat at a frenzied pace now, and more drummers from all over the jungle were starting to join in the symphony of thunder that was pealing across the hills. The percussive sound felt as if it were shaking the foundations of the earth itself.
‘What the hell is going on here?’ Margaret whispered, her heart pounding in her ribcage.
She dared not light up her gas lamp, not now. Panic descended, draping its paralysing cold over her like an icy morgue sheet over a corpse as the drummers quickened their tempo and maddened their rhythms. She had seen the aftermath of many battles and skirmishes as she had travelled east with the UN troops, but up until now she had never actually been in the middle of one – and the thought of experiencing this was blasting icy boosts of paralysing fear through her every vein and artery.
The drummers were getting closer, ever closer, and closing in rapidly. A woman screamed somewhere at the opposite end of the village, and some of the UN troops started
