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We shudder up the washboards on the ribby Mazonwe road in the dull light of a thick African sunset and then, as we turn up the Robandi farm road, it is dark. African night comes like that, long rich sunsets and then, abruptly, night. The cooler night air is releasing the scents trapped by a hot day; the sweet, warm waft of the potato bush; the sharp citronella smell of khaki weed; raw cow manure; dry-dust cow manure. We bump over the culvert at the bottom of our road (in which the big snake lives) and head up toward the house, which is a pale, unlit mass in the evening light.

Dad stops at the security gate, which is locked; he gets out with the FN slung over his shoulder and stops, listening, for a moment before making his way to the gate. Today he hesitates longer than usual.

“Everything okay?” says Mum.

“Just thought I heard something.”

“Did you?”

Dad doesn’t answer.

The cook has instructions to lock the gate when he has fed the dogs, before he knocks off for the night. Mum slides over into Dad’s seat, she has the car in reverse, ready to fly backward down the driveway and leave Dad to his own devices if we find ourselves under attack. It takes Dad a long time to get behind his own shadow from the headlamps of the car and unlock the padlock. He opens the gate and Mum drives quickly into the yard. Dad follows us on foot to the house.

Mum says, “I’ll see what July left out for us for supper.”

Dad still has a sweaty shirt on from his game of squash. He says, “I’ll change my shirt before we eat.”

But when he goes to the cupboard, he has no shirts.

And when Mum goes into the kitchen there is no supper. And the pots and pans and plates and knives have been pulled onto the floor and there is the chaos of a recent scuffle among the debris.

Now we all have candles and we run around the house shouting to one another the growing list of things that are missing.

“All my clothes!” shouts Vanessa.

“And mine.”

“Oh shit, Tim, they’ve taken everything.”

We hold candles up to all our cupboards. They are all bare. Our clothes, food, bedding.

“My rings!” shouts Mum. And there is real panic in her voice. “Tim, my rings!”

At the beginning of every planting season Mum has to give her rings to the tobacco man who lets us have money to grow another crop and he gives Mum back the rings at the end of the season when we have sold the tobacco. Now we have no rings and we will not be able to plant tobacco at the beginning of the rains.

Then Dad says, “Wait.” He says that he heard something when he was unlocking the gate. “Remember?”

“What kind of sound?”

A moaning sound, he says. “I’m going to see what it was.”

Mum says, “Get backup. Don’t go in on your own.”

But Dad has already hurried outside.

Mum says to Vanessa and me, “Take a candle and go to your room.”

We go to our room and Vanessa says, “I know, let’s play cards.”

We play twos ‘n’ eights.

Dad is outside and we can hear him shouting, “Nicola!”

Mum runs outside and the dogs scrabble down the length of the shiny-slick cement floor after her. We abandon our game of cards and follow the dogs.

Dad has Violet, our maid, in his arms. To begin with it looks as if she is not wearing any clothes but then Mum holds up the paraffin lamp and we see that Violet is wearing a dress that is stuck perfectly to her body and that she is viscous and shiny with blood, as if someone has poured oil on her, or wrapped her tightly in black plastic.

“Is she breathing?”

“I don’t know.”

Her blood looks so gleaming, it doesn’t seem possible she can be dead. Her blood is running and alive and keeps replenishing itself over the sleek lustrous skin of her dress, like a new snake’s skin.

Mum says, “Here,” and opens the back of the Land Rover. Dad slides Violet’s body into the back; it makes a noise like a wet sponge. Mum has rolled out a gray army-issue blanket and slid it under Violet. The blanket is soon black with blood.

Mum says, “Go inside, you kids.”

Vanessa says, “Come on, Bobo.”

Dad says, “I’m going to catch the