Zoe traded a look with Joseph. “Tell me about Charity. How did she come to Lusaka?”
“Frederick went to Zimbabwe for a meeting,” Anna explained. “He got very sick. He heard about a white doctor in Livingstone, so he went there. Charity was at the hospital, and she nursed him.” Anna sighed. “I have thought many times about what would have happened if he’d had a different nurse. It would have been better if none of us had met her.”
“He fell in love with her?” Zoe asked, putting the pieces together.
“It was not love. It was obsession.”
“He offered her a job?”
“She came to Lusaka as his personal assistant. He paid for a nice flat and gave her a driver. I didn’t know about any of this at first. He kept it hidden. But when she got pregnant, he knew she would need help. He took me to meet her a month before Kuyeya was born.”
“Is Frederick the father?”
Anna shook her head slowly. “He thought he was. I did, too. But he was not. I don’t know who the father is.”
Zoe frowned, wondering at Anna’s certainty. “How do you know?”
Anna looked out at the yard. “It was Patricia who found out. Frederick had many girlfriends. Patricia knew this, but she tolerated his follies. Things changed when he met Charity. He began to treat Patricia badly. She is a proud woman from the family of a chief. She told me she knew about my trips to Woodlands. She demanded to know about Charity.”
Anna closed her eyes. “I took her there—to the flat. Kuyeya was two months old and very small. I have never seen Patricia so angry. She threatened Charity. She told her that she would ruin her if she didn’t leave Frederick alone. Charity was terrified. She didn’t know about Frederick’s family. Patricia took a book from her. I was nearby when she showed it to Frederick. She told him that Kuyeya was not his daughter.”
“The book,” Zoe asked in fascination, “what happened to it?”
Anna reached into her bag and removed a spiral-bound notebook. As soon as Zoe saw it, her heart began to race. She took the notebook and opened it. Unlike the journal Doris had given her, the inside cover was blank. But the salutation on the first page was the same: “Dear Jan …”
“This is the original volume,” Zoe said, showing it to Joseph. “How did you get this?” she asked Anna.
“Patricia kept it in the closet. I saw it every time I brought her laundry.”
“Did you read it?”
Anna looked ashamed. “I cannot read. I only completed the sixth standard.”
“But your English is so good.”
“Patricia hired a tutor to work with me. They spoke only English in the house.”
Zoe folded her hands. “I assume Frederick cut Charity off and left her with the baby.”
“Patricia threatened him with divorce. I never saw Charity again.”
“Did you know she had a relationship with Darious?”
Anna looked at her sharply. “When?”
“Sometime after 2004.”
Anna’s eyes lit up. “That is how he knew about Kuyeya.” She explained herself before Zoe could ask. “When I heard about the rape, I didn’t understand. He didn’t meet Charity when he was a boy. But I knew the crime could not be a coincidence.”
“Did he know about the book?” Zoe asked.
“Yes,” Anna said. “I once saw him with it in his parents’ bedroom.”
Suddenly, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Darious had learned about his father’s affair with Charity as a teenager, but when he met her in the flesh, years later, he knew her as Bella. She never told him her real name, and he probably never asked. However, the question remained unanswered: how did he make the connection?
She refocused on Anna. “Did you see anything on the night of the rape?”
Anna gave her a look tinged with remorse. “Frederick and Patricia were gone. He went away for a while in his truck. Then he came back and parked in the garage. I saw him walking around in the dark, behaving strangely. I didn’t know what he was doing.”
Zoe conjoured the layout of the property and recalled that the housekeeper’s cottage offered a direct line of sight to the garage. “Did he see you watching him?”
Anna began to fidget with her hands. “I don’t know.”
Zoe waited a beat, then asked the most delicate question of all: “Will you testify?”
Anna regarded her gravely. “If I do not disappear, they will kill me.” She gestured at the notebook. “The truth is there. Show it to the judge.”
Half an hour later, Zoe and Joseph returned to the Prentice bungalow. They greeted Carol, who was reading in the living room, and walked to the terrace, taking seats in the sunlight by the pool. Zoe removed Charity’s notebook from her backpack.
“Read it out loud,” Joseph said.
She nodded and opened to the first letter.