Gertruidah Strydom has just lost both her parents in a freak motor-car accident. She returns home from the funeral. Alone. Yet why does she shed no tears? Why is there no grief, only utter relief? Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she is free. The family farm is hers. Only hers. Her father was a pillar of the community – hero of the Border war, successful farmer, church elder and family man. Her mother was the society darling, her tennis parties the toast of the town. Yet at night Gertruidah would lay awake, waiting for the creak of the floorboard, waiting for the doorknob to turn … Waiting for a bed-time story and a goodnight kiss for Daddy's little princess. What fairy tales did Gertruidah have to act out by the light of the moon? And what fatherly love was this? Why her fear of the slimy frog? Why her dread of the forked-tongue leguan? What perverted lusts lurked in the darkened Strydom house?
