As I crunch up the drive, the girl gravitates towards Sloth, holding out a piece of succulent.

"Hi, Munchkin," she says in a baby voice. "Oh, he's so cute." Sloth leans forward to sniff the aloe leaf. He takes a tentative bite, leaving a smear of milky sap on his chin fur, and scrunches his nose at the bitter taste. "Aloe's really good for the skin," the girl says. "We also grow indigenous herbs and organic veggies in the fields out back."

"No cheeseburger stand?"

The girl restrains a smirk. Her lost things are like a haloof dandelion fluff. "So are you inmate or rubbernecker?" she asks.

"Rubbernecker," I answer without hesitation. "You?"

"I'm a screw. Or on staff, anyway. Used to be an inmate. Repeat offender. Crimes against my body. Puking sickness followed by heroin, which led to more puking sickness." I'd be surprised at her forthrightness, but that's addicts for you. The twelve steps crack 'em open and then they can't shut up.

"You should grow hoodia," I suggest. "Isn't that a healthier way to suppress your appet.i.te?"

"More natural definitely," Overshare Girl agrees, "although I've never really got that argument. I mean, puffadder venom is natural. Dying of gum disease at thirty is natural. You know why the Khoi used hoodia in the first place? So they could pretend they weren't starving to death. How's that for messed up?"

"Pretty messed up." I push her a little to see what comes out. "This a good place?"

"S'okay. High on the spoilt little rich kids and schleb factor, but you only really catch the brunt of it when you're on the other side. But the food is good. Organic. You got a cigarette on you?"

"Sorry, I tend to b.u.m off other people. Anyone interesting?"

"Schleb-wise? That British Big Brother star the Pakistani girl? Melanie wha.s.sisface? She's really sweet. Not what you'd expect at all. She says they just made her look like a major-league b.i.t.c.h in the edit. Um. Some big-shot politician's son. Minister of Parking, or whatever. Some people just do their time, you know?"

"You just doing your time?"

"Sure. It's in the coding, right? It's funny, 'cos I used to be really big-time into astrology. Had a woman I used to see like once a month, sometimes twice. She was cool, even though I think she was making it up half the time. But I really wanted to believe that there were these magic celestial bodies that would direct my life, tell me what to do, and it turns out it's not stars, it's some bits of screwy DNA. I'm just meat with faulty programming."

"That's why you've chosen to stick around?"

"That gate you came through? It's like a revolving door. You go out, you come back in. Might take years, might take hours. It's inevitable. They tell you this stuff about cognitive behaviour and about breaking the pattern and being mindful. All I'm hearing is that there's no such thing as free will."

"They give you a rough time?"

She shrugs. "Some rougher than others."

"I have a friend who was here, S'bu? He doesn't even like to talk about it."

"S'bu Radebe? He was a sweetie. But really shy. He had a really hard time. Kid from the sticks. I mean, he shouldn't have been in here in the first place, even Veronique said, and he was having to listen to all these hardcore addicts talk about the bad s.h.i.t they'd done, prost.i.tuting themselves, abandoning their kids"

Killing their brothers, I add to the list, but only in my head. What comes out of my mouth is: "He shouldn't have been in here?"

"Ag, you know. Issues are like weeds. Everyone's got them. You can pull them up, you can poison them, even tually they'll just grow back. S'bu's too sensitive for the world. He just needs to toughen up a little and he'll be fine. His sister, though? She was nuts."

"Aren't we all?"

"Her and the boyfriends. Hei wena Hei wena."

"You mean like Jabu?"

"Excuse me? Hi there! Can I help you?" I recognise the warmly professional voice I spoke to on the phone.

"I'd like to carry on talking to you," I say to the girl, as the husky man in a checked shirt and an earnest smile starts walking over. "Chat later?"

"Doubt it. The inmates are going on a daytrip and I'm driving." She blows Sloth a kiss. "Bye, cutie!"

The receptionist leads me into the cool interior of the farmhouse. Whoever decorated has decent taste in art or, quite possibly, psychedelics. The reception area has wooden floors half-covered by a cheerful orange, red and blue woven rug. There is a print of Technicolor lunatic smiley flowers hanging above the hotel-style reception desk.

In front of the desk two cream and gold suitcases monogrammed all over with distinctive LVs are parked beside an oversized couch half-occupied by a boy who sighs dramatically and reposes himself, jiggling his foot impatiently.

"I'll be right with you," says my guide, over his shoulder to the boy, ushering me down the corridor and through to an office marked DR VERONIQUE AUERBACH EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR on the door, together with the admonition PLEASE KNOCK.

He ignores this, flinging the door open to reveal the lady in question sitting tucked into the bay window that overlooks the garden, reading a magazine.

"Oh good," she says, slipping into her shoes and standing to greet me. I catch a glimpse of the cover of the magazine. Mental Health & Substance Abuse Dual Diagnosis. Mental Health & Substance Abuse Dual Diagnosis. A glance at the bookshelf built into the hollow base of the window seat reveals similar numbingly academic t.i.tles. There is a heavy wooden desk stacked with a scramble of papers and files encroaching on a slim silver laptop at the centre of it all, like the eye of the hurricane. Above the desk is a painting of a Zulu hut on fire, a deep phallic root extending into the ground and figures writhing around inside in torment. A glance at the bookshelf built into the hollow base of the window seat reveals similar numbingly academic t.i.tles. There is a heavy wooden desk stacked with a scramble of papers and files encroaching on a slim silver laptop at the centre of it all, like the eye of the hurricane. Above the desk is a painting of a Zulu hut on fire, a deep phallic root extending into the ground and figures writhing around inside in torment.

"Heavy reading," I say as she shakes my hand. She has a grip like a pro golfer, loose, but in total control.

"Homework," she replies with an easy grin that furrows lines around her eyes. She's short, barely five foot in her heels and black trouser suit, but there is a sharp curiosity in her eyes that goes with her chin the kind that jabs into other people's business. She has a calico pixie cut, russet streaked with grey. I get the impression she's the art buyer. It's the shoes. Teal-blue Mary Janes with playful detailing purple and red flowers perched on the straps. "I'm Veronique, obviously. Thank you so much for coming out."

As if I was the one doing her the favour.

"Thanks for accommodating me at such short notice."

"It's a catchy headline. Rehab safaris. Makes it sound so glamorous."

"It's all about the hook."

"Mandla Langa," she says noticing my interest in the

burning hut. "His early stuff was all circ.u.mcision-related. It's about culture and tradition, rites of pa.s.sage, the difficulties of being a man. And also being mutilated."

"Do your clients relate?"

"We call them patients. But, yes, I suppose some of them do. C'mon, I'll give you the tour." She's all brisk enthusiasm.

"I'd say about fifteen to twenty per cent of our patients are foreign," Veronique says. Like a good journalist, I dutifully take notes. "A lot of them are from the UK. It's a last resort for the families that old att.i.tude of 'send the troublemakers to the colonies!' But we also get people coming in from Nigeria, Angola, Zimbabwe. Naisenya, the young woman you were talking to outside, is Kenyan for example. Mostly, it's a matter of money. Three months with us costs the same as a week in a UK treatment centre like the Abbey."

She opens the door onto a s.p.a.cious lounge with chairs arranged in a loose arc, facing a huge open fireplace big enough to cook children in. Above the mantelpiece is a mounted Perspex light, featuring a naive drawing of a c.o.c.ky gentleman devil smoking a pipe, reclining in an armchair. On the opposite wall is a dreamy etching of a goat with its head bowed and a chain around its neck.

"Between the devil and the deep blue scapegoat?" I say.

"It's just art, Ms December," she says, not meaning a word of it. "The most important part of what we do here is penetrating people's denial systems, removing the alibis that will trip them up."

"Sending their sins out into the wilderness to die."

"It's one of the theories of being animalled, of course," she says.

"I never liked that one. Give me the Toxic Reincarnation theory any day."

"I don't think I'm familiar with that."