PRISCILLA’S REAL NAME IS KITTY HENDRIKS. It’s written in large letters on the cardboard sign.

A few people whisper, point. Priscilla thinks they are pointing at her and sings extra loudly, trying to impress.

Back to the screen. Blommie drops that card and holds up another. This one reads: SHE IS WANTED BY POLICE IN THREE PROVINCES ON CHARGES OF THEFT, FRAUD, EXPLOITATION AND MURDER.

A woman in the audience cries out. Priscilla takes it as a cry of pleasure, and winks at her. She even does a little wave.

Blommie holds up a new placard. MY NAME IS BLOMMIE ERASMUS, SON OF THE LATE THEUNIS ERASMUS. THIS WOMAN KITTY HENDRICKS KILLED MY BROTHER JOSEPH. HE WAS SAVAGED BY HER DOG. THE DOG BIT THROUGH HIS WIND PIPE AND NOW HE IS DEAD.

A man in the audience faints. Another man calls out, in Afrikaans, “Ongelooflik!” which means ‘unbelievable’.

Blommie’s next cardboard sign: WE HAVE PROOF. PRISCILLA MEIRING IS A CRIMINAL AND A MURDERER. NOW SHE PLANS TO TAKE OVER THIS FARM AND CONTINUE EXPLOITING THE WORKERS. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN.

The audience stand. A huge “boo” emerges. A boo by a hundred people is quite something to behold.

Priscilla’s corny smile wavers, becomes a grimace of worry. She keeps singing though, determined to finish the worst pop song ever written. As she is nearing the chorus for the second time a tomato hits her smack-bang right in the face.

“Heks, witch!” screams a child.

Priscilla sits still as a doll. Her body is rigid with shock. She has no idea what is happening. Tomato mush is oozing off her cheek. Another tomato whizzes through the air, splattering onto her shoulder. Then a sandwich, crumpled up piece of newspaper and a banana pelt their target accurately – they hit Priscilla in the neck and chest. A banana skin lands on her boot.

She turns around. She sees the video screen, where Blommie is still patiently holding up the last notice.

She takes a step back. Then one more. She wobbles in her ten-centimetre heels. She falls. A huge blonde hair extension gets caught in a groove between the wooden slats of the stage. When she gets up she looks like an extra from a zombie movie – covered in slimy fruit skins and broken sandwiches, half her hair gone.

“Oliiiiiiiiive!” she screams, and it is the scream of a demon. “This must be your doing!” Then she does something amazing. She picks up the stool she was sitting on and starts to attack the screen. She has gone mental. Priscilla has finally lost control. She slams and slams at the screen, bashing it down with the stool. Then she goes all out and starts smashing the stool against the stage itself. The stool shatters into poles of wood. She has gone crazy.

She is swearing like a pirate, a long list of words I would never be able to remember, let alone write down and share. Each swear word is amplified by the microphone which is lying on the floor.

“I’ll kill you,” she screams, and it is like the scream of an eagle, piercing and intense. “You’re dead. You hear me? Dead!” I know she is talking about me.

My heart leaps into my throat. If Priscilla says she is going to kill me, I halfway believe it. She has already certainly killed one boy and one animal. I know in my heart that she capable of the greatest evil.

The crowd is a mess now. People are on phones, arguing, pushing to leave. Somebody is taking picture after picture on their cellphone. Priscilla tries to push them away but they swoop aside and keep photographing.

I can actually tell who it is – it’s Yster. My heart leaps with fierce pride. I would like to think that I am someone that doesn’t believe in revenge, but actually, I think I do.

Priscilla is wrong. We are right. Right conquers wrong. Sorry Priscilla.

Just as Priscilla is reaching the height of her manic, swearing, tomato-stained breakdown, I see two men walking up the driveway, their faces slack-jawed in shock and amazement at the scene. One is the policeman I hid away from, the day I met Yster and he took me captive. I hated that policeman before. Now I love him.

The second person is my father. I’d forgotten he was due back today. I’d said goodbye to my old life, tried to forget. I cannot. I cannot forget my father. And I know my father loves me, even though he has so much sadness. I scramble down the tree.

“Not yet,” warns Black Cat. I look into his dark eyes and say, simply: “I have to.”

I sprint toward my father. He is with the policeman, who is trying to get Priscilla to calm down. I see my father’s face fall even further as the pastor tells him what is happening. The policeman is now holding Priscilla’s arms behind her back.

“She’s admitted it. She admits everything,” the policeman tells me with a grim look as I approach. I don’t respond to what he has said. I run straight to my father.

He goes onto his haunches to receive me in a hug.

“Dad, Dad, Dad,” is all I can say into the collar of his jacket. The jacket collar quickly becomes damp with tears. Mine.

“Olive, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, sorry,” my father whispers into my ear. His breath is warm. “Olive, my Olive, I’m sorry…”

I want to tell him how I did it for him, for us, but I can’t find words. My brain is not working. I am one hundred percent pure emotion.

“Dad, Dad, Dad,” is the most I can come up with, and I cling to him, and he rocks me back and forth. We stay like for some time, two people protecting each other from something that tried to pull them apart.

Later that afternoon we are all in our kitchen. Me, my dad, The Unwanteds (Yster, Black Cat, Blommie, Modem, Finkie, Engel and Stompie) and the policeman, whose name I find out is Constable Wikkus.

I have made each of the boys a bowl of porridge which they eat hungrily. My father is drinking coffee. Not beer. Coffee.

“I still can’t get how you hacked her video feed so easily,” says Constable Wikkus to Modem.

“Was mos easy,” explains Modem. “Her password is ‘Priscilla’.”

Priscilla is no longer here. She has been taken down to the police station for questioning.

“I can’t believe she didn’t even tell me you were gone. But how did you survive out there Olive? Out in the wild?” says my father, still dazed and confused by the afternoon’s dramatic events.

I look at Black Cat, who gives a smile so small you almost can’t see it.

“I made some friends,” I say.