Lydia could not help smiling when she woke up at last and was shown her ‘bedroom’ for the coming weeks.

‘So this is where I am being exiled to?’

‘Lyd, you still have stitches in those feet, you can't climb…’

‘I know, I know. Thank you, both of you.’

The equity of her gratitude, distributed with such quick grace, helped them overcome the first hurdle in their quest for a forgiving truce. Peace through amnesia. Afterwards, they ate a late-night supper of pasta and an ‘exotic’ sauce that Silas jovially concocted, then settled down to a quiet cup of tea before the time came to go to bed. This would be the next test, their ability to part quietly, retreat into their divided intimacies (it was clear that Silas would sleep upstairs in their bedroom, while Lydia would be alone in his study) without betraying any hurt or suspicion, avoiding extraordinary gestures, a weighted glance or lowered eyes. Mikey, as was his custom, kissed his mother on her cheek, touched his father on the shoulder, before going to his room.

Lydia used her crutches to get to the small downstairs bathroom, allowed Silas to help her undress, but insisted on washing herself. She sat on a chair before the basin and sponged down her upper body. She could not wet her feet just yet, not until the stitches had been removed. He observed her nakedness, but suppressed his unexpected arousal. She had the squatted-down resolve of a woman not ready to be loved.

In the days that followed, they were helped in their reconciliation by the many real crises that Silas faced. Days before Archbishop Tutu was to present the TRC report to the President, the ruling party tried to obtain a court order to stop its publication. Silas spent hours shuttling between Ministers and lawyers, priests and politicians, trying to persuade them to reduce the scale of their demands, soften the almost tyrannical belief in the justness of their various causes. He mobilized friends and family of the adversaries, called in favours, threatened and cajoled. In the end, he preached, yes, he too was reduced to the gospel of his own beliefs, as pragmatic as they were: ‘Let them all say what is necessary for them to say, let us follow the law to the letter,’ he counselled his bewildered Minister. Desultory days and tedious nights of bargaining, until there was nothing left to barter with, neither principle nor compromise.

In the meantime, Lydia's feet were healing and Mikey was preparing for his exams. They spent their lonely hours in the different levels of the house, vaguely aware of each other late at night, when she could not climb the stairs and he dared not go down to her makeshift bedroom. His mother's smell – that day – still clung to him. He also remembered the silence in the house immediately afterwards. Now the house was just as quiet. He thought of Lydia, down there in the well of the house, aware of the unnatural distance between them. Mother and son should not be avoiding each other like this.