He suspected his own motives when he felt the need to go downstairs, to drink water or simply sit in the cool recess of the stoep, staring out at the comforting meaninglessness of the street's activity, people walking by, voices, music, the blurred hum of traffic further down the hill. The summer was already unseasonably hot.

He met Kate on one more occasion, at her house. Her daughter Ferial was away, and so was Janine. Marguerite had returned to Belgium. ‘This is not Africa,’ she had told Kate haughtily, ‘it is your illusion of Africa.’ Nevertheless, her departure contributed to love's grand coincidences. Kate and Mikey were alone, except for the dogs, which milled around him, smelling his manly foreignness, his odour of lustfulness. They made love in her study, on a chaise longue with an upraised back. Perhaps this influenced his passion. He was fierce, violent almost, and she winced with pain once, ready to withdraw from him. His rhythm was different, his passion dark and hard, no longer young and joyful. He has been spoiled for young people, doomed to seeking out older women for the rest of his life, she thought, when he finally leaned back, drained of colour and life.

She did not mention their last encounter, her hasty and humiliating departure, nor did she joke about his ‘dammed-up’ passion. He was restless, even as he reclined by the pool, stroking the backs of the dogs, offering themselves greedily to his attention. They took naturally to him. He had none of the fear of dogs that usually possessed kids who had grown up in the township. Thoroughly freed of his past, she thought.

It was obvious that there was something he would ask for, perhaps as he got dressed, or when he was about to leave. She went into her study and returned with a thick manila envelope. ‘Here's what you asked me for the last time,’ she said.

He smiled, thanked her, kissed her on the mouth, softly. A farewell? she asked herself. She watched him walk away, hands in his pockets, the envelope tucked under his arm. She did not offer him a lift, although it was a long way home on foot. But he was young and full of energy, ferocious in fact.

And is that not what a woman wants in a man – vigour? Or else it's not worth it!

That night, Lydia lay on her bed and looked around the sombre room. This was her husband's world, filled with recorded knowledge, a desperate orderliness of catalogued books and research papers. A history of the world, a containment of history, of civilizations won and lost through the rule of law. That was his true north, the rule of law. Swore by it. Saved him from the Vagaries’ of the rich and the powerful, he was telling her just the other night. Yes, he was beginning to speak to her again, about his work, about mundane office politics, his Minister's floundering. It was good to have a rule to live by, but how little his rule – if you make a law, then apply it, to the letter, there is no other way – had helped all those Victims’ who had told their stories before the Commission. The brave victims and the wise Commissioners, the virtue of both defined as if by divine decree.