Mikey walks, endlessly, strides away, long, loping steps that take him down Munro Drive to Orange Grove, to the Radium Beerhall, to the Health and Racquet Club, where he works out, mixes with friends. Suddenly, he seeks out the company of young people, who welcome him, absorb him into their circle, fiercely, the way compassionate people take in a refugee. Mikey also – Lydia discovers – catches Kombi-taxis to Newclare, where his father grew up. He returns from these trips drained of energy, and is often distracted and listless, without appetite. Both Silas and Lydia worry that their son is taking drugs, but say nothing. Lydia's guilt is particularly acute.

But they continue to live together, in proximity to one another, a family unit whose names seem more and more incongruous when said together. Silas Ali, Lydia Ali, Mikey Ali. Mikey dislikes the sound of his own name most of all, he has come to understand that it is an ‘oxymoron’.

Vinu, from his English class at university, is celebrating her parents’ divorce. She dyes her hair bright orange and invites Mikey out for a drink. Her tall body flung down in a chair, she tells him that his name is even worse than hers.

‘Vinu Viljoen,’ she says her name out loud. ‘Bastard people are beautiful, bastard names are not.’

They laugh, and then she starts crying, and Mikey hugs her, stares fiercely at the curious people around them, until they are forced to look away. He tells her that he understands.

‘Why don't they marry their own kind?’ she asks. ‘That way, they won't have to discover, years after they've brought children into the world, that they're culturally incompatible, and the children won't have to suffer.’

Mikey says that from now on, he is to be addressed as ‘Michael’, that is his name. It is a declaration of loyalty to her. He doesn't know why he is making this decision; after all, if you want to change what people call you, you should choose something more appropriate, a first name that goes with the family name.

‘Something like Moosa Ali,’ Vinu says, ‘or better still, Mohamed Ali.’ She laughs, dries her tears, kisses him tenderly, says, ‘I am going to find a half-Hindu boertjie to fuck,’ and goes off.

He remembers that Kate calls him ‘Michael’, that her use of this name has a possessive tone, but he dismisses the vaguely troubled feeling he gets when her name is mentioned or when he, on the odd occasion, thinks about her. He does not return her calls, and once turned back at the university gates when he saw her sitting in her car, waiting for someone, a friend or a colleague, maybe even him. He has no desire for her, for her body, her hoarsely whispering voice after they have made love, her smell, which he has begun to regard as ‘typical of an older woman’. Yet he is grateful that she obtained Du Boise's records for him.