Silas grabbed Lydia by the arms and shook her. The glass of beer fell from her hands. She kissed him on the mouth, held him close to her, and sucked his tongue into her mouth the way she did when she was really passionate. She tasted of hops, of bitter fruit. She gasped, then leaned up against him, her head against his chest, weeping, making gentle dancing movements with her feet. He cradled her head, astonished by how much taller he was. He glanced down the slenderness of her back, saw the slow pool of blood spreading on the floor, saw his heavy shoes immersed in its dark glow, saw her feet dancing, delicate little steps, on the jagged edges of the broken beer glass.

2

After what seemed like the longest hour of his life, Silas got Lydia to hospital.

On the stoep, she had clung to him, weeping silently, ignoring his pleas to stop dancing, she was cutting herself up badly, she would bleed to death. In the end, he had to heave her up into his arms, as if she was still the slender, weightless young girl he had carried to his bed, long before they were married, a romantic gesture that made her giggle and spoiled their sex, that first time, in his room in the backyard of his mother's house (he remembered now, of all things, how the hastily drawn curtains had kept the sun out, the way an animal is kept at bay). He staggered to the settee, where he laid Lydia down, exhausted by the dead weight of her limp body. He listened to her weeping, softly now, saw the blood slowly seeping from her feet into the white linen slipover covers that he had chosen and that she had warned were impractical.

Silas had to rouse himself, dispelling the memory of that miraculous young love. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, tasted the sweetness of the young Lydia's skin, then realized with horror that there was blood on his hands and on his clothes. He called an ambulance, told the woman on the emergency line that it was urgent, his wife had cut herself, an accident, that it was serious, she was bleeding ‘profusely’.

The woman sounded dubious. How had the accident happened, she wanted to know, did his wife have any other injuries, was there anyone else in the house, children, domestic workers, any neighbours nearby?

‘Please, lady, we need an ambulance!’ he shouted, forgetting how his politics had drummed out of him the use of words such as ‘lady’. It struck him that the woman mistrusted him, that she thought this was just another case of domestic violence and was trying to gauge the danger to the victim, and that perhaps he did sound guilty, an abusive husband filled with the usual remorse. He begged her to send an ambulance, she could interrogate him afterwards.