He put the phone down, listened to Lydia's weeping change its tempo, becoming slower, hoarser, saw the glaze in her eyes and was afraid she was going into shock. He went in search of something he could use to staunch the bleeding, bed sheets that he could rip up and wrap around her feet, towels, one of his crisp blue shirts perhaps. He realized vaguely that this was a desperate, mumbo-jumbo solution, subconsciously inspired by something he had seen on TV or in a movie, that she urgently needed real medical attention. Surprised at how very seldom he went into the linen room, a remnant of the house's once opulent intentions, he took two clean towels from a rack and swaddled Lydia's feet in their comforting thickness.

He watched the towels darken, a slow crimson seepage, and was filled with silent panic that he felt he dare not betray, not to Lydia the victim, not again. He could not – once more – scream and weep louder than her, just as he had done nearly twenty years ago, when his outburst of rage and futile horror had earned him a dismissive blow to the head from one of the cops. But once again he heard those deep, low groans, Lydia in agony, Lydia wanting to die, and he would not let her die here, in their home, before his eyes. He sat down on the settee, raised her feet onto his lap, and used his cellphone to call Alec. Brother-in-law, friend, cool, laconic Alec who never seemed to hurry but was so quick at everything.

‘Lydia's had an accident, we need to get her to a hospital, the fucken ambulance is taking for ever!’

In his mind, the circumstances of Lydia's injuries were already being mitigated. Her wounds were not self-inflicted, not provoked by his obsession with remembering the past, it had been a freak accident, it had happened because she wanted to drink beer and hated the taste, and he had criticized her for drinking flat beer. Ja, a small, trivial thing like that, and the glass went flying, fell, flung, who knows? You know how she is, bra, how they all are, the Oliphant women, with their anger, slow in coming but fucken volcanic when it's there, broer. Shit, you know what an Oliphant temper is like!

He addressed Alec mentally, not so much to rehearse an excuse, but to debate with himself how the whole thing had happened. The arrival of Alec and Gracie saved him from creating a lie in his mind. It had taken only fifteen minutes for them to get from a township west of Johannesburg to Silas and Lydia's home on the other side of the city.

‘Drove like fuck!’ Alec said, explaining the near miracle of making it there so quickly.

Jackson and Mam Agnes were on their way as well. Mikey was driving them, Gracie said, somewhat surprised that Mikey could drive and that Jackson allowed anyone else behind the wheel of ‘his baby’, that monstrous old car.