When the Friday night of the dinner comes, Silas is ready, Michael is not home. He has not bothered to call, they have not seen him since the night before. They fret, old habits of worry die hard, but they go to Rachel and Vusi's dinner. It turns out to be a large party. Guests gather in the garden talking, congregate around tables laden with food and drink spread out on a huge expanse of flat lawn, cultivated for entertaining.

‘All the usual suspects,’ Silas says in an undertone, as they move through the crowd of dignitaries. He too is showing something of his old, bristling self, but Lydia will not be drawn in. They run into several Cabinet Ministers, his own Minister mercifully not among them. Silas is acknowledged, smiled at, nodded to, as is the woman at his side. She earns renewed attention: she looks different from the wife they remember. They join a group of people at a table, stand in a pool of light that illuminates the sumptuous summer darkness. A journalist who knows Silas's ‘fixer’ role in the ‘TRC process’ tries to engage him in conversation. He is after a background story. Silas sips his wine, smiles, benign in his indifference.

Rachel Moss is a wiry, energetic woman, her once fussy Jewish-English nature has been totally Africanized. Even her thin, high-pitched laugh tries to boom louder than her lungs will allow. She comes dashing out of the house, shakes Silas's hand, hugs Lydia, and takes her around to meet her guests. She introduces Lydia as part of ‘her team’, a real ‘find’, a kind of prodigal daughter stepping out of the rather dubious shadow of her husband, Silas Ali.

Silas's dubiousness is not explored. Everyone now accepts that back-room, ‘fix-it’ men are necessary in South African politics, that the old days of public debate are gone. Being in government is different from fighting for freedom. Things have to be managed now! Some liberation movement activists remain sceptical: aren't these shadowy men merely angling for something, creating the right profile, ready for when the new President takes over?

Rachel returns Lydia to Silas's company. Partners belong together at parties. An understandable assumption. It belies Rachel's own dilemma: her husband is about to become unemployed, he has to resuscitate his practice as an advocate. The comfort zone of the TRC, its prominence and fame will be of no help. Vusi hovers around Rachel, competitive, jostling for the attention that his wife gets.

Silas and Lydia run into Kate, who is looking gaunt and tired. She greets them both with effusive hugs. Lydia shrugs her off and walks away, leaving her alone with Silas. He does not know how to deal with the awkwardness, with her wounded silence. Impulsively, he hugs her, as if asking her to forgive his wife's abruptness. ‘She is not the same person,’ he starts saying, then he has a sudden realization. ‘Do you know, I turn fifty next month?’

They disengage, laugh.