‘Yes,’ she confirmed, when he asked if he had also been under severe stress then.

Silas was admitted to the hospital for observation. It would be wise to keep him overnight, they said, even though it may only have been nerves, the stress of his wife's accident and her being in hospital. Lydia, realizing that Mikey would be alone, lost her poise. She wanted to go home and take care of her son, she said. No child should ever be alone in this world. But Mam Agnes, her voice startlingly intense, said that the best thing the two of them could do now was to deal with this problem, whatever it was, so that they could stop this madness between them. She and Jackson could go and stay over in Berea.

For the first time, someone had mentioned ‘this problem’. Gracie, Alec and Jackson looked away, while Lydia leaned back and shut her eyes. She meekly accepted the sedative that the nurse shot into her arm and soon fell asleep, propped up like a living corpse. Her visitors left, each glancing back, sad that this should be happening to someone like Lydia, who had always been the strongest one in the family. Their panic had subsided, and they were confident and querulous once more.

They would have to go home first to collect some things, Mam Agnes said, before they went on to Berea. That meant driving all the way back to Soweto. ‘It's because you children want to move to the suburbs,’ she said, as if expressing a thought that had been preoccupying her for a long time, ‘the township's not good enough any more. I mean, in the past we had all of you right there, close to us. Once, we could just walk over to where Mikey was.’

‘Why did you offer if you're going to moan about it?’ Jackson said.

‘Listen –’ Gracie interrupted ‘– don't the two of you start arguing now!’

They walked down the corridor, people standing aside for them, their quarrelling reduced to whispers by the sudden hush that had descended, as if at the command of a silent voice. Alec imagined that people were staring at them, signalling that visiting time was over, people pay for the peace and quiet here, this is not one of your township hospitals where you can make as much noise as you want. Gracie tugged his sleeve, pulling him away from the confrontation she saw building up in his eyes.

As they walked, she took out her cellphone and called Mikey.

‘Hello, Kate speaking.’

Grade, forced by the atmosphere in the hospital to lower her voice, and desperate not to lose her own composure, resisted the temptation to berate the woman at the top of her voice. ‘How is Mikey?’ she asked instead, matching Kate's cool voice with an iciness of her own.

Mikey was asleep, Kate said, and Julian had gone home.

Gracie explained what had happened to Silas. ‘Mam Agnes, Mikey's grandmother, will be coming over to look after him,’ she concluded.