His room, which I went to so much effort to set up, remains empty. I hoped so much he’d like it, since I painstakingly decorated in a way that’s “culturally sensitive” to appease Dee, but he won’t sleep there. The first few nights he screamed every time I put him down in the crib until eventually I gave up. My bed is where he’ll quieten down, either lying on my chest or next to me with one arm reaching out and touching me. Mandla craves constant contact and I’m so terrified that I’ll smother him in my sleep that I barely manage to get any rest myself.

The insomnia hasn’t helped the constant worry. The new security measures mean we feel safer in the house but they haven’t stopped the threats. Some of them arrive as letters but most of them come via phone calls. The voices change and some are issued in English while others are in Afrikaans.

We’re coming for you. Die kaffirtjie moet op pas. We’ll show you what we do to women who don’t listen.

They’re all bad enough but yesterday’s courier delivery was especially chilling. I signed for the package, thinking it was one of the items I’d asked Vince to ship, but the box contained a life-sized plastic doll that had been spray-painted brown. There was a hunting knife buried in its head.

The threats would be easier to deal with if Dee and I were united against them, but she continues to treat me as though I’m the enemy. True to her word, Dee hasn’t been any help with Mandla at all. When she’s home, she shoots me disapproving looks as though everything I’m doing is wrong, yet she won’t offer any help or advice. The rest of the time, she makes herself scarce, either out hiking or with Riaan.

I know she’s sulking right now but she’ll come around. How can she not when Mandla is so ridiculously lovable?

I never understood why the universe deprived me of a child for so long, or why it allowed all those infertile years to carve away at me, but I know the reason now: None of the babies that I miscarried were meant to be mine. Not one of them. The universe wasn’t hollowing me out, it was whittling away a Mandla-shaped space so that when he came, he’d slot right into me like a missing puzzle piece.

All those years of being barren were preparing me to recognize my soul mate when I finally met him because that’s what Mandla is. Forget all the husbands and the boyfriends who I hoped would make me feel whole. Those were all dead-end streets. The road leading me away from Vince was the only road I was ever meant to be on because it led me home.