Of course, Stompie and Sarie don’t know about Mandla’s status. The stigma is just too great and they can’t be trusted to keep it to themselves. If the lynch mobs are pissed off about Mandla being black, his being HIV positive will push them over the edge. As they turn away, I see Sarie nudge Stompie, nodding in the direction of my magazine cover on the wall. He follows her gaze and his eyes almost pop out of his head when he catches sight of my naked form.

“Ek het jou mos gesê,” she whispers. I told you so.

Stompie looks like Christmas, Easter, New Year’s, and his birthday all came on the same day and I make a mental note to take the picture down. No one used to bat an eyelid in Cape Town but the farm crowd isn’t quite as cosmopolitan as the Clifton crowd. I only put it up to annoy Dee anyway.

Sarie and Stompie recently announced their plans to retire, which is sad considering how long they’ve been a part of the family. But then, they have gotten on in years and now that we’re living at the farm, we don’t need caretakers anymore, though we will need to hire a maid to do housework.

I made a decent profit on the Camps Bay apartment and have some money in the bank even after paying Vince back, with interest, for the loan for all the security upgrades. I make a mental note to chat to Dee and see if we can pool our resources to give Sarie and Stompie a decent retirement gift. They’ll need all the help they can get wanting to live in some godforsaken village of their birth and taking care of the entire family, and they’re not going to get it anywhere else, that you can be sure of.

“Time to blow out the candle!” I slip a cream votive candle onto the cake and light it.

Everyone starts singing in that horrible stilted and hushed way people do, as though they’re terrified that someone will actually hear their voice. I raise my own voice, both to drown them out and to show them how it’s done. “Happy Birthday, dear Mandla. . . .” I draw out the ahhhh sounds. “Happy Birthday to you.”

“Hip hip,” Dee surprises me by calling out, and the small group replies with, “Hooray!”

“And nog a hip hip,” Riaan shouts.

“Hooray!”

Jez barks, as though throwing in her two cents’ worth.

It’s time to blow out the candle. This would be the tricky part if Mandla knew how to do it. I was told to be careful about mucus, so getting it all over the cake would be a problem. I pluck the candle from the cake and then blow it out myself.