“He needs me,” she’d said the night I stood guard between her room and Mandla’s with my arms crossed, refusing to let her pass. “He’s crying out for me.”

“He’s babbling, Ruth, not crying. You only put him down fifteen minutes ago. He’ll never learn to sleep by himself if you come running at every little noise.”

She’d shot me a filthy look but went back to bed. It took another three nights of us playing that cat-and-mouse game before Mandla finally settled into a routine and slept through the night. Things were much better on all fronts but even so, Ruth kept insisting she had a feeling that something bad was going to happen.

“Life is the bad thing that’s going to happen,” I’d quipped back. “You can’t protect him from that.” It hadn’t done anything to appease her.

I left Ruth to her own devices and stepped outside, quickly closing the patio sliding door behind me so as not to let a cold breeze in.

Riaan had a three-legged cast-iron pot balanced on a Cadac gas bottle out on the patio and was making an oxtail potjie.

“How’s the food coming along?”

“Good. The meat’s browned and I’ve already layered the veggies. It should be ready as soon as the rugby’s over.”

“Shouldn’t you stir that?” I teased, knowing full well that a potjie should never be stirred. Each ingredient was added in a very particular kind of order and the pot created a pressure-cooker effect to steam everything to perfection.

“Rooinek,” he joked, calling me the Afrikaner insult for the English: redneck. “No clue how to make boerekos.”

“It’s time. The match is starting!” Ruth called from inside.

It was the Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and New Zealand, and we gathered around the television to watch the match build up. Rugby was one of the few areas where our parents’ worlds had converged—rugby meaning as much to the Scots as it did to the Afrikaners—and so Ruth and I had grown up watching the sport.

Because of sanctions imposed against South Africa during apartheid, we hadn’t been allowed to compete during the first two World Cups, in 1987 and 1991. It was a huge deal that South Africa was not only hosting it, but that the Springboks had also made it through to the finals to play against the Kiwis.

I’d set out bowls of biltong and droëwors to snack on during the game, because rugby just wasn’t rugby without the traditional dried-meat snack. Riaan and I were drinking Castle Lagers while Ruth had wine.