“Lovely to meet you. I knew your father many moons ago.” There’s a smirk of recognition from both of them, so I know they’ve heard the stories or, at least, some bastardized version of them. “Would you like to come in for a drink? I don’t have beer but I’m sure I could rustle up a brandy and Coke.”

They thank me and follow me up the steps, sitting on chairs on the veranda after indicating that their boots are dirty and they don’t want to trek mud inside. After I mix their drinks, pouring a double for myself, Jez follows me outside as I deliver them. She stops short of going near the men, her ears and tail lowered, and then she surprises me by baring her teeth and growling at them.

They laugh nervously and I apologize, scooting her back inside before closing the door behind me. Jez hasn’t been herself since we handed the baby the over. It’s like she’s bereft without him. I know how she feels.

We sit and chat about the weather for a bit, and then talk turns to Hartbeespoort Dam, and how it’s become a drawing card for rich people from Johannesburg looking to get away from the city for the weekend. Golf courses and resorts are springing up all over the place and it’s bringing a lot of pleasure-seekers with money to our neck of the woods.

“Which is why we’re prepared to up our offer,” Klein Maynard says.

“Your offer?”

“For the farm. Since you turned us down.” I’m taken aback. The estate agent told me it was some consortium who’d made the offer but didn’t tell me who was behind it.

“We want to make you an offer you can’t refuse,” Henning says before Klein Maynard offers a million rand more.

The total figure makes my eyes water.

Damn Dee for making us turn it down. Damn her for making me give back the baby. Damn her to hell for all of it.

And it’s in damning her that I somehow conjure her, like one of those demons in horror movies who appear when you mention their name, because there she suddenly is, pulling up in Da’s old Chevy Impala. We watch as she parks behind their bakkie and gets out. Her eyes look swollen, as though she’s been crying again, and I suddenly realize where she’s been all morning: at the hospital visiting her son. I’m just wondering how to ask her if anything has changed without letting on too much in front of our guests, when she walks up the stairs and glares at them.

“This is my sister, Delilah Ferguson,” I say by way of introduction and to cut through the awkwardness. “These boys are Klein Maynard and Henning Coetzee.”