Just the memory of those words brought her up sharp, as they had done when she’d first heard them. She’d seen Lesedi for what he was – a boy in a man’s world – and she’d feared for him. She had ended the conversation there and then, saying they should talk more when he got home. He’d told her not to wait up as he had one more meeting with the community worker, Kagiso, before he set off for Johannesburg. It was the last time she’d spoken to her son.

A few minutes later she’d taken a call from Jake Willemse. His tone had been silken civility, his message anything but. Your son should get himself a proper job, he’d intimated in a barely veiled threat, instead of interfering in government business. ‘He really will get into all sorts of trouble if he carries on like this.’

He’d stressed the word ‘government’ as if it were sacred ground, a place for the gods, not mere mortals like Lesedi. He’d ended the call by saying he’d have to tell the boy’s father. This was the conversation she’d relayed to Josiah when he’d called from Dubai.

Priscilla heard a key in the front door and looked across the vast open-plan living room to see the security guard let Josiah in. Even at this distance she could see he’d been drinking. In some men alcohol dispels the gloom and lifts the mood. In Josiah it made him combative and aggressive. He’d never touched her in anger but the threat was always there.

‘Vusi! Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Where are these people?’

‘I gave them the evening off. I thought we’d want to be on our own.’

‘You thought what?’ he barked.

‘I said, I thought it would be better if we all had some time to ourselves. Shall I call the girls?’

‘No, leave them. Get me a drink,’ he said, as he entered the hallway toilet, leaving the door open.

Priscilla poured out a large measure of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and walked over to the fridge.

‘No, no, leave the ice.’

‘I’m just getting myself some ginger ale,’ she said. She noticed that his fly was still open. There was a drip mark on his trousers. He kicked off his shoes and fell onto the white leather sofa, which gave out a hiss as his full weight sank into it.

It was then that whatever tiny vestige of a relationship Priscilla still shared with Josiah disappeared. True, they were no longer man and wife in a conjugal sense, but there had been moments, if few and far between, when she might look across a room full of people and see Josiah, vigorous and animated, and remember why she’d once felt as if her life could never be complete without him at her side.