And what about the others? Kagiso remembered how often they had talked about what to do if there was a danger of discovery, about how they would continue to be able to get messages to each other, how they could carry on their work. They’d discussed the mechanics of clandestine activity but, he realised now, it had never occurred to them to ask each other how they might feel. None of them had any idea of how the others might react.

What if one of them was pulled in? The trust that comes with friendship, the certainty of a shared enterprise, they had taken for granted. But now, separated and alone, each of them had to find his or her own reason for staying true. Stripped of the borrowed purpose of the Collective, each would be left to discover whether what drove them was conviction or something less, just a good idea at the time.

François, still the white boy eager to prove he deserved to be a part of this new South Africa. He wasn’t really fighting for the future, he was fighting against his past. Kagiso tried to envisage François again, but now imagining him without the balm of friendship, which soothes out the blemishes and deficiencies of character. What was he, really? What did he represent? Maybe he was just another of those privileged liberals who fight other people’s battles comfortable in the knowledge that their own position is secure, the ones who are unable, or unwilling, to understand that the favoured status bestowed on them at birth might be part of the problem.

Two-Boy, restless, bored, looking for something that might replace the tedium of a career and the stupor of his battle with the bottle. He hadn’t been searching for the Land Collective, he’d needed a diversion, something to replace the previous thing that had excited his interest. He’d found Sharmi. He’d followed her.

So it all came back to Sharmi again. Two-Boy wasn’t the only one who’d been drawn to her, enticed by the sheer, gravitational force of her personality. It had happened to Kagiso, though he’d resented it at the time. Her conviction had seemed like a rebuke, a judgement. Even then, before the Land Collective, Sharmi had known you had to take sides. She understood that theirs was a country still divided between rich and poor, white and black, and that she was not going to stand in the middle. She wanted victory; compromise was like coming second. He’d been close to her, and it had left him feeling exposed.