Any minute now, Lindi would walk through that door and be drawn, irrevocably, into his life, a part of it that even his mother did not know about. There’d been so many decisions he’d had to make since the sabotage had begun – he’d agonised about all of them. Countless times he’d found himself still awake at dawn, fighting a private battle between what his activism propelled him towards and what his conscience warned him against. And yet this latest decision – to confide in Lindi and break the cardinal rule of the cell – he had taken on the run.

Lindi could feel the clammy dampness of her shirt under the rucksack.

She’d been surprised by how readily the farm-shop owner had let her have a lift with the delivery van. ‘Don’t you worry, ma’am,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll make a plan, get you on your bus now-now.’

She’d done exactly as Kagiso had suggested, telling the man she’d had some bad news and had to return to Johannesburg. She’d left enough money to cover her overnight stay at the Mirabel and said she’d call Mrs Venter later in the day.

She was dropped off at the bus terminus, and as soon as the van was out of sight she walked, in fact it was more like a run, to the railway station. Her phone started ringing. She recognised the number, Sanjit Patel’s, and remembered to turn her phone off.

The perspiration was only partly down to the physical effort of rushing around with her luggage. In the space of that short phone call with Kagiso she’d stepped into utterly uncharted territory. She’d acted on impulse and now fought against the inclination to reprimand herself for not being more wary.

Lindi walked for a few minutes on what she thought was Voortrekker and had to turn back. A pedestrian pointed to what looked like an alley – which South Africans call a service road – and told her that if she cut through it she would come out on Voortrekker.

She hadn’t checked out of the Mirabel properly; she hadn’t given any sort of explanation to Mr Patel; she hadn’t discussed any of this with Anton. Every omission amounted to a risk, the kind of impetuosity that she’d never understood when she’d seen it in others.

And now she was walking down a back alley to meet … to meet who? She barely knew Kagiso – Kagiso the boy, perhaps, but not Kagiso the man. She had fashioned a person, a fully fledged character, out of no more than the threadbare fabric of a memory.

She emerged onto Voortrekker Street and almost immediately saw Mama K’s a little further down on the opposite side of the road. Lindi stood still.

Commuters walked around and past her. She hardly noticed them. She’d reached a point of no return.