As for herself, Priscilla knew that the old pattern – allowing Josiah to get on with his life so long as he didn’t bring it into the home – had to stop. She had to come off the fence and take sides. And she’d decided that if the consequence was the unravelling – final and irrevocable – of her marriage to him, it was a price she was willing to pay. Anything, she decided, was preferable to allowing Willemse, whom she’d never trusted, to get away with being responsible for the death of her only son. She’d convinced herself that he was to blame. Hadn’t Lesedi implied that Willemse had threatened him?

Once in the last couple of days, when she had hit the nadir of her emotional collapse, she had even thought her husband might have been involved. She had rejected that. Josiah was many things but he was not a murderer.

Whatever Lesedi had known, she was going to make public. In all the enervating confusion of the last few days that was the one thing she had got right, the one thing she’d been sure of. All she had to go on was Lesedi’s fateful boast – ‘I do understand, Mom. I’ve got the accounts, the files, the letters. I’ve got copies of it all.’

Immediately after that call with Lesedi Priscilla had gone to his room and searched it from top to bottom. She’d imagined a stash of papers – nothing. In the end she’d grabbed his laptop, the cables and the satchel in which he usually carried it. She had acted on pure instinct. He was always using the thing. Perhaps that was where he’d kept his secrets.

She stared at the laptop now, having retrieved it from a cupboard in the guest wing of the house. Priscilla had no idea what to do with it. She had never used a computer in her life. And even if she knew how to turn it on she didn’t know what she was looking for.

She needed help. It dawned on Priscilla that almost anyone she could turn to would be someone who was beholden to Josiah. That was how it worked. Like a contemporary version of the ancient kings and chiefs, who had held sway before the onslaught of the settlers, Josiah had dispensed his patronage far and wide. In return he received unquestioning allegiance. There was no one she could trust.