‘Look, I’m tired. I’m not here for a row. I’ve had enough of those. You and I have always disagreed about how to go about this whole business, but that’s not it, is it? The rows, the arguments, they were not just about operations, not just about tactics, Kagiso, they were about us. You know that, don’t you? And that’s why Lesedi’s death is so tragic. Actually, I think people like him are asking for it, but that’s not why he ended up being killed. He died because you and I never learned how to just talk to each other, to explain ourselves to each other, to tell each other what was going on in our heads.’

Kagiso let the words sink in. She’d drawn him in, made him as culpable as she was. He wanted to throw the accusation back. He stared at Sharmi, as if to make sure this wasn’t just another front she’d opened. She looked spent. He knew her well enough to see there was no fight left in her. She wasn’t pointing a finger at him or trying to blame him. Not now, not this time. There was no judgement. She was trying to describe what had happened but he didn’t recognise the picture.

‘But – but you can’t hate me that much … not enough to go and do a thing like that?’

‘I don’t hate you. I don’t think I ever have.’

‘Then why this?’

‘You tell me, Kagiso. Let’s not play games. By morning I’ll be all over the news. By this time tomorrow you’ll either have to be out of the country or you’ll be pulled in, too. So tell me. Why have we been trying to destroy each other?’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘Just tell me the truth.’

‘About what?’

‘About us. I know what I did, what I carried on doing. I’m not proud of it, any of it. I’ve worked it out now. I wanted us to talk about it a long time ago. But we never got the chance – you walked away.’

Sharmi and Kagiso had met some years earlier. She’d just finished working on a feature film that had been shot on location in South Africa, hired as one of the English director’s local assistants. There was a cast party and Kagiso had turned up, invited by a woman he’d known at Stellenbosch, whose father had invested in the film. Apart from the uniformed staff serving an endless supply of food and drink, the two of them were the only people of colour. Sharmi had seen the woman on the set occasionally, all white linen and lovely. For Sharmi each day on the shoot had been like a trial: she’d felt the need to prove herself, to say something, to do something that might catch the director’s eye. The other woman, fragrant and ethereal, would turn up whenever it suited her and make straight for the director’s chair, flopping into it like she owned it. Her conversations with the director would always start with a reference to some encounter they’d had off location. Daddy this, Daddy that.