The contrast between the two women could not have been greater and – over the course of that evening – Sharmi had lost no time in reminding Kagiso of the fact. That was when the sparring had started, that very night. It had begun as joshing, energetic disagreements charged with a sort of sexual frisson. Neither understood at the time that something else was at play – though they would find out in time, but too late to do either of them any good.

The party, and the events that had followed it, had shaped their relationship. They didn’t talk about it any more but it sat there like a mutant gene that disfigured their lives.

The woman was just another of those people Sharmi had wanted to get even with, and Kagiso had offered her the means to do it. Sharmi never forgot the exquisite pleasure of watching the reaction on the face of Kagiso’s Stellenbosch blonde when she heard that he would be leaving the cast party in her VW Beetle and not Daddy’s BMW. In the car back to her digs in Muizenberg, Sharmi had, with some relish, described the look. ‘First time the spoiled brat had anything taken away from her,’ she’d said. ‘Probably thought she’d had you bedded, her first black man.’

It had led to another argument, their second or third of the evening.

‘Why, why must you turn everything into a political battle?’ he’d asked.

‘Because in this country everything is political, Kagiso, even who you fuck,’ she’d replied. They’d ended up in her room later, Kagiso tearing at her clothes and lunging at her from behind with a ferocity that had left her dissatisfied and only just on this side of humiliation. But she hadn’t tried to stop him. Earlier that evening, at the party, in the car, she’d goaded him, needled him, and he had reacted like a wounded animal. They were even.

That evening, each of them had revealed something to the other. In being exposed in that way, they had reached a point in minutes that might take months, even years, for others. It was a bond of sorts.

She’d woken the following morning to find that Kagiso had gone, leaving what she thought was a ludicrously formal note to say he’d be grateful for the lift back to Jo’burg if the offer was still open. (They’d talked about it at the party.) She’d called him straight away.

‘What do you mean, “if the offer is still open”?’ she’d said. ‘You weren’t that bad!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said.

‘Christ, I’m joking, Kagiso. We were both a bit over the top.’

‘It won’t happen again.’

And it didn’t. Not on that journey. Never. She might as well have had a complete stranger in the car. They talked about everything except what had happened. The first part of the journey was through the sparse and arid beauty of the Karoo. She’d imagined the two of them, in the bubble of the car, their intimacy a cocoon protecting them from the vast and unforgiving desert around them. At first she’d let it go, hoping he’d open up. Then, when they’d broken the journey in Nieu Bethesda, Sharmi had confronted him.