Sharmi Meer woke up and looked around the room, like someone trying to familiarise themselves with the surroundings. From the sofa-bed, she gazed up at the elaborate pressed-tin ceiling, then across to one corner where an impossibly healthy rubber plant had had to adapt its upward trajectory. Sharmi got her bearings. She’d picked up the plant at an end-of-day sale at Rosebank market and handed it over as a not entirely convincing gift. Its size and vigour now, many years later, were a tribute to her friend’s nurturing skills but also to the steadfastness of their relationship. Her friend was out; she was on her own. This was the third, maybe fourth, bed she’d slept in since deciding to abandon her own apartment after that last meeting. It was like a farewell tour.

Sharmi was on the verge of getting up to make some coffee but slumped back into the cushions. What was the rush? She still had time. Long enough to wonder how she had reached this point of no return. Would it be like the movies? She realised she didn’t even know whether the police in South Africa read out your rights. Perhaps that was just an American thing. At what point did they take the photo, those black-and-white mug-shots in which the suspects always seemed to look guilty? Thank God she’d had a haircut.

She’d already decided to present herself at Johannesburg Central Police Station, the old John Vorster Square, where so many anti-apartheid activists had been beaten and bruised, some never to be seen again. They’d all been dragged in, kicking and screaming against the oppression they were fighting.

But Sharmi would just walk in, like she was volunteering for duty. And it was a kind of duty. That was how she saw it now. Handing herself in to protect the others. Of course they’d get pulled in, too, but she’d be able to prove that they knew nothing about what had happened to Lesedi. She owed it to them – she owed it to Kagiso. Yes, even Kagiso. Especially Kagiso. She knew that now. It wasn’t an ending she was looking for but a new beginning.