Lindi pulled back the blind. The taxi was still there. She decided to get on with her calls and keyed in the first number. She was about to press the green ‘call’ icon on her smartphone but stopped, a reflex: the less easy she was to track, the better. She put her mobile down and picked up the landline phone. She’d use that instead.

Finally, she got around to the call she’d been wanting to make from the minute she’d set foot in South Africa. She searched her contacts for Maude’s number.

‘And how’s my baby?’

Even after all these years Maude’s voice was as familiar as her own mother’s, and Lindi, who long ago had taught herself to put away childish things, felt, in an instant, like a little girl again. These were the very words she’d hear every morning as she stumbled, sleepy-eyed and groggy, into the kitchen where Maude would be preparing their breakfast.

‘Your mom told me you would be calling and I have been waiting by the phone.’

‘I’ve got a parcel for you from Mom,’ Lindi said, unconsciously reverting to the South African idiom. ‘I’ve been dying to call you all day but I’ve been so busy.’

‘I know you have some important work here. Tch, tch. This is a bad thing that’s happening here,’ she said.

Lindi heard Maude click her tongue and remembered how the disapproval it implied used to weigh down on her more heavily than any scolding meted out by her parents. Maude’s admonishments were all the more powerful for their rarity, whereas her parents’ daily complaints about homework not done or clothes left on the floor had lost their potency with each repetition.

‘Isn’t it terrible, this whole business? Maude, I have to go to Mpumalanga tomorrow but I promise I’ll come and see you when I’m back in Johannesburg.’

‘You’re going where? Mpumalanga?’

‘I have to start somewhere and that’s where the trouble is. And it’s where my boss wants me to go,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll be there for just a couple of days.’

‘Kagiso is there – that’s where he’s doing his work. His office, they call it Soil of Africa. He used to work here in town in a good government job but he left. I don’t know what for he wants to go and sit in the bush but he’s there.’

‘What a coincidence, Maude.’

‘Yes, he’s there,’ the old woman said, with a hint of ruefulness.

‘Isn’t it amazing that he should be in Mpumalanga of all places? How can I get hold of him?’

‘You can phone him. He never answers the phone but for you maybe he’ll do it.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he’s just got a lot of work, Maude.’