She took the phone from her hip pocket. It was the one that was supposed to be used only in an emergency. She looked at the contacts list: just three numbers, no names. She could hear the lecture from Kagiso. Don’t keep the numbers on your phone: commit them to memory. Even if she did call Kagiso, Sharmi couldn’t think what she would say to him. If it had been Two-Boy, that would have been easy. She’d tell him she loved him, yes, loved him like a sister, and she’d ask him not to be lonely and to take care of himself. With François, too, it would be simple: one of those it-was-good-while-it-lasted calls. She realised it wouldn’t bother her one way or another if she never saw him again. But it was different with Kagiso. She knew the call would be about an ending, but she hadn’t yet worked out what kind.

13

It was Josiah Motlantshe’s casual announcement that he would be travelling again that galvanised his wife into action.

There were many things in their lopsided marriage that irked Priscilla Motlantshe, but which she was resigned to tolerate. However, the thought that her husband could so quickly pursue the business deal that had been interrupted by Lesedi’s death seemed shocking, even by his standards.

In some ways, his many affairs – which he could barely be bothered to conceal these days – were a relief to her. She had long ago ceased to harbour any passion for her husband. She remembered their first time. Her physical response to him, the sheer pleasure of allowing him into her body, had been so deeply entwined with her admiration for his political courage. The years of separation, when he was incarcerated on Robben Island, had made no difference. If anything it had intensified her desire.

Looking back, she knew all that had begun to wither the day he’d cut his first big business deal. She didn’t begrudge him the money, or the achievement, but she’d seen how the energy and intelligence that had once driven his activism began to feed an appetite for wealth. The apartment in Sandton, with its incumbent (indeed recumbent) mistress was a relatively new development. The fact of it angered her far less than the idea that he thought she was stupid enough not to know about it.