After her walks, Ginie liked to sit in the sun and watch the men work. She found it therapeutic to observe them working with their hands: John with his shirt off, his back and chest shiny with sweat; Cedric, who was a whole head shorter, working around him with decisive movements.

As the pavilion had been designed with curved walls, Cedric drew it on a grid. He and John set out the grid on the cleared ground with posts and strings and Cedric marked the outline of the foundations in whitewash lines. Once this was done, John dug the foundations by hand and poured them, and Cecil set out the foundation walls from the grid. John did all the brickwork and together, the two men worked out the patterned courses under the windows.

Gradually, a structure began to rise up; modern, marvellous and strange. It consisted of a large, single room designed around a spiral light-well, so that light fell in a pool from the roof. There wasn’t a single straight line, but a series of curved walls, like rondavel shapes. These walls, however, were higher than any rondavel and were plastered white. There were maze-like nooks and a niche to hold Ginie’s collection of minerals and semi-precious stones. It had large, stained glass windows, with panes fashioned into modern, geometric shapes overlooking the Dell.

Cedric wanted the walls to be kept white, but Ginie overrode him – she had a strong need to surround herself with colour. She painted the walls blue herself, adding a mural that was inspired by the various animals, birds and fish she’d seen on her travels. She stayed up all night to paint it, letting it flow without conscious planning or thought, simply following the paintbrush as fast as her hand could move it across the wall. Creatures with curious, elongated shapes began to emerge, connected to each other by curving lines that were like the tendrils of a gigantic vine. Jongy was in the centre, observing everything. Painting brought an energy Ginie hadn’t experienced since before he died; hours passed without her noticing.

She finished as the dawn chorus started up, silencing the nightjars and the owls. The sky was clear and greyish, with a few pink streaks radiating out from the glow of the rising sun. She sat on the floor to survey her work, marvelling at its strangeness.

Not long after Ginie finished her mural, the rose bush beside Jessica’s grave flowered and three puppies were born to Sandra and Max: two boys and a girl. Sandra lay in her basket, exhausted, as the squirming pups latched on to her teats. Max seemed proud as punch, though he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Stephen wouldn’t let Ginie keep the puppies and insisted she find homes for them in Umtali. She was disappointed, but the puppies’ arrival seemed to signal the start of a period of regeneration at La Rochelle. A good omen.