Above all, what Saskia desired most was to be normal … to feel normal … to feel as though her utter brokenness had still left her with a kind of beauty that the world wanted and appreciated. And so, Saskia had begged Norman to stay. This had been a mistake because then, when Norman walked away, he had done so with his head held high, thinking that he had something she wanted and believing that that something was himself – when really what she wanted from him was her appreciated self. This was probably how she would have felt after she had told Emil Coetzee their truth. She would have felt … nothing. She would have felt that the truth did not matter. All there was, all there had ever been, all there ever would be for her, was this emptiness.

Saskia wanted to believe she was capable of being different, perhaps even better, but she could not be sure of this because everything that had made her had been wrong.

Later, as Saskia parked the car outside her flat, she felt empty … devoid … culled. She opened her rucksack and retrieved the Selous School for Boys 1942 yearbook in search of the man who was her father, but found in it what she always did: not a man but a boy, a boy of fifteen – a boy in need of love and protection. Emil Coetzee.

Saskia

SASKIA

Saskia was about to open the gate that led to her mother’s cottage when she stopped. Had that little girl at the corner just called her a bitch? A group of young girls from Coghlan Primary School were standing a few metres from the cottage on Ninth Avenue. They would have looked like angels in their blue-and-white uniforms had their little faces not been contorted into confused hatred as they screamed, ‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’

Well, witch was better than bitch, if only marginally, Saskia thought as she opened a squashed packet of Everest cigarettes that Norman had left behind. She never smoked – but then again, she never visited her mother more than twice in one week. Twice seemed to be going beyond the bounds and bonds of filial duty. Her mother – weak and self-absorbed – had, throughout her life, disappointed her at every turn. And now this. Saskia had absolutely no idea what to do with what she knew.

The two plainclothes detectives had not been following her for a few days, so at least she was probably no longer a suspect. She was relieved that she would not have to spend her days watching the detectives; if they were not following her any more, then they would not find their way to her mother. But was that what she wanted – for her mother to get away with murder, when she had already got away with so much?

‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’ the Coghlan girls shouted.