At eighteen, she had known that there was only one way she could realise her dream to be a postman – she would have to marry, and marry very wisely. She would have to choose a man who would give her her freedom without his knowing that this was what he was doing. In Immanuel Moyana, she found the perfect man for her purposes. He had a roving eye, a weak resolve and a highly suggestible mind. He loved what he saw when he looked in the mirror and believed that others would be as enamoured of him as he was of himself; and so when Dikeledi, the most beautiful girl in the village, smiled at him, he was not surprised, and believed that he had been half expecting it all along.

Even before Dikeledi hinted to Immanuel that they should get married, she had cannily put it into his head that he should go and find his fortune in the mines of Johannesburg or Kimberley. She spoke, with genuine admiration, of the many things her father had managed to achieve from such a great distance – school fees for his daughter, eye surgery for his father, a donkey-drawn Scotch-cart for the fields, a brick house, a communal well. Immanuel saw himself building a brick house that would be the envy of the entire village. He saw himself living in that house with Dikeledi and their beautiful children, and he could not wait to leave the village. His wedding night was a near disaster because of his excitement at being both in the room with Dikeledi and on his way to South Africa. It did not help matters, of course, that Dikeledi was very reluctant to let him touch her soft places.

Soon enough, Immanuel was gone and Dikeledi found herself to be that rarest of things: a married woman who was free to do as she pleased. And Dikeledi definitely did as she pleased. For two years, she went through the motions of preparing a home for herself and her husband, all the while knowing full well that Immanuel would never return from the bright lights of Johannesburg, which was where he had chosen to settle. As Dikeledi cooked for one and ate alone and contentedly in her hut, the villagers, waiting in vain for a letter and a money order, began to whisper. They had always known that Immanuel was no good, and now he was proving it by neglecting their very own jewel. They should never have sanctioned such an obviously ill-fated union – and they would not have, but she had been so very determined, hadn’t she?