‘Is that you?’ Loveness called to him from the kitchen.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ Spokes replied as he removed his fedora and placed it on the hat and coat rack behind the front door. He bent down and removed the pegs from the bottoms of his trousers and placed them, along with his home and office keys, in a basket that the lovely Loveness had made at the Women’s Institute. He placed his father’s messenger bag next to the basket and retrieved the white envelope.

‘It is finally here,’ Loveness said when he entered the kitchen. She motioned with her head towards the kitchen table where a book, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, was lying next to a vase of colourful flowers that Loveness had made out of silk stockings. She had, a few weeks earlier, placed her name on a list so as to borrow the title from their local library.

It took Spokes some time to look at the book because he was still taking in all the loveliness that was his wife as she stood there with a pink apron tied over her magenta georgette A-line dress. What case could possibly be so important that it would make him put off spending each and every minute in her presence? Even though he did not want it to, the answer to that question came in the form of one word: Daisy.

Spokes sat by the kitchen table, placed the white envelope on it, and picked up the book.

‘I thought we could start reading it tonight,’ the lovely Loveness said as she placed a small bowl containing a dumpling in chicken broth in front of him, thus allowing him to sample what he would soon have in abundance. He put a spoonful of dumpling and broth in his mouth and actually had to close his eyes so as best to savour it. It was the perfect union. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ she asked, looking at the envelope. Spokes nodded, and she smiled.

‘Nineteen-eighty is going to be good to us, you’ll see,’ Loveness said as she sat on his lap.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ he asked.

‘No need to. I know you, Spokes Moloi. You always do the right thing.’

‘Word around the station is that the ceasefire will officially be announced tomorrow,’ Spokes said.

Loveness smiled and her cheeks dimpled as she gently placed the palms of her hands on either side of his face. ‘Have I not been saying all along that 1980 will be our golden year?’

‘You have,’ he said as he watched a certain kind of fire enter her eyes.

‘But I don’t see why its goldenness cannot start … now,’ she said, slowly raising one eyebrow.

‘Maybe Wives and Daughters can wait till tomorrow night,’ Spokes said.

‘Maybe,’ Loveness whispered as she kissed her husband.

Later, as Loveness snored softly in the gentle crook of his arm, Spokes looked at the slice of the silver moon that shone through the lace of their bedroom curtains and thought, as he often did before drifting off to sleep, of how he had come to be the luckiest of men.