But this still did not excuse Sitshengisiwe’s bad behaviour. When he had come home after work and found her not in the house, he knew exactly where she was. Hadn’t it been the case almost every evening since the New Year’s Day party? She spent most of her time after work with Bodicea Mthimkhulu, enjoying herself and not really caring that she would only start to cook for her husband at 7 p.m., knowing full well that the last meal he had eaten had been at 1 p.m. All of a sudden, nothing mattered to Sitshengisiwe more than Bodicea, not even her duties as a wife, which she had vowed before a pastor always to uphold. Some deacon she was.

The evening before, he had waited in anger, expecting his wife to arrive late to cook his dinner as usual, but when 8 p.m. struck and there was still no sign of her, he decided not to give her the satisfaction and made his own dinner. If she expected him to go and fetch her from the Mthimkhulus, make some kind of scene that she would use to prove a point he didn’t know she was making, then she, as Madam liked to say, had another thing coming.

He had gone to sleep fully expecting her to return chastened at some point during the night, but now it seemed she had, instead, chosen to spend the entire night in another man’s house! But even as he thought this thought, it did not seem possible: she was too much Cosmos Nyathi’s daughter to do such a thing. Perhaps that was it? Perhaps she had simply gone back to being Cosmos Nyathi’s daughter and stopped being Philemon Dlodlo’s wife. Could it be that she had finally actually left him?

Philemon’s entire body tensed with a fear that predated even Sitshengisiwe’s unholy union with Bodicea.

It had begun with the artichokes. Madam had been determined to have artichokes – coated in breadcrumbs, deep-fried, and served with a lemon and herb butter sauce – at her Christmas party. She had enjoyed something of the kind on a recent trip to Cape Town, and she had wanted, more than anything, to win the hearts of her guests by replicating the recipe. Suspecting that artichokes would not grow easily in the City of Kings, Madam had encouraged Philemon to plant the seeds months in advance. He did as he was told, but the artichokes had predictably struggled, even though he coaxed them almost daily. Luckily, after a few false starts, his labours bore fruit. It had been very hard work, but when he saw the plant peep through the soil and then grow to its protea-like full glory, he was very proud of his work. So was Madam, who had encouraged baas to give Philemon an even bigger bonus at the year’s end.