Tie still in hand, Silas sat down on Bodecia’s side of the bed, next to her. Even though their bodies were touching, she did not stir. Silas unravelled the tie and placed it clumsily around his collar. He waited patiently for her to open her eyes, which eventually she did. She looked right at him with that thing in her eyes that Chief Inspector Spokes Moloi had put there – suspicion, doubt, fear, the beginning of hatred – he could not tell which. He would know exactly how deeply whatever it was she felt had manifested itself by how she would respond to the test he had just set for her.

At first, it looked as though she would fail. She kept looking at him with that thing in her eyes; and then she said, stifling a yawn, ‘You leaving to go vote? We really should have voted together yesterday.’ With that, she did not quite pass the test, but at least she had made an effort with the ‘we’.

‘Voting together would have been the proper thing to do … the expected thing. Casting our votes for a country we have long fought for.’ She sounded more like the politician that he was pretending to be. In truth, she sounded like the person she was – a woman who had taken an active part in the Women’s Assembly for over fifteen years, and who had helped the nationalists’ cause by tirelessly asking other countries for charitable donations and support.

‘I needed to continue campaigning,’ Silas said.

‘You are worrying needlessly, as I keep telling you. The people will vote for you. They worship you. Have genuine affection for you.’

‘Which, I suspect, is more than my wife feels for me at this moment.’

‘What?’

‘Genuine affection.’

Bodecia had the decency to furrow her brow.

‘You think I have not noticed that things have changed between us since Chief Inspector Spokes Moloi’s last visit?’

She at least continued to look him in the eye, which gave Silas a little hope, even though that something Chief Inspector Spokes Moloi had put in her eyes was still there.

‘The way you look at me has changed.’

‘Has it? I have not noticed any change. I think I am mainly confused. I mean, why did he question you?’

‘He did not question. He insinuated. He is a clever one, that one. He knew that if he asked me a question outright, he would get an answer he did not want, and so he muddied the water; he planted seeds of doubt in your mind because that is what he wanted to do all along. Don’t you see? He wants to drive a wedge between us. He wants you.’

‘Spokes is not that type of a man,’ Bodecia said, trying and failing to seem nonchalant. ‘Everyone in all the townships of the City of Kings knows that for Spokes Moloi, there is only one woman: Loveness Moloi.’