When Saskia Hargrave had started entertaining the City of Kings with her ‘Where’s Emil Coetzee’ column, B, happy that the state had not got its way, had begun to thaw, and forgave Kuki her moment of weakness. For her part, although she thought Saskia Hargrave a harpy, Kuki appreciated the fact that she was the only one who had given her a choice in all of this – she could choose to take offence or choose to take comfort in the stories that appeared in The Chronicle. Kuki had not yet made up her mind as to which to choose, but she liked having a choice.

To make amends for her earlier intolerance, B had insisted not only on throwing Kuki a birthday party, but on calling it an Independence Day party too. There was an abundance of Independence Day parties being thrown all over the City of Kings, mostly by the Africans. Those parties were celebrating majority rule; but Kuki’s party, B emphasised, would celebrate an adult life lived beyond the shadow of Emil Coetzee – the shadow that had made Kuki understand herself as no more than a wife and a mother. And it was, of course, Kuki’s shying away from the limelight for many years that B used as evidence of Emil’s long shadow. But that was because B did not know that Kuki’s aversion to the limelight predated her marriage to Emil by many years … because B did not know about the parties of Kuki’s childhood.

Kuki had spent every one of those parties ensconced in layers of itchy lace that she pretended not to feel because she had been socialised into a ladylikeness that would not allow her to scratch herself in public. The parties, although held in her honour, had been largely adult affairs. Her parents invited their acquaintances, and if their acquaintances happened to have children, then Kuki had companions on the day; if not, she spent her birthday alone at the children’s table, while her parents entertained.

At some point, Kuki would be called to parade before the adults, who would say nice things about her appearance before her mother nodded at her, which was Kuki’s cue to leave the room and join the other children, if there were any. Together they would politely go through the stages of her birthday – meal, presents, cake – without saying much to her or each other. They all seemed to exist as props that gave texture to an adult world, but not much else.

Because Kuki was the only child of parents who had had her rather late in life, her world, although rarely filled with other children, was filled with so many dolls, toys, and books that they had to have their own room. With their busy social lives, her parents became adept at giving Kuki everything her heart desired save what it desired most – companionship.