Instead of experiencing these other ways of being a woman, all Kuki had done so far was sit on a settee alone in a corner, and, slightly amused by the manufactured antics of the multiracial gathering around her, diligently make her way through a packet of Everests. Although the times were changing and things were shifting around and between them, the guests seemed intent on being happy and on looking forward to the future. To Kuki, it all seemed a little too much like a performance to be real, but what did she know?

‘Would you mind terribly?’ a voice asked before its owner sat himself down beside Kuki without waiting for her response.

‘No, not at all,’ Kuki said, shifting so as to make the man even more comfortable.

Earlier, she had noticed him as soon as he entered the room. He was, like her, a gangly type, somewhat out of place. Now he kept running his fingers through his chestnut hair, and she kept trying not to look at his immaculately manicured moustache because she knew that looking at it would make her look at his mouth, and she did not want to look at his mouth. She looked into his eyes, which were a heart-warming hazel colour that made her blush and look away.

‘Are you comfortable?’ Kuki asked, shifting again, this time trying to create as much distance as she could between them. She was too aware of his presence – his closeness.

‘No. I have not come for table. I have come for tea,’ he replied as he held up his tea cup and smiled a naughty boy’s grin.

Kuki surprised herself by laughing heartily. The laughter kept on coming until there were tears rolling down her face. It was an old joke, and not a particularly good one, but to her, in that moment, it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.

He looked at her with laughter welling in his eyes.

‘If I had known that that was all it would take, I would have sat down next to you a lot sooner,’ he said. ‘But I have been standing in that corner for over an hour, agonising over what I would say to you.’

His sincerity immediately sobered Kuki.

He offered her his hand: ‘Todd Carmichael.’

‘Kuki Coetzee,’ she said, shaking his hand and marvelling at how warm it was. ‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.’

‘The pleasure is all mine, I’m sure,’ he said.

They were still holding hands when Kuki found herself telling him about the beautiful, golden-haired boy she had lost two years earlier, and the ex-husband she had lost even though he had never really been hers. Todd shared with her the wife, the son, the daughter, the maid, the gardener and the dog which he had lost during an ambush when he was in Geneva trying to negotiate a ceasefire.