But the hero, who had held so much promise, was disappointing her; she was now halfway through the book and he still had not even kissed the wild-at-heart wallflower. As Mrs Louisa Alcott sighed and took in a deep breath, she noticed the freshness of the morning air for the first time. She knew that her husband, Mr Louis Alcott, would not be happy to return from overseeing the running of the farm to find her sitting in the front garden.

Perhaps it was not altogether wise to sit outside, actively courting potential danger, but the radio had announced that there was a ceasefire, and Mrs Louisa Alcott had had enough years of being cooped up in the house for her own safety. During the war, she had spent every morning of the working day barricaded inside the house, armed with both a rifle and a pistol, in case the terrs came traipsing along. As a girl, she had been taken hunting with a rifle by her grandfather; as a teenager, she had been taken to target practice by her father; and, as a wife, she had been taken to national security classes by her husband. So Mrs Louisa Alcott was more than prepared to deal with the terrs and more than capable of giving them what they deserved.

The terrs had never come to the Alcott Farm, probably because it was too close to the main road that led to the City of Kings, and so she had spent a good portion of those armed days in much the same way she did now, reading Mills & Boon novels and sucking on koeksisters – only back then, she had done so in a barricaded kitchen.

She breathed in deeply again, and in that breath forgave the hero for not realising that he was falling in love with the heroine and for not kissing her, although it was obvious that her waiting lips were ready to be kissed. She turned to page one hundred, sure that all would come right over the next hundred pages: it always did. The only place where happy endings were guaranteed was within the pages of a romantic novel.

She continued reading the love story that was playing itself out in the Australian outback, which was where Mrs Louisa Alcott liked her heroes to reside because she could easily imagine the terrain to be very much like the farmland and veld that made up her world, and could, therefore, easily believe that it was possible for a hero to appear unexpectedly in her life.

Just then there was a loud bang, and Mrs Louisa Alcott jumped off the bench, threw away the Mills & Boon, and upset the plate of koeksisters that had been comfortable on her lap. As she ran towards the house, she supposed that it would have been too much to ask to expect everyone to honour the ceasefire. She was halfway to the front door when she turned and saw a beige bakkie drive up the tarred road that led to the city. The car had curls of smoke unfurling from under its bonnet as it came to a controlled standstill at the side of the road just opposite the Alcotts’ gate.