Spokes could easily understand how and why a man would fall in love with Marion Hartley. She had an alluring, fluid quality about her and an endearing playfulness that he could see Emil Coetzee tripping over; and then, thereafter, having lost his footing, never being able to quite right himself again. It was not just her looks that were beguiling; it was her entire person. A woman like that could be extremely dangerous.

While Marion Hartley was preparing her drink, Spokes marvelled at her transformation within a matter of minutes. By the time they sat themselves down in her living room, she seemed to have convinced herself that she really did not have to fear the worst where Emil Coetzee was concerned, and Spokes wondered what it was she knew that made her almost certain that all was well. Kuki Coetzee had her ‘disappearances’ to rely on; what did Marion Hartley have?

She re-entered the living room in that fluid way of hers, carrying a glass of something that looked tropical and indeed sinful.

‘It does not feel like Christmas Eve, does it?’ Marion Hartley asked as she took a seat on the same sofa as Kuki Coetzee. She seemed to do so because she understood that Kuki Coetzee and she, in loving the same man, had to be there for each other at this time. She also understood that Kuki Coetzee did not have the same assurance that all was probably well that she had.

Spokes watched as Marion Hartley placed her glass on a coaster on the side table closest to her end of the sofa before reaching out a hand to Kuki Coetzee. She managed to give Kuki Coetzee’s hands a gentle squeeze before Kuki Coetzee removed her clasped hands from Marion Hartley’s touch and, not knowing what else to do with them, sat on them as though she were a punished schoolgirl.

‘I’m sure it will all be all right,’ Marion Hartley said, reaching for her drink and taking a long sip. ‘He probably just needs to clear his head.’

‘So you don’t think you’ve just been supplanted? That he’s chosen someone else to spend his nights with?’ Kuki Coetzee asked, her words slings and arrows.

Marion Hartley smiled softly and sympathetically at her. No, she definitely did not believe she had been supplanted.

‘Why would he need to clear his head?’ Spokes asked. ‘Do you have some idea as to why he went into the bush?’

Spokes could tell by the way Marion Hartley scratched the back of her head and then smoothed over the uncreased skirt of her dress that these questions had taken her by surprise, and that she was, for the moment, wrong-footed. ‘Why? Why? Well, because of the ceasefire, surely,’ she eventually said before taking another generous sip of her drink.