As he lay waiting for the tablets to take effect, Derek thought about Diane. She’d made it clear that morning she was still angry with him. He shouldn’t have told her that he believed Clare to be his daughter. But the combination of the trauma of the crossing, pills and whiskey had muddied his thoughts. Also, if he was perfectly honest, he’d longed to have someone to talk to about it ever since he’d worked it out.

He’d always imagined, given that his, Diane and Michelle’s friendship was significantly older than their connections with the others, that Diane would be the most sympathetic. She knew that Derek had loved Michelle ever since the three of them met at primary school. He didn’t like to dwell on the fact that Diane also warned him against his feelings for Michelle for almost as long.

“Get over her,” said Diane: Derek had put his fist through a cupboard door when he discovered that Michelle had agreed to go to the matric dance with someone else. “You two are too alike to ever be a couple.”

“What do you mean? She’s nothing like me. I’d never do something like this to her!”

“Bullshit, Derek. What about sticking your tongue down Shona Morris’s throat at that braai last term?”

“That’s because Michelle chose to go away for the weekend at the last minute.”

Diane shook her head. “You’ll never get it right. It’ll never work. You think you love her, but you want to possess her. She might love you, but no one will possess her.”

But Derek and Michelle did get it right. Or rather, Derek thought they did, for a few weeks when they began university. With Diane around less—she and Bruce had recently begun dating—and in their new environment, Derek and Michelle relied on one another for company between classes and during social events. So much so, in fact, that those they met on campus believed them to be a couple. They were invited to parties together, where they arrived and left together. One night, after copious plastic cups of cheap wine, they kissed.

When Derek told Diane about the kiss, she warned him against it happening again. “It’ll end badly, Derek. Especially for you, I suspect.”

He didn’t listen. He and Michelle took it further and were happy, drifting together on a raft of passion and naïveté, until Derek, hormones and ego optimised, had said to Michelle, “I knew you’d come to your senses one day.”

The next day, when they met on the library stairs as usual, she told him she no longer wanted to be romantically involved with him.