I couldn’t say lover. It didn’t gel with the image I had retained of my mother in her stiff blouse and humble cotton skirt. At the same time, Marieke’s declaration that she’d been carrying on an affair did not altogether shock me as it probably ought to have done. I’d known for years about my parents’ extramarital dalliances. They loved to fight about – not the affairs themselves but the way my father went about it. He was often careless, forgetting to hide hotel and restaurant receipts or encouraging strange women to leave cryptic messages on our answering machine. One night, a particularly bold paramour showed up at the house. She parked her car, with its mainland numberplates, in the middle of the drive, the idling engine louder than a speedboat. From my bedroom window, I watched my mother cross the lawn and peer into the driver’s side. I heard her knuckles rap the glass, the retort echoing like a gunshot through the cold night air. When the car drove off, I climbed back into bed and tried to sleep. But it was impossible to block out my parents’ raised voices. When I came downstairs the next day, they were eating breakfast as if nothing had happened. Ignoring me, my mother handed my father the milk and asked what time he would be home so they could take their evening walk across the dunes. My father said he had some business to take care of in Horntje but he planned to be back no later than five. Everything was so calm and placid; if I hadn’t caught the glare that passed between them, I might have convinced myself I dreamed the whole thing. I forgot all about it, although things between them grew increasingly cold.

They died a year later.

At the funeral, I half-expected a few strangers to come forward and lay claim to their affections. Nobody did. If my mother’s suitor was in attendance, he was indistinguishable from the neighbours and colleagues who crowded into the packed churchyard, stamping their feet to shake the damp clods off their boots, hugging themselves to ward off the winter chill. In books, revelations always take place at weddings and funerals. Jane Eyre discovers Rochester’s dark secret, Hamlet is driven mad with grief over Ophelia’s suicide, Miss Havisham stops the clocks at twenty minutes to nine and spends the rest of her days eating rotten wedding cake and corrupting impressionable young minds. In real life, people take their secrets with them when they die.

I walked back into the bedroom and knelt beside Marieke.

‘Who was he?’

‘His first name was Gerrit. I don’t know his surname. They met at a café in town, but he worked at the ranger station.’

‘He was a scientist, then.’

Marieke shrugged. ‘Maybe. Your mother never said.’