It’s supposed to be off. Her rules. All devices in the gold skull bowl by the front door, beneath the charcoal portrait of Glenda Kemp, the snake-dancing stripper of the ’70s. No video, no audio recordings, no interruptions, for everyone’s sake.

Her knees are beginning to shake. She can feel the orgasm rising, the heat up her vertebrae, the new looseness in her limbs. “Oh god,” she whimpers, taking his hand to her breast, but then irritation crosses his brow, and he looks over his shoulder toward the front door.

“Your phone is going crazy,” he says. “You might need to get it.”

“God, sorry. Stay right here.” She kisses him and peels herself off the bed. Behind her, Henk scrubs his fingers through his hair, which is starting to thin, to go with his new middle-aged pouch that seems here to stay no matter how much he tries to CrossFit it away.

She scoops up her phone. Twelve missed calls—her mom, Zukiswa, and three from her sister, Chantal—dozens of WhatsApps and Telegrams, email notifications, texts from unknown numbers. She can’t make sense of it.

“Give me a second, sorry.” Nats puts on a wrap, steps out onto the balcony, closing the sliding door behind her, and calls her mom. The view of the city looks out over a sea of red rooftops and trees.

The phone rings.

Another cruise ship has pulled into the harbor, like a new, shiny white office block that has materialized between the downtown skyscrapers.

And rings.

Lion’s Head still has a long black swipe of burned grass from the wildfire a month ago, just above the line of the pine trees. Nats had a Burn, Baby, Burn! party, all of them sitting on the balcony with cheap vodka left over from one of Malik’s gigs, where the client wanted him to pour it over his balls. They’d packed emergency suitcases, and Sir Floof was in his carrier, ready to evacuate if the wind turned. “To global warming!” Luvo had toasted the spectacle, but they watched the orange flames lick the mountain, the red lights of the fire trucks, the constant buzz of the helicopters, with a creeping apocalyptic dread.

Like listening to her mom’s phone ringing, and ringing, and ringing. Voice mail. She hangs up. Presses call again.

Her mom picks up immediately. “Natalie,” she says in a broken voice like Nats has never heard, never imagined her bolshie materfamilias would even be capable of, not even after her dad died. A wave of weakness makes her clutch the railing for balance. “What is it, Mom? Is someone hurt? Is it Chantal?”

In the Uber riding to her mother’s house, crying and shaking, she goes through the messages, even as more pour in, from other country codes, unknown numbers. How the hell did they get her details?

Whore

Bitch

Cunt

You got a dirty mouth, girl, I’d like to come in it.