THE VISIT FROM MY PARENTS ended. Nothing I feared about Joseph being discovered happened. I remember the goodbyes, the children jumping up and down as Klaas loaded the car, how many suitcases for such a short visit! The dogs jumping and wagging their tails, they knew my parents too. Klaas joking and talking in Xhosa with Josias, Josias even smiling, almost laughing, for once. Klaas had slept in Josias’s room, they made their own arrangements about that. Of course, now, only now, it occurs to me: what bedding did they use? Perhaps Klaas brought a blanket with him, all the way from Villiers in the car, and slept on the stone floor, under it. I think that might be what they did. I remember hearing Klaas talking in the back room of the kitchen, late, when the servants were eating their dinner, their stew and mieliepap, their radio with music on. It was an enjoyable visit for them too. We — they — had all known Klaas for a while.

I DID COME DOWN with a cold. On the Tuesday after my parents’ visit. I think I was . . . shattered . . . by the collision of the two worlds, the world of my parents, and Joseph in our garden room. And in our own home. It didn’t feel like my home any more. I felt so ill, I became fevered. I retired, I retired to my room, to my bed.

For one week I lay in my room, curtains drawn. I’d never drawn my curtains during the day. The room, now, was dim. I lay under my covers, how I remember it. Emily brought me thin gruels she had made, on her tray, I barely touched them. In the afternoons she’d bring me tea, with lemon. I hardly drank that. She brought plates of dry toast, she tried that, but I didn’t eat.

Helena was taken to ballet classes that week by her friend’s mother, and she and Stephen walked to school, down the street, they had never needed me to drive them. What else went on in the house while I was sick, I don’t know. Emily did everything as usual, and directed Tiny. Josias did his work, as usual, I am sure. Howard came home every evening and came straight to my room, he’d bend down over the bed to kiss me on my forehead, and ask worriedly, are you feeling better, are you feeling better yet?

Every evening, my mother would call. I didn’t want to speak to her but Howard said I must, I must speak to her, she’d think there was something really wrong otherwise. I’d finally pick up the black phone receiver next to my bed, Howard would have been talking to her, in hushed tones, on the receiver in his study. I’d hear her thin voice over the wire, perhaps plaintive now. I’ll be fine, Mom, I said, just a cold, just a bad cold, that’s all. I could hear my voice, as I said it. A soft voice I have, I think, but it had a note of uncertainty in it now, I could hear it.