But my painting. I struggled with it. How many canvases I tried, then discarded — tried, then discarded. I spent weeks on one canvas, each day I came to it, and moved something in it, I moved a line, or a shadow. I mixed a new shade of colour, my colours that I loved so much. Each day the colours looked a little different, yet the same. My brush, so firm in my hand, like my hand itself. The light in the room would change, so slowly, as the morning wore on. The shades deepened, then lightened. Did I need more light? But I didn’t need more light, I knew that. The light in my room, my studio, had a dimness which I loved.

The struggle with that painting had been going on for months, I don’t know how many months, but many. I felt the struggle to be a part of me. I’d sit in the studio on the wooden chair I had, a hard chair, but deep and low. I’d found it in a neighbour’s garage once, and asked him for it. I’d sit, and shut my eyes. I had an idea that if I shut my eyes the image of the painting would be clearer to me, as it had been all night, in my dreams. Perhaps it was.

At last I’d emerge for lunch. Out of the trees, into the sunlight, although the trees were always close and rustling. I loved them, too.

I would sit on the patio then, Emily would bring me lunch, she knew exactly what to bring, because it was always the same. Sliced avocado, a cut tomato; lemon. And my tea. A silence hung in the afternoon.

I would think of the hanging afternoon, so hot, where my mother would be, sitting on her porch. Her husband — my father — at his shop. She alone, but for Maggie, sitting on a chair under the eave in the yard at the back. Flies, many flies. Maggie’s pale blue uniform and white apron, her scarf, her doek, a little crooked on her head. I’d call my mother later, I thought. I had nothing to tell her, perhaps I could think of something about the children, because her first question always, how are the children. Perhaps that was her only question.

OUR NEW MAID fit in soon enough, Emily showed her everything. Josias carried on in his inscrutable way, he played his radio in the afternoons in his room, I’d hear it if I stepped out into their yard. And then he would be cleaning the pool later, when the children were done swimming. I’d come out again with my tea then and sit on the patio, in the afternoon sun. But still shaded. I’d watch Josias’s rhythmic movements with the pool net, he was like a shadow, and so lean he was. The pool so still: pale blue, and deep.

Twice a week I drove Helena to her ballet class. Her pale-pink attire: tights, leotard, ballet shoes. Her hair pulled back into a ponytail, Emily would help her with that: brushing, brushing, smoothing, smoothing the hair.