Perhaps Howard later told Stephen that I had an allergy to some flowers, or he made some other excuse, I don’t know.

Howard never bought me roses.

BUT THERE WERE those long afternoons in Villiers when I was a girl. As I lay outside on my blanket reading, I’d sometimes hear the voices of children, teenagers calling and whooping on the wide street. They’d be on their bicycles. And then I’d sit up, and watch them, their wheeling, wheeling down the street. Bare feet, their feet so fleet on the pedals. I never learned to ride a bicycle.

I’d feel my aloneness, then. I knew some of the children, they were from my school, the only school in our town, but they were Afrikaners, Afrikaans. I’d hear their language, and sometimes they’d call to me, meisie, meisie, daar’s sy, daar’s sy, and they’d laugh or whoop, and wheel again, perhaps showing off. I envied them their ease, their slow swoops down the street. I, behind my iron garden gate, the roses, my mother’s roses by, the pale rocks with their slow, black lizards behind me, against the house’s wall.

THE SUMMER MONTHS of 1972 started turning, turning to autumn. It was April.

Autumn wasn’t beautiful in Johannesburg, the leaves don’t turn the way they do here, we didn’t care much for autumn. Josias started cleaning up the pool in preparation for winter, the pool simply lay for the few winter months under a grey tarpaulin, and its water became green, green with algae, under it. Josias’s work with Howard and the chlorine would stop, and now there was one less thing for Josias to do, one less thing for Howard to share with him.

Joseph was still in our garden room. It had been more than three months. I’d say to Howard, Howard, really, when is this going to end. It’s not right. He’ll be found one day and then what? He’s made it this far, Howard would say, I don’t think he’ll be found. It’s fine. What’s it to you, Jacqueline, he’d say. I became angry then. It’s my space, I said. What are you talking about, it’s not your space, you can’t see or hear him from your studio, you’re just being ridiculous. Our conversations went like that.

Once I told Howard, well, I have to order more food you know, his milk, bread, tea. Our leftovers. Emily has to go down there twice a day, she resents it. This, this, was a lie. I’d seldom lied before. I’m sure I’d seldom lied.

Howard laughed abruptly then. We’re not short of money, Jacqueline, order him whatever food you want, you know that.

I knew that, of course I knew that. I didn’t try that argument again. I could hear the falseness in my voice, my soft voice that I came to hate.

And then later, reading in bed under the lamp, I’d be disturbed by my thoughts. What does Benator say, for God’s sake, I’d say. It’s Jack who brought him here, isn’t he going to take some responsibility? Howard looked at me and shook his head. He didn’t answer.