My mother and father had not visited again, they didn’t visit in winter and I made excuses when my mother asked if we’d come to Villiers. I pictured the dry yellow grass of my mother’s garden, the cacti, the lizards in the cold sun. Perhaps Maggie had been drinking again. I didn’t ask.

I’ve made another cover, a patchwork one, my mother told me on the phone. It’ll go in Stephen’s room, same colours as his room, she said. I thought at once that Stephen wouldn’t like it, Stephen would be twelve soon, he was interested in his own things. He had his swimming trophies lined up on his desk, his chessboard, he was good at chess. He wouldn’t want that patchwork on his bed.

Next time you come you’ll see how tall he’s grown, Mom, I said. That’s all I said.

HOWARD HAD BEEN to the police station again, to enquire about Tiny. Her room was a space, a blank space now, in that backyard. I’d been in it, I’d seen it. Bare, the room. Quite bare. Nothing there. No trace of Tiny. Perhaps she’d never been there.

Howard told me about his latest conversation at the police station. The blank face of the young officer, and his boss this time, a thick-set man, standing behind him. No, meneer, the boss said, my people checked again, we got no record. No record of that person. There’s lots of missing Blacks, meneer, we can’t keep track of them and what you worried about, meneer. They look after themselves, I told you before. We got big work to do here, meneer, big problems here.

Howard returned home in a fury again, even more furious.

I’ve said it before: Howard didn’t often get angry.

I remember our conversation that night, I lying with my book, the lamp of my night-table, and Howard getting ready for bed.

It’s intolerable, he said.

How’s Joseph and the garden room? he said. He hadn’t asked for a long time, he was busy and preoccupied with work, as I’ve said.

It’s fine, I said. What does Jack Benator say, are they going to move him? This situation is what’s intolerable, I said. I turned away.

AND ONE EVENING Emily returned from her day off in Alexandra and told me she’d heard news about Tiny. Tiny went to see her children, her mother, once, just once. She told them she was living with her boyfriend, somewhere else, she wouldn’t say where. She had a job as a nanny again, that’s what she said. She was alive, she was alive, Emily said. Beyond that: nothing, nothing else she knew.

Josias was standing there as Emily told me about Tiny. He clicked his tongue in that way he had. He shook his head. We said nothing, but I thought of Tiny’s room, her empty, bare room. I thought of her figure, a young woman’s figure, shapely beneath her blue uniform, her apron. I thought of her children, playing in the rutted roads of Alexandra township. Bare feet, in the dust.