Oh Marie, I said, thank you, dear, I don’t like going out at night, and in winter.

She tried to persuade me, she said they’d pick me up in the cab, travel with me to and from the Lincoln Center. You’ll enjoy it, Jacqueline, she said.

She calls me Jacqueline, not mom.

How are the girls, I said. Fine, everyone’s fine, she said. Let me know if you change your mind, we’d be delighted.

But I’m not going with them to La Sylphide next Thursday.

I READ IN THE PAPER: raid on weapons cache. Another one. Cache. Cacher. To hide.

I was hiding so much. I spoke to nobody.

I’ve said before: my children are strong. They went to school, Stephen did well and swam in his team. I drove Helena to her ballet classes, she progressed, and passed from one level to the next, practising her pirouettes around the dogs, who barked and barked.

Josias was quiet and did his work, or perhaps he didn’t do that much work. I didn’t watch, or care. Perhaps the pool had more debris and leaves floating on its surface than usual, I heard Stephen once complaining to Josias, hey, Josias, too many leaves in the pool, too dirty! Josias ignored him and smoked his cigarette on the chair near the dogs, as always.

Emily seemed preoccupied, she told me Albert was having trouble with the children in Alexandra, the children running, running in the dust behind the houses, and Albert’s mother now living with them. But Albert’s mother was old — her legs were bad — and she couldn’t help much.

I told Emily I was coming down with something, I must rest.

Howard came home tired, tired lines around his eyes, I saw them now.

AND THEN I WROTE to Eric, on a blue aerogram. He’d sent me one of his letters, filled with funny and interesting things. I thought: I can’t keep replying with gloomy letters, without explaining what’s wrong.

I started my letter in the usual way, with news that was not news: painting stalled; children and Howard alright.

And then I wrote: Eric, there’s a man I have to tell you about.

Why, why did I write that?

But then, here’s what I didn’t write:

I didn’t write: Eric, I want to sleep with him.

I didn’t write: Eric, I’ve fallen in love with him.

I didn’t write: Eric, should I sleep with this man? Instead, I wrote: Eric, the resistance here is alive and well, you’ll be happy to hear. A man working for the ANC is staying with us. He’s working underground; a fugitive. He stays in the garden room right near my studio, at the end of my garden. Take courage, Eric.

And then: Yours, Jacqueline.

It felt like a triumph of sorts, to tell Eric that we here were working towards something, some kind of breakthrough, even though it didn’t seem like it.

I thought then about letters being intercepted by the security police, that was happening. But why would the security police intercept a letter from me, a woman in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, writing to her art student friend in London? They wouldn’t intercept such a letter, they’d have no reason to intercept such a letter.