A week after Father’s call, Lottie and I sit in Health and Hygiene and pretend to be interested in this afternoon’s topic: “How to Make Soap Your Friend.” From outside the open classroom window comes the rumble of the Ocean Current as it pulls to a stop across the road from the dining hall. The engine idles. On board is a canvas bag stuffed with letters for Keziah students and seed catalogs for farmers who live on isolated farms at the end of barely used washboard roads. I shut my ears to the siren call of the brakes and the ticket seller calling “Durban, Durban, Durban” in a lilting voice. If Father can telephone, then surely Mother can write. But she won’t. She hasn’t. Not in almost two weeks.

The bell rings, and the boys rush out of the classroom to the dining hall for morning tea. Lottie and I let the others get ahead of us. It saves on awkward silences and skittish glances, both of which happen whenever we get too close to the other students. We can’t shake the rumor that we’re infected with germs from Darnell’s dead body. Lottie and me are bad luck charms, to be avoided.

We walk the concrete path through the haze of blue buildings and step out onto the main road. A gang of boys, both tall and small, gathers under the branches of a jacaranda tree and gazes, slack-jawed, in the direction of the Ocean Current. The girls ahead of us stop to whisper behind cupped hands, their attention drawn to the idling bus. Everyone should be stampeding toward the dining hall, where thick slabs of white bread and apricot jam are waiting to be eaten.

Lottie and I push through the gawkers, and I see her. Mother stands in the swirling dust in a too-short daisy-print dress and white lace-up boots with stacked high heels. A dozen gold bracelets circle her wrists, and her lips are painted ruby red. Mother breaks every rule of our godly society with insulting ease. She could, with one swing of her hips, open the gates of hell and drag us all down into the fiery pit with her. She is irresistible, dangerous, fabulous.

I shut my eyes, squeeze tight, and then reopen them. No mistake. Mother is dazzling and real, and right in front of me.

“Mummy . . .”

“Adele . . .” She holds out her arms, and the gold bracelets chime on her wrists.

Mum . . . My heart beats out the word, and I run to her in front of a dozen witnesses who will call me crybaby for the rest of the term. Who cares what they say? Father called and Mother is here, and I burrow into her shoulder.

“My baby,” she croons into my hair. “My baby girl.”