After Nick had left her guesthouse room in the early morning, Rachel went back to bed for a while. Lulled by the whirring fan, she smiled as she remembered Nick’s eyes, deep blue in his tanned face as he kissed her goodbye. His lips had touched hers so gently. Not surprising when she thought he was a man who saved lives. Surprising when she remembered he was an ex-mercenary.
Rachel turned onto her side and hugged the pillow. She hadn’t told Nick much about her own situation. He’d shared more of his past with her. In answer to her questions he’d told her that he had been married for a few years and divorced for a few more. She didn’t know what had caused the divorce, although he’d said something about an armed robbery that had taken place at their home in Northcliff. She got the impression that this robbery had been a turning point for the worse in their marriage, but she didn’t know why.
Perhaps the trauma of this violent crime had damaged their relationship.
Her own turning point had been far less dramatic.
Rachel shoved her face into the pillow, remembering the day that her husband – the charming, charismatic, super-talented attorney – had arrived home, sobbing and devastated, after attending a conference in Polokwane. He’d asked her to sit with him in the lounge, and there he had made his confession.
The woman had been a legal intern. Not beautiful, not even attractive – Rachel remembered seeing her once or twice at the office. A stern-looking, hatchet-faced young lady. Perhaps her obvious shyness and awkward appearance had posed a challenge that he had found irresistible. Rachel didn’t know. All she knew was that Adam’s stumbling, tearful apology had come as a total shock. She’d never thought this could happen.
He told her they’d spent the previous night together. They had both had too much to drink. He said it was just the one time, and she believed him. In the morning, too late, he’d realised the enormity of his mistake and rushed home.
Strangely calm at the time, she fell apart later, over a period of months. She’d become a hateful person, her moods swinging from banshee rage to sullen silence. Her adulterous husband ended up looking like the hero, the one who was struggling to hold everything together.
‘You have to roll with the blows,’ a girlfriend had told her with a weary, cynical smile. ‘Get over it. It happens to all of us.’
Rachel found she couldn’t.
One day Adam announced his new brilliant idea. ‘Let’s start over somewhere else,’ he told her. ‘Let’s emigrate to Australia.’
Before her shell-shocked brain could fully absorb this reality, they’d gone for interviews, done the paperwork and had their visa applications fast-tracked by his Aussie connections. Before she could blink, they were packing up the house and making ready for their departure.
Then, at the last minute, she’d pulled out. She told Adam she needed more time to think. He should go and she’d decide whether she wanted to follow or not.
She still hadn’t made up her mind. He said Australia was wonderful and she must join him there. As soon as possible, because he missed her so much. If she hadn’t arrived by Christmas, he was going to come back and fetch her.
Rachel wasn’t sure if he really missed her. In her jealous moments, she thought he sounded a bit too happy over there. Perhaps he’d already found himself another sour-looking woman. No shortage of those in Australia, surely.
At other times, she realised she was being stupidly stubborn. The man loved her and he’d made one dreadful mistake. He’d apologised and she’d made him suffer for his infidelity for far too long already.
Now, after her night with Nick, they were even. Rachel had thought if this ever happened she would be filled with a bitter sense of satisfaction.
That wasn’t how she felt at all. She’d never expected to feel the way she did now.
She pushed the pillow aside, swung her legs off the bed and stood up. Patience was arriving in half an hour. She dressed quickly, noticing as she did so that her cellphone’s battery had died. She plugged it into the charger and turned it on.
Nick had left a message.
Rachel smiled when she heard his voice, but her smile vanished as she listened to his story.
His brother Paul was out of prison. Nick hadn’t seen him for years, but he thought he might have thrown the bottle from the balcony. He was a dangerous man and Rachel must be careful.
‘I’ll chat to you later and explain everything. I’m sorry,’ he concluded. ‘It’s awful having to …’
His words cut off abruptly.
Rachel saved the message. Then she walked outside, glancing nervously around. She hurried over to the gate to tell the guard that, with the exception of Patience, he shouldn’t admit anyone else who claimed to know her.
She was heading back to her room when she heard an odd sound from outside the gate. A tiny call so incongruous that she didn’t react at first. Then she heard it again.
‘Mama.’
Rachel whirled around. She hadn’t expected to hear anyone calling her by the pet name all her schoolchildren used. Not on a fine, sunny afternoon in a strange suburb of Johannesburg, where she had never been before and never expected to visit again.
‘Mama.’ The man who had called stood outside, clutching the gate with one hand. The other grasped a wooden cane.
Rachel’s jaw dropped open. She stared at him, dumbfounded.
It was Sipho.
She ran across the paving, shouting to the guard as he emerged from his cubicle, ready to chase Sipho away.
‘It’s all right. I know him. He’s a friend.’
The gate rattled open and the slender young man limped inside and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder, his cane clattering to the ground.
‘Sipho, we thought … We thought you were dead.’ Blinking back tears, she hugged him hard and stroked his short, tightly curled hair.
She felt him nod.
‘I know, Mama.’ His words were muffled, his breath warm on her sleeve.
‘You’re limping. Are you hurt?’
‘I was, long ago. It is getting better.’
‘Where have you been?’
Sipho didn’t answer immediately, and Rachel’s joy at seeing him again was short-lived when she remembered why she’d come to Johannesburg.
She took a deep breath and held him tight. ‘Have you heard what’s happened to your brother, to Khani?’
He nodded again.
‘That is why I am here. I am going to come with you to the funeral.’
In an unwelcome rush, Rachel realised the truth.
‘Sipho, does Patience know you’re still alive? Why didn’t you contact me? Why didn’t she …?’ Lost for words, she stepped back from the boy and stared down at him.
Now Khani’s behaviour made sense. He’d been distraught when his brother had disappeared. For weeks, they’d sat together in the afternoons, making lists, calling the hospitals and the morgues, fighting with immigration officials for information on whether Sipho had left the country.
She had been puzzled – hurt, even – the day that Khani had refused her offer of a lift to her house.
‘I’m not looking for my brother any more,’ he’d told her. ‘I do not want to find him now. I believe that he is dead.’ And then he’d run off to join a group of friends heading for the park.
From that day, she remembered, he hadn’t spoken about Sipho, although his desire to go to Johannesburg had been unwavering.
‘Khani knew you were alive, too, didn’t he?’ She stared down at Sipho. ‘He found out, so he stopped looking for you. But he didn’t tell me.’
He met her gaze for a moment, then dropped his head and looked down at his shadow.
‘I was in prison,’ he said in a tiny voice. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know.’
‘Sipho …’ Rachel was at a loss for words. During the long hours that she and Khani had spent poring over telephone directories and computers in her tiny home office, they hadn’t thought to check the prisons.
‘Come to my room,’ she said. ‘You can tell me all about it.’
Walking next to Sipho, she helped him with his halting progress. He shunted the crutch forward awkwardly. Both his legs dragged, but one worse than the other. Rachel’s joy at seeing him was dampened by concern. What had happened to him? He must have been seriously hurt. A car accident, perhaps. And all this time – years, it had been – with nobody to care for him. Until Khani had come to Johannesburg.
When she opened the door she smelled Nick, fleetingly but unmistakably. The faint scent of his skin, a whiff of his aftershave still lingered. The effect was like a punch to the belly. Nervousness and desire uncoiled inside her as she thought about their night together.
Then Sipho lowered himself onto one of the two chairs in the tiny lounge area, and she pushed the memories aside. She had more serious issues to deal with right now.
Rachel boiled the kettle and made two cups of rooibos tea. She sweetened the fragrant brew from the small jar of honey that the guesthouse had considerately provided, and handed Sipho a cup. He curled his palms around it and pressed it against his chest.
Rachel sat in the other chair. ‘What happened?’
Sipho bit his lip and stared at his teacup.
She waited.
After a few minutes, Sipho cleared his throat. ‘You see, Mama, I was hurt very badly. Some people, they take me to hospital. I give a different name. I tell them I am Nelson Mbeki. Then I am too sick to know anything. But when I am better the doctors they check my ID. They say I am telling lies. So then I tell them the truth.’
Rachel frowned, trying to make sense of the rambling story. She suspected that Sipho was giving her a ruthlessly edited version. But why?
‘Which hospital?’
‘Jo’burg Gen.’
She nodded. They had phoned there, but nobody had known who Sipho was. Not surprising, since he had been under a different name for much of his stay.
‘How long were you in hospital for?’
‘Maybe three weeks.’
‘Three weeks? Sipho, what happened? How were you hurt?’
‘I was shot with a gun,’ he said from behind his teacup. And before Rachel could respond, he continued, ‘So then when I am better, the doctors and the police they ask me questions, I tell them what-what. They find stolen stuff in my room and they ask me who I am working for. I do not want to say but they tell me I must or I will spend much time in prison. Then I tell them it does not matter because these people are dead. They still want the names so I give them some made-up names.’
He peeped up at Rachel from behind the white rim of the cup.
‘Then I tell them the places where we worked. Some of them. Not the place where the shooting happened.’
‘But Sipho …’
‘So then I am learning to walk again.’ He lowered the cup and regarded her with a steady gaze. ‘I go to court in a wheelchair because I can still not walk well. They tell me I will spend some years in prison, but not many.’
Rachel shook her head.
‘So you went to prison,’ she said.
‘For two years I was in a prison for boys.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I am free. But I am stupid, Mama, and I try to do a bad thing. I cannot run fast to get away so I am caught and the judge, he sends me to the prison for men. I have been free again now for four days.’
He put down the cup, held up four fingers. His story was finished. But how much had he omitted?
‘What was your crime?’
The question sounded blunt, but Rachel didn’t know how to phrase it any better. Her ex-pupil had participated in criminal activities. He had served what, by South African standards, was a formidable prison sentence.
‘Robbery, Mama. I was part of a gang.’
He didn’t look away or hide behind the teacup so she assumed he was telling the whole truth.
Rachel took a shaky breath.
‘What did you steal? Was anybody hurt?’
Sipho shook his head.
‘I cannot tell you now. First, I have to show you.’
‘Show me what?’
‘We will need to drive somewhere, Mama. In your car.’
Rachel stared at the young man, confused. He held her gaze unblinkingly.
‘How far?’
‘Not too far.’
The shrill tone of the guesthouse telephone made her jump. The receptionist informed her that Patience was at the gate.
Rachel turned back to Sipho. ‘We have to go to Khani’s funeral now. Whatever it is, you can show me afterwards.’
After the funeral, Patience held a wake for the guests, and it was early afternoon by the time they said their final goodbyes. Sipho directed Rachel onto the highway heading north. Traffic was light, and the air was clear. The tiled roofs of the houses looked like colourful islands in a sea of green grass and greener trees, stretching to the faraway horizon and capped by a cloudless azure sky.
In his phone calls and letters, Khani had told her several times how beautiful the city was. Rachel had never believed it until now.
In spite of the pleasant surroundings, she felt a growing sense of unease.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Turn left here off the highway. We are nearly there.’
Nearly where, Rachel wondered, hoping that Sipho knew where he was going because she certainly didn’t. She’d never been here before. They twisted and turned through narrow roads. An uphill drive.
‘Pull over here,’ Sipho said. ‘This is where I was shot. By the man who lives in this house.’
Black lettering on a white signboard informed her that they were in Northcliff. She pulled over onto green, trimmed grass. They stopped in the shade of a tree that grew outside the tall, salmon-pink wall.
‘This man, he is the one who shot me.’ Sipho looked at her, eyes wide and frightened, as if he were silently pleading to be believed. ‘His name is Mr Nick Kenyon.’