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Arno and Aviva looked at her curiously. Annamari prayed for the floor to open up and swallow her.
‘Sounds serious,’ Arno said. ‘You both look pretty grim. What’s up? Is it about Steynspruit?’
Annamari shook her head. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She cleared her throat, tried to remember the words she had rehearsed, over and over in her head. Nothing. She started again.
‘I don’t quite know where to start. This is very difficult. What I’m about to tell you... well, I’m not sure Aviva should be here...’
‘We don’t need to have any secrets from Avi. We’re all going to be family,’ Arno said.
Annamari took a deep breath. She started speaking. She couldn’t look at Arno. She couldn’t look at Thys. She wanted to die. She ploughed on. She made no excuses. She had no excuses. She had been incredibly stupid. She had fallen pregnant. And then she had lied to Thys – to everyone – for years. She was so sorry, so very, very sorry.
She forced herself to look at Arno. He was deathly pale.
‘So you’re telling me that Pa isn’t my father? Is that what you are saying?’
She nodded.
‘Pa, did you know?’
Annamari held her breath. What would Thys say?
‘Yes,’ Thys said. ‘I knew.’
‘You married her knowing she was pregnant with someone else’s child – and then you lied about it?’
Annamari cringed at the contempt in Arno’s voice.
‘No, I didn’t know then. I found out later. When you were – older.’
‘How much older? How did you find out? Did... did she tell you?’
Annamari flinched. The way he had spat out that “she” – it was like a knife piercing her heart.
Thys shook his head. ‘I just knew.’
‘And what did you do? What did she say when you confronted her? Why didn’t you tell me?’
There it was – that “she” again. Annamari shuddered.
‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything. I prayed that your mother would ... I don’t know: I prayed that the Lord would give her the strength to ... to tell me.’
‘And you didn’t say anything to me? Didn’t you think I deserved to know?’
‘I didn’t know what effect it would have on you,’ Thys said, then shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. I was scared. I didn’t want to risk ... I don’t know... I wanted things to stay as they were. I loved your mother. I loved you. I couldn’t risk losing you. I hated knowing, and I hated having to keep it a secret. But to risk losing your mother, to risk losing you... I couldn’t do it. I’m so sorry, son. I’m so sorry.’
Arno stood up, his fists clenched. ‘Don’t ... don’t ... I’m not your son. How could you pretend, how could you lie? All these years, you pretended that I was your son. How could you?’
‘Because you are. You are my son. You always will be. You have been my son from the day you were born. Nothing can ever change that.’
Arno turned to Annamari. She was dying inside but managed to meet her son’s furious eyes.
‘So, if I have the story right, you trapped Pa into marriage, you lied to him about me, you acted like a cheap...’
‘I... I... it wasn’t....’ Annamari spread her arms wide. She didn’t know what to say.
Thys interrupted. ‘Enough, Arno! Don’t speak to your mother like that. No matter what she did when she was a young girl, she is still your mother. She has always been a wonderful mother to you. You cannot deny that. And she’s my wife. She never trapped me into doing anything I didn’t want to do. I was always going to marry her. Our wedding day was the happiest day of my life. It just came a little earlier than I had planned, but I’ve never regretted it, not for a moment.’
Thys got up and came over to Annamari’s chair. He put his arm around her. ‘I cannot remember a time when I didn’t love your mother, Arno. Yes, I was angry when I realised what she had done, but I got over it because I loved her, and I loved you, and nothing was going to change that. Nothing will change that. Ever.’
Annamari fumbled in her pocket for a tissue to blow her streaming nose.
‘You have to forgive her, son. You have to forgive us. Please, listen to me,’ Thys said.
‘I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not my father.’ Arno fired a dagger of sheer contempt at them and strode out of the room.
Aviva scrambled after him. She stopped at the door, gave them a look of deep compassion and said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll speak to him. He’ll come around. He loves you.’
***
The sun went away. Annamari sat on the stoep listening to the silence of the night. It was pitch dark, the moon and the stars hiding their glow behind invisible clouds. She reached for her coffee. Sipped. Grimaced. It was cold. She sipped again. The wind gusted across the stoep. She shivered. The temperature dropped. A vicious streak of lightning split the sky, giving her a momentary glimpse of the remaining poplars. She jumped when the thunder followed. She sipped again. The heavens wept. Still she sat, ignoring the spray lashing at her from the broken gutter.
‘Annamari, come in. You’ll get sick sitting out there in the cold,’ Thys called softly from the French doors.
She ignored him. She didn’t care if she did get sick. She deserved to be sick. She deserved to suffer as she had made Arno suffer; as she had made Thys suffer.
‘Liefie, come on. De Wet is going to be skyping us soon. You know how excited he is about the whole India tournament. Come inside now.’
De Wet. And Steyn. She’d have to tell them. She sipped her cold coffee again. She hauled herself to her feet and walked into the house, into the kitchen, poured the remains of her coffee into the sink. Then she walked, down the passage, past Arno’s closed bedroom door, into the study to confront her younger son on the other side of the world.
De Wet’s skype call came through. His face shattered into a Picasso portrait; his voice a staccato jumble of words. And then nothing. There was a message on the computer monitor about contact with the network being lost. Thys tried connecting through the 3G but that didn’t work either. Annamari sent up a prayer of thanks for the bad weather. It gave them time to ... to what? De Wet would still have to be told. Thys sent De Wet a text message about the storm and a time to skype the next day.
***
Annamari and Thys sat in the lounge, looking at the silent, blank television. The storm had probably knocked out their DSTV satellite television reception as well. It didn’t matter. They hadn’t bothered to turn the television on. Thys held her lifeless hand. He squeezed it gently. The storm continued to rage outside. Hail clattered on the roof, making conversation difficult. It didn’t matter either. There was nothing to say. Not yet.
They waited.
Thys got up and went to the kitchen. He returned with two mugs of steaming coffee. He put the mugs down on the coffee table in front of her.
‘We haven’t had supper,’ Thys said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Are you hungry? Can I get you something? A sandwich?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
Thys sat down. He picked up his mug, blew on it, sipped. Put the mug down. She watched him. She looked back at the lifeless television.
They waited.
The hail stopped. The storm died. The silence was deafening.
Arno appeared in the doorway. Aviva was next to him, holding his arm.
‘I have one more question,’ he said. ‘Who is my father? My biological father?’