got meat. Mrs Smith apparently bought too much.”
The ancient lady who owned Smith’s Dry-Cleaners had taken Annabella on as her own personal charity case. She felt sorry for the girl who lived in Hillbrow with her tiny “illegitimate” son, squeezed into a flat with so many people. Compared to her luxurious life in Sandton, Annabella was definitely not doing too well – not that it bothered Annabella. Still, she wasn’t going to turn down some rump steak or any of the other accidental presents Mrs Smith rained down on her. “And she gave me this as well. I thought you might like it, Mpho.”
Her cousin pulled a folded length of fabric from her big handbag. It was a deep, rich ochre with strands of red and orange. Mpho reached for it. The fabric was smooth, a very fine silk, almost organza. She held it to her face, sliding it over her skin and feeling the rich smoothness of it. She would never have been able to afford such fabric.
“Are you sure, Annie?” Mpho couldn’t believe her luck.
“Yes, what would I do with it? I thought you could make something nice for the show.”
Mpho smiled. There was no way Mrs Smith would have just bought this for Annabella. She must have been prompted. Annabella was always looking out for Mpho. She rushed forward and gave her cousin a big kiss. “This is so perfect! It’s more than perfect. I’m going to make the most beautiful dress from this, and after the show I’m going to give it to you!”
Annabella smiled, but said nothing. Mpho hugged the fabric to her. “Listen, save some dinner for me. I must go to school. I can’t wait to start working with this fabric.”
Annabella set Johnny down and took the folded table from Mpho.
“Okay, ngwanak’a, you be careful now,” Mpho’s mother said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “I want to go and check on Aunty Koki to make sure she’s feeling better.”
Mpho watched them climb the stairs to their flat on the third floor, then she turned to head towards school just as an expensive-looking car pulled up at the kerb a few metres from the building. The car was far too posh for this part of town. It looked like a Lexus, all silver and sleek. When Mpho got near it, she hesitated when the man inside called her by her name. She stared at him, but he didn’t look like anyone she knew. He had long, tidy dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail at the back. He wore a diamond stud in his ear. Something about his smile drew her to him. He was definitely handsome, and fashionable to boot.
The man got out of the car and she still wondered how he knew her name. Maybe he was a customer at Monate but she doubted that. She would have remembered someone who looked like him. He was tall with wide shoulders that tapered to a thin, tidy waist. Mpho could tell he had muscular “footballer legs”, as Annabella liked to call them. He wore a cream-coloured linen suit which likely cost about what Mpho earned in a year.
And then he smiled again and Mpho felt her lungs freeze. She took a breath to keep her head from spinning. There was something about that smile. Something that made her weak, but it was a remembered weakness. It was a smile from her past, a weakness from long ago. She knew that smile and smelt danger in the air around it.
“Mpho? Is this little Mpho Kgosiemang?”
She looked at him a bit closer and suddenly it dawned on her. This handsome, obviously successful man was Thabang Modise! Just the thought of the name made her stomach quiver. For how long had she dreamed of seeing him again? Years of her adolescence had been spent dreaming up romantic scenes with Thabang Modise playing the lead role. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognised him straight away. She was sure there were whole sections of her brain exclusively built with memory bricks of this man. And here he was again in flesh and blood – and some quite stunning skin and muscle too.
“Thabang?”
“Yes, it’s me! But gosh, I can’t believe this is you. Heck, girl, you’ve grown into one stunning woman! I can’t believe you were the knobbly-kneed little girl with maphondo who used to tag along after us.”
He came forward and Mpho stuck out her hand, thinking he would shake it, but instead he pulled her up into his strong arms. She nearly melted at the smell of him. What kind of aftershave was he wearing? She wondered if it were one of these new ones with pheromones that tricked women into being attracted to men. If it was, it was definitely working on her. She wished he’d never let go of her, and nearly drifted away on an aftershave-soaked cloud, but then quickly regained her senses and escaped from his arms, if a bit awkwardly.
This was Thabang Modise, the boy she’d had a crush on for most of her teenage years. She couldn’t be trusted in those arms, not back then and if her thumping heart was anything to go by, she suspected not now either. Anything might happen. The scent of recklessness hovered around her.
Thabang, her brother Jakes and their friend Bongani had a band together when they were kids. It was a kwaito band called TJB, basically a rip-off of the very popular TKZ. Mpho used to think Thabang even looked a bit like Kabelo, the leader of TKZ. When Mpho visited during school holidays she spent most of her time following the band wherever they went. She’d hang around at their rehearsals and even sneak into a few of their gigs. Though Thabang was seven years older than her and paid her no attention at all, she used to dream that he’d one day be her boyfriend.
The last time she saw him was the Christmas holiday when she turned sixteen. After that the band fell apart. Mpho never knew exactly what had happened because Jakes wouldn’t talk about it. She often wondered where Thabang had gone off to. His mother, Aunty Koki, still lived in No 78, but Mpho never saw him around again. Now that she thought about it, it was a bit odd that no one ever talked about him, especially since Aunty Koki was her mother’s biggest friend. That was strange, Mpho thought.
“So where have you been, Thabang?”
“I went to Cape Town for a while. But now I’m here in Joburg. I’ve started my own recording label.”
“Wow, I’m impressed. What’s it called?”
“Mmino Productions.”
“Do you have any artists I might know?”
Thabang hesitated, as if he were almost embarrassed to mention it. “Have you heard of Lerumo?”
Mpho couldn’t believe it. Thabang Modise was the owner of Mmino Productions which was producing Lerumo! You heard his latest song called Staccato everywhere; on radio, on TV, in the minibus taxi – people even had it as a ringtone on their cellphones. Everybody was listening to that song. “Now I understand how you can afford a car like this.”
He smiled, slightly embarrassed. “Yeah . . . well. And you? What’re you doing?” Thabang asked, appearing to be genuinely interested.
“I’m in school, actually; my last year. And I work part- time at Park Station, at a takeaway called Monate Takeaways.”
“Are you kidding me? I used to work there too! How’s Mr Habib?”
“Really?” Mpho couldn’t believe that anyone as cool as Thabang Modise could have worked at Monate Takeaways. Maybe it really was a passing-through place on the way to success, just as she wished it would be for her. “Mr Habib is fine.”
Suddenly Mpho realised the time. “Listen, I need to get going. I have a class.”
“Okay . . . yeah, fine. I actually came to check on my mother. She’s sick.”
“Yeah,
