to think. Then Sean took a turn for the worse, and it really put things into perspective. It wasn’t about me or Carina or any of us. I didn’t need any more convincing, but Carina came to see me, to beg me to help save her son. Mother to mother. She wasn’t the same cold, hateful woman who sat in my lounge when we first met face to face. I agreed to take Jacqui back in the next morning.”
“But the procedure didn’t work, did it? Sean died.”
Adele nodded. “It never even went ahead. In that short period Sean developed an infection. I’m no doctor, but I know they tried everything to save him. Infections are common before transplants, and his system was already too weak from everything else. He passed away in September, not long after his birthday.”
From her handbag Adele produced a pack of Stuyvesant Extra Mild and tipped it in Vee’s direction. Vee declined. Smoking was not one of her vices, and she didn’t intend to make it one. Enough chipping away at her already.
“I warned Jacqui not to smoke,” Adele said, exhaling out of the open window. “I never used to. It’s a disgusting habit. Told her it would lead to an early grave.” She shook her head bitterly. From her lips to God’s ears.
“How did Jacqui take Sean’s death?”
Adele knocked her ash out of the window and walked out of the room. A few minutes later she returned with the squirming puppy in her arms. “Sorry,” she answered. “He’s not house-trained yet, but I never have the heart to leave him out in the cold.”
As she finished the cigarette, she said: “My girl was so different from me. Sometimes I wondered if they didn’t give me the wrong baby at the hospital. She took it so hard, because to her she messed up. She was like that, so protective. When she loved someone, she made their well-being a personal responsibility. Something her father could’ve learned a lot from.”
Now came the hard part. Vee knew the next couple of questions could draw a line in the sand and forever define her relationship with whoever she was interviewing, for better or worse.
“Mrs Paulsen, you speak about Jacqui in the past tense. I’m sorry to have to ask, but does that mean you don’t believe she’s still alive?”
Without hesitation Adele shook her head. “No,” she replied flatly. “Wish I could say different, something like ‘I feel it in my gut’ or ‘Deep down a mother knows’, but I can’t. Jacqui was a handful. She was growing wild, and I was essentially a struggling single parent. But one thing she wasn’t was cruel and maliciously dishonest. Yes, she lied – what teenager doesn’t? But she wouldn’t just disappear without one word, not one, to tell me where she was or how she was doing. Nothing would make my girl do that to me. So, no, I don’t think she’s alive.”
She dropped the whole of her dejected weight back into the sofa. “I told her to stay away from those Fouries. I knew nothing good could come out of it, but she wanted to be part of them so much. She wanted a real family. I tried to be enough, but they had this draw for her.”
“You suspect they had something to do with her disappearance?”
“Don’t know what to think. I’ve been over it a thousand times in my mind, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. This city’s dangerous for children, but no one ever thinks it can happen to their own. I’ve learnt so much about missing children these past two years . . . Do you know how many children go missing from homes in South Africa? Over one thousand six hundred per year. And three hundred of them are never heard from again.”
Her voice cracked, and she reached for and lit a new cigarette. The burning circle of tobacco illuminated a film of liquid brilliance in her eyes, threatening to break over the lids. “One thousand six hundred a year,” she whispered, “and my baby’s one of them.”
Vee switched off the recorder and let the silence hang. Families and their lies and wars. If anything was familiar . . . She refrained from rubbing her tired eyes. Outside, the light faded fast.
“Do you have a picture?” she asked.
Adele walked over to a dresser, retrieved and handed over a thick envelope. A lot of thought had gone into putting it together. Among the papers were two photographs. The uppermost showed Jacqui on the beach, fully clothed and laughing as she held a Coke. She had a small face, framed by shoulder-length curly hair, and her mother’s brown eyes. A pretty girl. The second showed her decked out in full uniform, forcing an embarrassed smile for the camera on what looked like a momentous school day.
“Keep it,” Adele said, blowing smoke in Vee’s direction. “I don’t need so many any more. Sometimes I think I’m the only one in the world who still cares what she looked like.”
Chapter Five
People in Cape Town don’t really see men, Joshua Allen mused absently. Sure, their eyes rested on and made out the edges of a form that constituted a person of the male gender, but somehow it didn’t quite register. Which was very strange in a city with a markedly higher proportion of women compared to men. The husbands and fathers looked the worst of it, like stale, staring zombies that merely followed their womenfolk everywhere.
Leaning against his car in a parking lot in Rondebosch and looking through the glass entrance of a supermarket, his eyes identified and followed the pair of women’s shoes he’d come with. Real leather boots, the comfortable ankle-length cut befitting delicate ankles and of a fetching maroon colour to match the handbag. Expensive stuff. He should know, since he’d paid for every stitch. The shoes met another pair before the till and began an animated conversation he knew of old: toes pointed towards each other, heels clacking. He’d have to wait longer.
Who was he to notice that other men were dumb disciples? Here he was, practically left to rot on the kerb like an old banana peel, and he wasn’t even put out. It wouldn’t be surprising if women no longer registered his presence either.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he ventured to passing potential in a very snug pair of jeans.
“Fuck off.” The girl eyed him up and down with lazy nastiness and swayed on.
Too young anyway. Her hips dipped just a touch in his direction, though; he was sure of it. He considered going in and breaking up the shoe conversation rather than standing around like a moron, but knew it was a bad idea. His presence would slow rather than speed things up. He’d be judged on his attire and bearded, ice-cream-encrusted chin, and his owner would wonder in shame if his only goal was to bring her down in public.
As he resumed his stoic stance, the movements of a solitary figure across the street caught his attention. Someone loitered before the display window of an electronics store, watching multiple images of Celine Dion in concert on a dozen stacked screens. This time, the feet of the one-woman audience bounced in anticipation. Joshua hesitated for a moment, then stepped off the kerb. In a beat his way was blocked by a barrel-chested blond man, two heads shorter but making up for it in previously advantaged authority.
“How much per hour?”
“Uhh . . .”
“Parking.” The man pointed to his car and dug through his pockets. “How much?”
Joshua shrugged. “Ten bucks . . . rand. Ten rand.” This was the city he now inhabited, where a driver could assume any man of colour standing around in a parking lot was a car guard. Might as well make some money off it. The man made a big deal of looking surprised before he paid up, muttering about
