motivation, Vee was glad she had leave to be here, sitting in the Corolla, parked in Little Mowbray opposite the home of one Adele Paulsen, waiting to conduct the first face-to-face interview of what would hopefully be an insightful article on the missing young of Cape Town.
She hadn’t been entirely upfront with Portia, who had no clue that Vee had only fragments of a lead, or with Adele Paulsen, who’d chosen to believe she was a law enforcement agent investigating her child’s disappearance. The former she would deal with later. Portia was fond of giving her sufficient rope to hang herself with, a public embarrassment Vee had so far managed to avoid. As for the interview, experience had taught her that lying would only get you through the door and no further. If Adele Paulsen smelled a rat early on, Vee could kiss it all goodbye. She popped some gum in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Coming clean was invariably harder than lying.
A boisterous group of bare-chested young men in shorts and sneakers jogged past. One caught her eye and whistled, calling out something in Afrikaans that made the rest burst into laughter. Vee turned away, dismayed as a familiar and unwelcome warmth spread threateningly below the navel. Lately her mind was a lust-polluted cesspool, and, being somewhat single-minded, she knew it would affect her work. It was hard to give one thing solid attention when sex, the loss of it from her life, the acquisition of it again with any decent regularity, how much of it other happy bastards were having, all seemed to occupy a startling portion of her thoughts.
The unsettling part was that men were everywhere, a miserable statistical half of the population. Since re-entering singlehood, she had noticed they were more everywhere than she’d ever known them to be before. Their obliviousness with respect to their sexual appeal was practically malicious. Striding around displaying V-shaped torsos misted with sweat and bare, muscled legs . . . it had to stop. Her last major assignment, a quest into the world of xenophobic riots and a city shredded by hateful prejudice, had propelled her into the arms of a skilled, smouldering Angolan. No more mistakes of that kind again.
A woman laden with bags of shopping began fiddling with a front gate, prompting Vee to jump out of the car and set the alarm.
“Ms Paulsen? I’m Voinjama Johnson. We spoke yesterday morning.”
The older woman looked briefly confused, then said: “Yes, yes of course. Miss Johnson . . .”
She trailed off and went back to prising open the clasp. Vee stepped up and unburdened her of two Shoprite grocery bags and followed her into the front yard. It was a small house with a tiny but manicured front garden. The stone walkway leading up to the front stoep was crumbling in several places but swept free of dirt.
Vee watched in amazement as a black puppy under a tree produced what looked like its body weight in excrement. She thought of her own dog as the puppy bounded over happily and barked. Adele Paulsen rubbed it with one affectionate foot and brushed it aside, climbing the steps as she rummaged for her house keys. She launched into an explanation of how being a teacher was very trying work, especially without the use of a car, which meant she was always late for the appointments she didn’t forget.
The woman was obviously house-proud. The entrance hall was neat, and the wooden floors looked like they’d enjoyed a recent application of polish. In the sitting room, the setting sun poured through heavy floral curtains and gave the room an open and cheerful air.
The tidiness brought on an unexpected swell of depression, and Vee quickly brought her emotions in check. If she’d lost a child – which she had, but not in the pure sense – keeping a home clean and welcoming would be a very low priority. She remembered her own time of misfortune: unwashed body and swollen eyes, perfectly happy to marinate in her own stink and pity were it not for those who loved her. Society extolled the virtues of strength, but nobody ever gave any solid advice on how to break down properly. How long could a mother bustle about playing hostess, all the while mentally pushing aside the thought that her only child might be somewhere no mother would ever want her baby to see?
“I completely forgot the time,” Mrs Paulsen called from the kitchen. “I hope you didn’t have to wait too long.”
“Not at all,” Vee lied.
Idly, she examined a large ornate cabinet filled with china plates, dusty mugs and tiny figurines. If there was one thing that crossed all cultural boundaries, it was the off-limits cabinet with the delicate glassware and precious silver.
“Ian gave most of those to me,” Mrs Paulsen said, following her eyes as she set down the tea tray. “From his travels during his university and post-grad days. Me, I haven’t really travelled much. To Namibia once, before I got pregnant with Jacqueline, and once the two of us went to Zimbabwe in the good old days when it was such a nice country.”
Over the rim of the teacup, Vee studied her. This woman devoted a daily portion of her energy to remaining on the move so that no one could see how miserable she was. And how angry. The canned rage was hard to get at over the pain, but it was unmistakably there. It must be a struggle for her to carry on as a preschool teacher, seeing those eager eyes and sweet smiles every day.
“And where are you from?” Adele asked, pushing short brown hair behind both ears. “Your accent’s very different.” She leaned over, deftly spooned three measures of white sugar into her tea and then reclined in her armchair. Moving Adele. Still Adele. Vee cast a swift vote for Moving Adele. Still Adele looked ready to rise at any moment and slap the taste out her mouth for holding the cup the wrong way.
“I’m Liberian. From Liberia,” Vee added stupidly.
Adele “ahhed” and looked ceiling-ward, snapping her fingers in recollection. In the measured tones of an educator, she rattled off the capital city and two neighbouring countries and pressed on the current state of the politics since the end of the civil war. Vee felt pleasantly surprised and impressed. Most locals had little knowledge of other cultures “further north”, as they called it.
“To tell you the truth, I really didn’t know what to expect after I spoke to you yesterday,” Adele went on, returning to small talk. “With a surname like Johnson . . . but you’re obviously not coloured. What does your first name mean?”
Vee’s internal alarm gave a warning beep at the urging for more chitchat. They were officially in avoidance-tactic territory, and time was something she didn’t have much of.
“I’m named after a trading city in the north. There was a mix-up on my birth certificate between my place of birth and my chosen name, so . . . Voinjama stuck.”
Vee about-faced, turning serious. “Mrs Paulsen, I have to be honest as to why I called. I mentioned I’m investigating old missing persons cases, but . . . it’s really for a magazine article. I’m an investigative journalist for Urban magazine; maybe you know it.”
When the other woman gave no response except to settle deeper into the sofa, Vee plunged on.
“I’m not connected with the police in any way, nor am I a private detective. But I do care about what happened to your daughter, and other children like her, and that’s why I’m here.”
Truth kept light. Honesty was wonderful, but too much of it, especially here, was bound to come across as highly questionable, even absurd. How on earth to tell a mother that during a panic attack she was hounded by what looked like the ghost of her missing daughter? The photograph that she’d “borrowed” from the bulletin board at the Wellness Institute would remain under wraps for now.
Vee squirmed under Adele’s gaze. The discomfort reminded her of waiting outside the principal’s office to be punished.
“So
