‘You’re looking good, hey, such beautiful make-up, and in your abaya and turban you look like you are fresh off the plane from Dubai,’ I said to Shireen. Every other time I’ve seen her, she’d been wearing thick black kohl under her eyes that smudged and turned her into a panda. Some sort of bright pink lipstick would have spread from her lips to her teeth, and it would be topped off with a floral scarf knotted under her chin. Her face had lost the post-baby fat she’d had. Today, her skin seemed smooth and flawless, her eyebrows shaped into arches, and soft neutral shadows blended onto her eyelids. Sharp black liner turned her eyes into almonds and her lips were soft and glossy in a sheer pink sheen. It wasn’t like she had a makeover – she was still Shireen – but she seemed to be standing taller.

  ‘You know, man, Kareem is four and he is going to playschool in the mornings. It’s the first time since when I had Alia – say ma twelve years – that I’ve had some time to myself. Kariema’s mommy’s got a lot of friends she goes to, so I don’t have to worry about her. I can go for a walk in Sea Point after I drop the children and I’ve got Arabic classes two mornings a week at a mosque in Lansdowne. I met some nice ladies there – we do charity for the old people together. It’s lekker; I’m doing good work and I’m not just so in the house.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Dhanyal en al sy dinge, ja, that made me think, No, I’ve got to look after myself a bit more. The younger ladies I know, they show me make-up and turban tricks off the YouTube.’ She giggled, stopped to add in a more serious voice: ‘It’s important for a woman,’ and nodded, as if it was something she had said a few times already. ‘It can’t just be about the husband and the chawldren.’

  ‘And how is Dhanyal?’ I didn’t want to ask about his second wife and their baby.

  ‘Alhamdulillah, he is well. I think he is tired,’ she laughed conspiratorially, ‘all the up and down between me and Aysha. Me and the kids are used to it, but he is always moving, moving, moving. “Move it” like the meerkat on that MTN, but ja, ma’ hulle sê mos – “no rest for the wicked”.’ She laughed some more. ‘Haai, shame, and that Aysha, she’s ma a young girl, you know. She wants her husband around her – some days she messages him like there’s no tomorrow and he gets so woes, then I think to myself, Gaan tog na haar toe, leave me in peace here … I’ll see you tomorrow. He made his bed; he must lie in it. I’m happy, you know – I found my own way met Allah se koederat.’ She stopped talking as we neared the braai area and Kari came to greet me. There was so much more I wanted to ask Shireen about her life. What had she done to find this calmness, and then with a husband who had cheated and taken another wife? Why was it so hard for me?

  ‘I thought I heard the bell,’ said Kari, bouncing towards me in her swimsuit, a long sarong tied around her waist. Yellow polka dots on the bikini, surely it was not Kari’s original one that made her feel brave? ‘I was closing the pool. I know the girls are watching,’ she said to Shireen, ‘but I feel better when the net is on – then they can play without me worrying.’ She smiled, came to hug me with her cold skin. Adam and Kareem were in their pyjamas running around the small patch of grass next to the pool, Kareem’s two sisters in hot pursuit making the little boys laugh and shout. I missed Stacey and Harley so intensely in that moment, it was a lump in my chest. They would’ve loved to be here. There were no little kids where they were in Joburg.

  ‘Looks like a party here!’ I said, and it did. Kids playing. Braai going, Dirk with his back to me turning a grid full of chops that looked about ready for eating. Owen was watching intently, feigning interest in the fire. I knew he was pretending; all of us in ABS know that Owen hates braaiing. Andile – Andile! – was curling sausage off another grid and putting it onto a serving dish, Di standing next to him as if it was the most fascinating thing she had ever seen a man do. I guessed that Lily had to be around somewhere inside the house, unless she was working late.

  ‘It’s just a Friday night supper,’ Kari said, smiling. ‘Everything is ready. Come, let’s go find the others and eat.’

  41

  By nine thirty, the little boys were sleeping in Adam’s room and the sisters were watching TV from mattresses in the guest room they would share with Shireen for the night. Since Dhanyal was with Aysha and Kari’s mother was in Joburg for a wedding, Shireen said there was no point in making the long drive home to an empty house. The adults split themselves. Dirk and Andile sat close to the braai where Dirk had stoked up the coals, adding wood to keep the fire going while they drank red wine. Conversation about the state of South Africa drifted in the air. I imagined how intense the conversation would’ve been if Jerry were there; it was exactly the kind of conversation he loved.

  Lily, Di, Kari, Shireen, Owen and I sat at the patio table, empty ice cream bowls in front of us. We’d been laughing about Easter falling on 1 April this year, imagining the April Fool Easter jokes we could play on the kids. I could already see Stacey’s face if I made them hunt for non-existent eggs – that was a joke that would not go down well.

  ‘That Andile is a nice guy, hey,’ said Shireen, raising her eyebrows in his direction. ‘Are you and him a thing again, Di?’ It was a question I’d been dying to ask. Andile and Di seemed so comfortable with each other, but I hadn’t seen any kind of contact between them that suggested they were a couple, and Di’s girls were with Alan tonight, so she wouldn’t have had to hold back for them.

  ‘That’s a million-dollar question, Shireen,’ Di answered, keeping her voice low enough so that we could hear but that she wouldn’t be heard over Dirk and Andile’s conversation. ‘I like him a lot and, after we broke up, we managed to stay friends. We like to do things together – it’s easy.’ She shrugged. ‘It was just too soon for a proper relationship for me when we met; I need to be free for a while longer.’ She didn’t say anything about Tinder-scapes or that she was seeing other men and women. I wondered how Shireen would deal with that. ‘We just do things together like friends, no issues, you know. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not in a rush. My girls like him and all that, but they’re just getting used to having a stepmother – I think they like me on my own for the time being. Andile is good about it; I think he would like something more but he doesn’t pressure me. He is divorced too, and he has children in Joburg – he knows it takes time to adjust.’ Di picked up her phone as a message beeped in. ‘Kate saying goodnight.’ Di smiled and then her smile dropped suddenly. ‘Here’s an e-mail to the shop’s address, must have come through this afternoon already … Dunno how I missed it,’ she said, looking at me. ‘CCMA notice that a hearing date has been set for Monday, 16 April.’

  Silence at the table.

  No-one had raised the CCMA or mentioned Wayde tonight. Except when Dirk had asked where Jerry and the kids were. ‘Finally had enough of us?’ Lily, my fellow foot-in-mouther, joked.

  ‘Taken the kids to visit his mother this weekend,’ I’d answered. Lily didn’t say anything more. Owen covered up for her, started talking about some new tenant they had at Eden on the Bay who was driving them mad.

  ‘Shit, well you knew they would set a date for it,’ said Lily. ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘We’ve got an appointment to see a labour lawyer, a guy in Table View that Andile recommended. Going to hear what he says and take it from there.’

  Everyone looked at me. Long eyes, waiting to hear what I would say.

  ‘It’s a mess,’ I said, finally. ‘It’s an ugly mess.’

  42

  By eleven-thirty, I was back home, sitting on the couch closest to the kitchen. The longer I sat there, the more I could pretend that it was an ordinary night, that Jerry and the kids were upstairs fast asleep in their beds. That they weren’t one-and-a-half-thousand kilometres away in Hazeldene with Jerry’s family. Yesterday, he told me he wanted to take the kids to visit his mother, and he thought this weekend was as good a time as any. No point in staying home since I would be working all weekend, he said. I couldn’t disagree. I don’t know why I felt so bereft. It’s not like he had left me and taken the children. We were still talking to each other, still sleeping in the same bed. No-one could believe that at Kari’s house.

  ‘I thought Jerry would still be screaming the house down and at the very least have moved into the guest room. He’s taken it pretty calmly,’ said Lily, ‘for Jerry.’

  After the CCMA e-mail announcing the date, it was as if a dam wall had opened. The words came pouring out of me, such was the relief to be able to discuss it calmly, without drama or shock. Just to talk to Lily, Di, Kari and Owen. It felt like the old days, except there was also Shireen, who added something soft and caring, and who was listening and being much less judgmental about me than what I’d expected her to be. Even Dirk and Andile came to join in, adding their bits of wisdom, Dirk awkward and funny at times. But still, everyone was kind.

  Even after I had told them everything from start to finish, everything that had lived in my head, everything that wasn’t in the WhatsApps, they were kind in the face of my total and absolute loss of sanity. How I completely believed that there was something between me and Wayde. I’d focused on the age gap between us as being the thing that made my crush on him so ridiculous, when the real stupidity – the insanity – was forgetting that I was married, and that he worked for me. I had power over him. That’s what made it wrong. I talked to my friends as if alcohol had loosened my tongue, but it wasn’t that – we’d hardly had anything to drink since Kari never drank around Shireen, and somehow that seemed to rein the rest of us in, too. I told everyone everything there was to tell, even the detail of the storeroom, when the men looked down at their glasses. I felt exhausted. Like a fever had broken.

  I don’t think I would have talked like that if Jerry was there. How would he have understood that what had happened with Wayde had so little to do with him and everything to do with me.

  ‘I’m not breaking up my family over something this stupid,’ Jerry had said to me this afternoon before he and the kids had left for the airport. He had my phone in his hand, still clutching it. He didn’t really want to give it back. I’d gone to say my last goodbyes to them in the mall parking area. After hugging Stacey and Harley, who already had their headphones clamped on their ears, I stood awkwardly outside his car door talking to him through the open window. The car’s engine purred quietly beneath our voices. ‘We have to face it, there are some big things that are not working between us. Even without this,’ he handed my phone back, ‘we’re not how we used to be. We can’t even talk about schools for the kids without a screaming match. We can’t even have a Shabbat with my family.’ Jerry’s shoulders slumped round in the car as he shook his head. I didn’t have words. He was right.

  I told everyone at the braai what Jerry had said. Andile, the one who was making the family bigger, as I remembered the meaning of his name said he would, was the one whose words had the biggest impact on me.

  ‘Shelley, your CCMA hearing is going to be nasty.’ He shrugged when he said it; Accept it, he seemed to say. ‘But I’ve never heard someone talk so honestly about something they’ve done wrong. I’m divorced and we both stuffed up bad, but I’m telling you, if my wife and I had talked like that about what we did wrong like you just did? I think we would have figured it out or at least been better people for it.’

  43

  Sunday, 18 March

  My first Family Sunday without my family. Two nights without them wouldn’t have seemed like much before I was a mother. A nice little break, I would’ve imagined. I hadn’t expected that I would be one of those mothers for whom two nights away from her kids felt like a very long time. I imagined I would catch up on sleep, enjoy my bed all to myself. I was exhausted. The extra sleep and the lack of having anyone to care for should’ve been bliss, but the absence of my family wasn’t a relief. It was a reminder of what was at risk. Every day I worried about what I had done. The e-mail from the CCMA gave me a date to obsess over. April 16 seemed very far away, a million hours of worry.

  ‘Go home,’ Di said, looking at the clock in the shop. It was only four. She knew Jerry’s flight was landing at six; they’d be home by seven. ‘I can manage the last few hours by myself. Make dinner for them or something.’

  ‘I got up early this morning and made them a lasagne already, so I can wait a bit more if you want?’ I said. Lasagne was the twins’ favourite; they liked my homemade one more than the Woolies one, which was saying something. It’s seldom that in their books something from Woolworths doesn’t win over something I’ve made. ‘I just want to pick up some wine for Jerry.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. Go get everything ready for them.’ Since Friday night, Di and I had talked about everything. She told me how hard it was being the only single one in ABS, and how much harder it was being a single mother than she had ever anticipated. She felt like she was living a split life, week on, week off – she either had the girls with her and she was immersed in being a mother, or she was supposedly on her own, trying to live an imitation of a single life. Hardest was that Ex on the other side of the garden, seemingly living a perfect new life with his new wife. Except for Andile, she felt like there were only a few people who could be part of her two lives. I wish she’d explained it earlier. I’d been oblivious.

  At home, I fussed with the dinner table as if Jerry and the kids had been away for a month. I set the table the way I used to before we had children. With real linen and proper glasses for Jerry and me. So what if the kids messed and bickered around us? They would all be home.

  The kids were happy to see me, each in their own way. Harley ran into my legs and clutched them, while Stacey arrived a bit slower, but handed me a crumpled bag of peanuts from the plane. ‘I saved them for you,’ she said.

  Jerry was different.

  Quiet, subdued, shuffling around with the suitcases. What had his mother advised him? Had his brothers given him a talking to?

  ‘You okay, Jerry?’ I asked him as he went on his way up the stairs with one of the kids’ bags. ‘I made us some dinner.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know,’ he said, the bags under his eyes puffy. Lines on his face drawn sad. ‘We all ate on the plane – don’t think anyone is hungry now. Sorry, I didn’t expect that you would make anything. I’m tired also, going to go up so long.’

  ‘But you’re okay, right?’ I asked. I wanted him to be okay with me. I didn’t want to build silence between us.

  ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’

  I tried to convince myself that he was telling the truth.

  44

  Friday, 23 March

  Di, Jerry and I sat in the quiet waiting area of the attorney’s offices in Blaauwberg Road. At seven-thirty, the after-work traffic was starting to calm, but we could still hear the cars roaring past outside. That Friday night feeling. It had taken us more than a week to get an appointment with the labour-law consultant Andile had referred us to. We didn’t speak as we sat in the small lounge area, waiting. Nervous. The seat at the reception desk next to us was empty, only a framed photo of a smiling young woman and a baby keeping us company. We’d been let in by a young guy in dark pants and a white shirt, a patterned tie knotted in a neat triangle at his neck. ‘Good evening, I’m Thabiso Ranaka,’ he said, shaking our hands in turn when we arrived. ‘I just need a few minutes and I’ll be ready for you.’

  I could feel the tiredness between the three of us, unspoken as it was. For Di and me, it had been a very long week of working extra shifts at the shop while Beauty was away on the barista course. Her daughter was going to start helping out from next weekend, so there was that to look forward to at the very least. Jerry had been home late from work every day, according to Theresa. He arrived just as she was trying to give the twins supper, and they would be so excited to see him that their food was instantly forgotten, she said, irritated. I didn’t get to have supper with the kids, arriving just as they were put to bed, which made them wake later in the night looking for me. Jerry and I sat at the supper table and pushed the food around on our plates, making small talk until it was a reasonable time to say goodnight and slide into bed. I didn’t know what to expect from him. His mood changed like the weather. Hot, cold, medium, blustery. Sad. Silent, interrogating. He didn’t say a word about what it was like in Joburg even though I’d asked more than once. Not more than twice. I didn’t want to irritate him even a little. I kept the small talk going.

  I didn’t know what else to do. ‘Be patient,’ Kari and Di said.

  Then Theresa gave us notice on Monday, and I understood that her irritation had been of the kind people had when they’d decided to leave a job. She was off to do summer camp work in America, to travel before and after. She wasn’t sure when she would be back. Jerry and I had to tell the kids, unprepared for their reaction, though we should have been – would’ve been – had we been less wrapped in our own misery. Stacey trashed her doll house in her room and Harley cried under his bed. It was normal, Jerry told me; of course they would react – they’ve known her since birth, spent hours with her every day. Theresa was a part of our family and she was leaving. Jerry was soft and kind to our children in a way that I know I sometimes forget to notice. Now it was all I could see.

  The sand was shifting under our feet. It felt like everything was changing.

  ABS steadied me. On Monday, Kari cooked dinner for both me and Di, delivering Tupperwares of chicken and sides I didn’t know she knew how to cook. Yesterday after school, she offered to take the twins with her when Theresa had her visa appointment at the American embassy. Lily showed the heart behind her face, the one you will never see in WhatsApps. She hatched a plan to give her clients coffee vouchers for the shop with each treatment she sold. She bought a hundred vouchers, which was so obviously excessive, but she swore she needed that many, and left a pile of her business cards on the marble countertop at Coffee & Cream, right next to the chocolates. It would be good exposure for her too, she said. We knew she didn’t need it. Her business was thriving; she had employed another doctor to help her. Kari said there was talk of a third doctor and new premises.