An endless time later. Countless days, more than a year.
Long enough for the Rand Supreme Court and the ride up Rissik Street to be just a hated memory, a smell that was everywhere in the mind but couldn't be located.
It was the first time that he had asked for writing paper and a pen.
What to write? What to say?… He could hear the singing,. Many, many voices in a slow dirge. Couldn't escape from the bastard singing. Shit, when it was his turn, who'd be singing for bloody Jeez?
On the top right hand corner of the sheet of paper he wrote the date.
2
He let himself in through the front door and the atmosphere hit him.
Before Jack had his key out of the lock and the door closed behind him, he could sense catastrophe.
The vacuum cleaner was in the middle of the hall rug.
His mother always did the carpets straight after Sam and Jack had gone to work and little Will to school. There were dirty clothes at the foot of the stairs. She would have put' the yesterday shirts and socks and pants into the machine straight after she'd done the carpets. Down the hall the door into the kitchen was open. The saucepans and the frying pan from last night's dinner and the morning's breakfast were in the sink.
Had to be a catastrophe.
Sam gone bankrupt? Will hurt?… But Will was sitting glumly at the top of the stairs, still in his school blazer, and he too had his routine and always changed out of his blazer, chucked it on the bedroom floor, as soon as he came in, and that would have been two hours back… Sam couldn't have gone bankrupt. What recession? Business never brighter, Sam was forever saying.
The boy on the stairs shrugged dramatically, like no one had bothered to tell him what was biting his Mum and his Dad.