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on the rack along with the jerrycans. After four or five relationships with clones of Mr Men’s Health she would know that the soulful silences and the laconic devil-may-care chats were mostly camouflage for self-absorption and average intellect. So she would allow the Stoffels of the world a chance, and after a month or so of entertaining, albeit unexciting dates she would gently tell him it would be better if they were only friends (‘you’re a goodguy’) while secretly she wondered why this sort of man could not set her heart alight.
    We took off into the south-easter. Emma put the magazine away and stared out of the window at False Bay, where the white horse breakers galloped into the shore. She turned to me.
    ‘Where are you from, Lemmer?’ With apparent interest.
    A bodyguard does not sit with his client on planes. The bodyguard, even on a solo mission, forms part of the greater entourage. Usually he travels in a separate vehicle, always in a seat, to perform his duties anonymously and impersonally. No intimate contact and conversation, no questions about the past. It is a necessary distance, a professional buffer, so ordained by Lemmer’s First Law.
    ‘The Cape.’
    It was not enough to satisfy her. ‘Which part?’
    ‘I grew up in Seapoint.’
    ‘It must have been wonderful.’ What an interesting assumption. ‘You’ve lost the accent.’
    ‘That’s what twenty years in the public service does for you.’
    ‘Brothers and sisters?’
    ‘No.’
    Some part of me enjoyed this, the attention, the interest. I felt like her equal.
    ‘And your parents?’
    I merely shook my head, hoping it would be enough. It was time to shift the focus. ‘What about you? Where did you grow up?’
    ‘Johannesburg. Linden, in fact. Then I went to Stellenbosch University. It was such a romantic idea, compared to Pretoria and Johannesburg.’ She stopped for a second, thoughts drifting off. ‘Afterwards, I stayed in the Cape. It’s so different from the Highveld. So much … nicer. I don’t know, I just felt at home. As if I belonged. My dad used to tease me. He said I lived in Canaan while they were in exile in Egypt.’
    I couldn’t think what next to ask. She got in first. ‘I understand from Jeanette Louw that you live in the country?’
    My employer would have had to explain why it would take six hours for me to report. I nodded. ‘Loxton.’
    She reacted predictably, ‘Loxton …’, as if she ought to know where it was.
    ‘In the Northern Cape. Upper Karoo, between Beaufort West and Carnarvon.’
    She had a way of looking at you, a genuine, open curiosity. I knew what the question on her tongue would be. ‘Why would you want to live there?’ But she didn’t ask it. She was too politically correct, too aware of convention.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind having a place in the country one day,’ she said, as though she envied me. She waited for my reaction, for me to tell her the reasons, the pros and cons. It was a subtle way of asking the ‘Why would you live there?’ question.
    I was rescued by the steward, who passed out blue cartons of food – a sandwich, a packet of savoury snacks, a fruit juice. I avoided the bread. Emma only drank the juice. While she forced the straw through the tiny foil-sealed hole with her delicate fingers she said: ‘You have a very interesting job.’
    ‘Only when I can squeeze the Stoffels of the world against a pillar.’
    She laughed. There was also a touch of something else, faint surprise, as if seeing something contradictory to the image she had built up of me. This average man who had been a disappointment in the conversation department had a sense of humour.
    ‘Have you guarded any famous people?’
    That’s what everyone wants to know. For some of my colleagues, interaction with celebrities gives them valuable attention currency. They would answer ‘yes’ – and deal a few names of film stars and musicians like cards on the table. The questioner would pounce on one name