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one thing we have lots of here,” he said calmly. “There is lots of time.”

She gestured at the door. “You have a family and I—”

“They know I am here and they know it’s my work.”

“Perhaps I should come back tomorrow.”

“Tell your story, Christine,” he said softly. “Get it off your chest.”

“Sure?”

“Absolutely.”

She looked down at her cup. It was half full. She lifted it, swallowed the lot in one go, replaced it on the saucer and put it down on the tray on the desk. She drew her leg under her again and folded her arms. “I don’t know where it went wrong,” she said. “We were like everyone else. Maybe not quite, because my father was a soldier, and at school we were always the army kids. When the Flossies flew out, those airplanes to the border, the whole town knew about it—our fathers were going to fight the Communists. Then we were special. I liked that. But most of the time we were like all the others. Gerhard and I went to school and in the afternoon our mother was there and we did homework and played. Weekends we went shopping and barbecued and visited and went to church and every December we went down to Hartenbos and there was nothing odd about us. Nothing that I was aware of when I was six or eight or ten. My father was my hero. I remember his smell when he came home in the afternoon and hugged me. He called me his big girl. He had a uniform with shiny stars on the shoulders. And my mother . . .”

“Are they still living?” the minister asked suddenly.

“My father died,” she said. With finality, as if she would not elaborate further.

“And your mother?”

“It’s a long time since I have seen her.”

“Oh?”

“She lives in Mossel Bay.”

He said nothing.

“She knows now. What kind of work I was doing.”

“But she didn’t always know?”

“No.”

“How did she find out?”

She sighed. “That is part of the story.”

“And you think she will reject you? Because now she knows?”

“Yes. No . . . I think she is on a guilt trip.”

“Because you became a prostitute?”

“Yes.”

“And is she to blame?”

She couldn’t sit still anymore. She stood up in a hurry, and walked over to the wall behind her to get more distance between them. Then she approached the back of the chair and gripped it.

“Maybe.”

“Oh?”

She dropped her head, letting her long hair cover her face. She stood like that, very still.

“She was beautiful,” she said at last, looking up and taking her hands off the chair-back. She moved to the right, towards the bookshelf, her eyes on the books, but she was not seeing them.

“They were in Durban on their honeymoon. And the photos . . . She could have had any man. She had a figure. Her face . . . she was so lovely, so delicate. And she was laughing, in all the photos. Sometimes I believe that was the last time she laughed.”

She turned to the minister, leaning her shoulder against the bookshelf, one hand brushing the books, caressingly. “It must have been hard for my mother when my father was away. She never complained. When she knew he was coming home, she would get the house in order, from one end to the other. Spring-cleaning, she called it. But never herself. Tidy, yes. Clean, but she used less and less make-up. Her clothes became looser, and more dull. She cut her hair short. You know how it is when you live with someone every day—you don’t notice the gradual changes.”

She folded her arms again, embracing herself.

“The thing with the church . . . that must be where it started. He came back from the Border and said we were going to another church. Not the Dutch Reformed Church on the base anymore; we would be going to a church in town, one that met in the primary school hall on Sundays. Clapping hands and falling down and conversions . . . Gerhard and I would have enjoyed it if our father hadn’t been so serious about it. Suddenly we had family devotions at home every day and he prayed long prayers about the demons that were in us. He began to