LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      The next morning I stood on my stoep and watched the early light make long shadows of the hills and the thorn trees. The sun was warm on my face and I had a good feeling but I wasn’t sure why. It was probably because of the lamb. I was going to make slow-roasted lamb, with potatoes, pumpkins and green beans. And a buttermilk chocolate cake.

      Detective Kannemeyer hadn’t listened to my whole story at the police station, but got my details and said he’d come round to my house the next day to take a statement. I could see he had a lot on his hands, so I didn’t argue. He said he would call first.

      On the way home from the police station, I’d stopped at the butcher because they had a special on leg of lamb. There is no better-tasting meat than Karoo lamb. You can taste the Karoo veld, and sunshine and the sweet wild herbs the lambs eat.

      I was in the mood for my nice cream dress, the one with the little blue flowers. I took off my veldskoene and found my blue shoes with the low heels. I put on my apron and started with the lamb.

      Once the lamb was in the oven, I went outside to pick rosemary for the potatoes. The red geraniums were flowering, and I cut some to put in a vase on the kitchen table.

      When I was in the garden, the phone rang. My shoes interfered a bit with my walking, and on account of this and the distance between the geranium bush and the phone, my heart was beating fast when I picked up.

      ‘Hello.’

      ‘Tannie Maria?’

      ‘Hats,’ I said.

      ‘You all right, darling? You sound a tad breathless.’

      I put the rosemary and the geraniums on the phone table and sat down on the chair.

      ‘What did Jessie find out?’ I asked.

      ‘Can you come in to the office? To discuss the murder case.’

      ‘The case,’ I said, because it felt good to say.

      ‘Well, it’s not as if it’s a big murder mystery. We know jolly well who did it. But we don’t want the rotter to get away with it, do we?’

      ‘I can’t come yet,’ I said. ‘Detective Henk Kannemeyer is coming here today.’

      ‘The big chap,’ she said, ‘with the strong arms.’

      ‘To take my statement. And read the letters.’

      ‘Jessie went to interview him, but he wouldn’t tell her anything. Maybe you’ll have better luck.’

      ‘I’ll do my best. What did Jessie find out at the hospital?’

      ‘Sister Mostert, Jessie’s mum, heard that it may’ve been an overdose. Sleeping tablets.’

      ‘Suicide?’ I leaned forward in my chair.

      ‘Maybe. They still have to do the autopsy.’

      ‘Look, I mustn’t stay on the phone. You know, in case Kannemeyer calls.’

      ‘You sound like you’re waiting for a date.’

      ‘Don’t be silly, Hattie. I must go.’

      I rubbed the geranium leaf between my finger and thumb and breathed it in.

      Suicide. Selfmoord as they say in Afrikaans: self-murder. Sjoe. In some ways it felt worse than murder. If a man treats a woman so badly that she ends her own life, it’s like he has killed her twice: her heart and then her body.

      When I was with Fanie I thought of killing myself. I even got as far as buying sleeping tablets.

      There was a pressure on my chest like a bag of potatoes. I just let myself sit there, next to the phone. Then I was suddenly crying. For Martine, for Anna, for myself. I hadn’t cried for years and there I was, crying for the second time in just a few weeks. Maybe it was not a bad thing. When I was finished, my heart felt a bit lighter.

      I hadn’t killed myself. I was here now, alive. I had chickens that gave me beautiful eggs, a stoep with the best view, and some real friends.

      I took another sniff of the geranium and got up.

      I peeled the potatoes and sprinkled rosemary, salt and olive oil over them, put them in the oven and turned up the heat. Then I took the letters from Martine and Anna outside to the stoep table, along with some tea and beskuit, and read through what the women had written, and my responses to them.

      ‘No,’ I said to the last beskuit. ‘This woman didn’t kill herself. She had plans to escape.’

      I went inside and chopped up half a pumpkin, and sprinkled it with sugar, cinnamon and blobs of butter.

      ‘I wonder if I left the phone off the hook,’ I said to the pumpkin as I put it in the oven.

      I checked the phone. It was okay. I nipped the ends off the green beans and prepared the batter for the chocolate cake. I was greasing the cake tin, my fingers covered with butter, when the phone rang.