LITMIR.BIZ

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We can post loads of your letters up on the website. And people can email their letters to you.’

      ‘Come have a look,’ said Jessie.

      ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thanks, skat.’ I didn’t want to sound ungrateful. ‘The thing is, I am sure most of the people who write to me don’t have web thingies. They are just . . . ordinary people.’

      ‘You’d be surprised, y’know,’ said Jessie. ‘Many people have internet in their homes. And lots of the little towns have got internet cafés these days.’

      I went to look at the website on her screen. It was called the Klein Karoo Gazette, just like the newspaper. Jessie clicked on something and a page came up that said: Tannie Maria’s Love Advice and Recipe Column. There was a drawing of a nice tannie who didn’t look like me, holding a lovely cake in the shape of a heart.

      ‘It does look nice,’ I said. ‘I know I’m behind the times and all . . . with this website stuff.’

      ‘Oh, do tell her, Jessie, what you organised.’

      ‘I spoke to the manager of the Parmalat cheese shop,’ said Jessie. ‘They have bought some ad space next to your column, and . . . you know how they have that notice board up in their shop with announcements and stuff? Well, they’ve agreed to put up a second board, just for Tannie Maria’s letters and recipes.’

      ‘Ag, moederliefie,’ I said, smiling at them both. ‘That is so sweet.’

      ‘And now,’ said Hattie, ‘we can pay you a bit more for your work. What with all the extra letters you’ll be posting.’

      ‘Most people keep their letters anonymous,’ I said, ‘so I can’t post to them.’

      ‘No, darling, I mean posting on the website, and the notice board.’

      ‘About Parmalat,’ said Jessie. ‘They ask if you could put dairy products in your recipes. Cream and cheese and that.’

      ‘All of them?’ I asked.

      ‘Um, no, but in a lot of the ones that go up on the board.’

      ‘That’s okay,’ I said, ‘I like cheese.’

      I was going to make some coffee before starting work, but the handwriting on one of the envelopes stopped me. I pushed the other letters aside and sat down and opened it.

      It was from the woman with the dead ducks.

      It said:

       A note for Tannie Maria (not for publication)

       The mutton curry was superb. It seemed to pacify my husband a little. I kept some for my friend, who loved it.

       I am making a plan that will allow me to leave. I will just have to tread water till I get it right.

       Thank you.

      Sometimes I wished the letters to me weren’t anonymous. That I could write back. I suppose there was the danger that the woman’s husband could get his hands on my letter. I wrote back to the duck lady inside my own head: You can do it! I’ll send you every recipe I know to help you.

      I have a drawer in my office, where I keep my thank-you letters. But I didn’t put her letter there. I felt worried about her; she hadn’t escaped yet. I was going to take her letter home and put it in a special place.

      I made us all coffee and then read through the other letters. Hattie and Jessie were arguing about an article, but I tuned their voices out while I worked on my laptop. I like writing by hand but it’s easier to fix mistakes on a computer.

      By lunchtime I had a headache but a good feeling in my heart. There were only two letters left to answer. To all the other people – teenagers and grannies, men and women, writing in with their problems and their dreams – I had given some small advice and a good recipe. The best recipe, the one that kept reminding me it was lunchtime, was the potato salad with mint and cream. I needed to go home at once and test that one out. I also wanted to take the duck lady’s letter home. I couldn’t reach her, but I could look after that letter as if it was a piece of her.

      ‘I’m going home,’ I told Hattie.

      My house was cooler than the office. And I had some ice-cold homemade lemonade.

      ‘Goodness gracious,’ said Hattie, glancing at her watch, ‘it’s one o’clock already.’

      ‘I’ve done most of the letters, and will bring them tomorrow.’ I said. ‘I just need to work out which are for the paper and which are for the cheeseweb.’

      Hattie laughed. She had a tinkling sort of laugh. Cool like water.

      ‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘I’m too hot and hungry to talk right.’

      Before I got in my little blue bakkie, I opened the doors on both sides and chased the heat waves out. Still the seat burnt my skin wherever my dress wasn’t covering me. I left the windows open when I drove and the air dried out my lungs.

      The hills were lying low, as if they could escape the heat. Towerkop rock, on top of the Swartberge, wasn’t shy of the sun, sticking its bald, split head high up into the sky. The sides of the mountain looked fuzzy and wobbly.

      When I got to my house, before I even poured myself that lemonade, I took the letter to the kitchen shelf. To the big recipe book my mother had given me. I opened the pages of Kook en Geniet. I folded the duck lady’s letter between the pages, and closed the book around her words. Like it was holding her, sending her everything she needed.

      I spent the afternoon with my potato salad, preparing it and eating it at my stoep table, and then I sat beside the leftovers with my last two letters and my pen and paper.

      One letter was from a young girl with no friends and a school cooking project. The other from an old man living alone on a farm, with too much mince in his freezer. I could feel the unhappiness of the writers, and I sat with it for a while, trying to work out what I could give them. They were asking me for recipes, but it’s obvious that they were lonely and wanted love. I did not have a recipe for love.

      But if I could give them really good recipes, easy ones they could make themselves, they could invite someone to eat with them. I knew the recipe for a perfect macaroni cheese that I could give to the girl. And for the old man, the best spaghetti bolognaise. And even if they ending up eating them on their own . . .

      ‘If you are honest with yourself,’ I said to the potato salad, ‘is the feeling of love really any better than the satisfaction you get from a good meal?’

      Food is good company, but it doesn’t answer back, not in words anyway. Maybe that is one of the reasons why it is good company. But it did communicate with me somehow, because next thing I knew I was polishing off the leftovers of that cream and mint potato salad.

      My mouth was full of delicious flavours and my tummy full, and I answered my own question: ‘I think not.’

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      The next morning my phone rang. It was Hattie.

      ‘Have you heard?’ she said. ‘Nelson Mandela died last night.’

      When I put the phone down, I made myself a cup of coffee and took two rusks and sat out on the stoep. But before I could bring the coffee to my lips, the tears started leaking out of me.

      Mandela was ninety-five and had been sick for a while, but it still came as a shock. I looked out at the brown veld and the wrinkled gwarrie trees and the distant mountains. My tears made it seem like rain was falling, but the sky was wide and empty. I knew that people all over the land were crying with me for Tata Mandela.

      Then my belly started shaking and tears from deep inside me came up and I realised I was crying for my own father too. My pa who had left me too soon.

      I looked out at the veld and

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