LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      A shriek pierced the still night air and then moments later a single hoarse word was screamed out.

      “Fire!”

      In the ramshackle township of Ivory Crossing, on the outskirts of Cape Town, no word could provoke panic and fear quite like this word. Even as the voice shrieked again, “Fire, Fire,” the word was gathering pace on the night air, repeated now by a growing clamour of voices. The silence of the night had been ruptured.

      Bodies spilled out of their makeshift homes. Babies wailed. Women screamed. Men began to run, gathering their meagre possessions even as the flames grew. By now orange flames fanned out, leaping from house to house. A blaze lit up the inky blue-black of the African sky. Panic had seized the township.

      As they ran, a crush of bodies tripping over each other, pushing and shoving and jostling, few turned back to look at the small tin-roofed shack that seemed to be the epicentre of the blaze.

      Hours later, in the watery grey dawn, a scene of destruction greeted the survivors. A half-mile radius of homes had been levelled, the scorched earth still smouldering in the cool morning air. An old woman, her shoulders hunched over the precious bundle in her arms, stood barefoot and stared unblinking at the devastation. The shawl around her shoulders had slipped to the ground but she continued to stare at the shack where it had all begun. A faint mewling sound drew her attention to the bundles in her arms, to the two babies, mirror images of each other, that she cradled against her. The mewling subsided and the babies settled back into deep sleep. The only evidence of the terror in which they had been caught up was the dark sooty smoke marks that marred their brown skin. The woman turned to the tall uniformed man who stood alongside her.

      “This one is Grace,” the woman said indicating the baby in the crook of her left arm who sucked her thumb in sleep. “And this is Lola.” The officer barely afforded the twin babies a glance, his eyes focused on the smouldering remains of the rest of the township. Finally, he turned to the woman.

      “Where are the parents?” The old woman shrugged, tilting her head towards the charred, burnt-out remains of what had once been the twins’ home.

      “The fire started in their house, they didn’t make it out,” the woman said with a long deep sigh. There had been many fires in the township but the ferocity of this blaze, the speed with which it had spread, tearing through homes and destroying lives, twisted the woman’s gut and she knew she would never forgot this day. “What will happen to the babies now?” she asked, remembering their beautiful and yet serious mother, a teacher, who had worked tirelessly to ensure that the children in the township received some kind of education. She thought too about their father who had worked in the mines. The old woman had always been struck by his kindness, he had a gregarious charm that drew people to him and yet he was the first to help her fetch water and offer her extra kerosene to light her lamps.

      In her arms, one of the twins stirred and the woman looked down at them. “What will happen to them now?” she asked again. The police officer shrugged, barely sparing the tiny babies a glance.

      “They are orphans now,” he answered already turning his back.

      A small jet taxied down a private airstrip, slowing before it finally came to a complete halt. On board the jet, Scarlet Wilde stared out at the open landscape of rusty red sand that was visible, in every direction, for as far as the eye could see. The sun blazed down on the tarmac, bouncing off the runway to create a blinding glare. Even with her trademark white blonde hair swept back away from her face and wearing only a minimal amount of make-up, Scarlet was still recognisable as Hollywood’s favourite fallen angel. For every peak in her short and yet prolific screen career, there had been a corresponding crash in her personal life. The Oscar win had been followed by love affairs gone bad, lovers that sold their stories and most recently a marriage heralded with fanfare that had faltered after a mere 73 days of what the papers had christened unholy

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