Eventually, a little desperately, her father had produced Mingi: a meowing yin-yang ball of fluff, hoping the kitten would stitch up The Black Hole, but it didn’t. She kept quiet about it after that, not wanting to cause them any more worry. Now they were gone. And now James was the worrier.
‘And?’ he prompts, ‘what’s the reason?’
She smooths out the polka-dotted tablecloth. She finally says the words out loud: slowly, clearly, listening to her own voice.
‘I think I was adopted.’
James frowns at her: ‘What?’
‘Keke visited while you were away. She found out some… well, to cut a long story short, my mother had a hysterectomy before I was born.’
She lets it sink in. James just looks at her.
‘And,’ she says, taking the birth certificate and magazine clipping out of her bag, ‘look at these. Look at this cheap-ass certificate, probably created in Corel Draw. Do you know that there is not one photo of me as a baby? Not one.’
She flips the imposter-baby picture over to reveal the magazine name and date on the other side. James looks stunned. She doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t quite believe it yet, either. He grabs the photo from her hand and studies it.
‘I know!’ she says, ‘isn’t it crazy? I’m adopted!’ The woman at the next table looks over in interest. Kirsten lowers her voice.
‘So there is a reason I never felt properly connected to them. Why I always felt like an outsider.’
‘Everyone feels like an outsider. It’s inherent, the feeling we don’t belong. Ironically, the one thing we all have in common.’
‘Yes, okay, but… it’s crackers, right? Do you realise what this means? I could have a family out there!’
James is quiet, looks worried.
‘Well?’ she urges him, as if he has some kind of answer for her.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s pretty shocking. If it’s true.’
‘I need to find them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What the hell do you think I mean? I’m going to find out who my real parents are. And meet them. Have them over for some fucking cake.’
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘I knew you’d say that.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘That night… that night they were killed,’ says Kirsten. James puts his hand over hers. ‘My mother called me. Said she had to tell me something. That it couldn’t wait.’
‘Why didn’t you… tell me?’
‘She was upset, stumbling over her words. Not making sense. I thought she was… having one of her episodes.’
Carol had been showing signs of early-onset Alzheimers. She hadn’t been diagnosed, but the symptoms of dementia had begun presenting themselves the year before, and were increasing in frequency. Kirsten pictured the disease as a whey-coloured cotton wool cloud over her mother’s head (Cirrus Nest). As with most issues, her parents hadn’t liked to talk about it.
‘Surely you must get it? This is my chance to find my missing part. Besides, it’s not just for me, it’s for us. It will be helpful to know my biological mother’s medical history, it might help us figure out our… fertility issues.’
‘We don’t have fertility issues,’ he says.
‘Are you being serious? We’ve been trying for years.’
‘That’s normal, nowadays.’
This makes Kirsten furious. She feels like upending the table, smashing plates. Instead she just sits and fixes her glare on James. A frozen veil descends between them.
‘I feel the hope, too,’ says James. ‘And the disappointment. I want a baby as much as you do.’
‘Bullshit,’ she says, although she knows it hurts him.
‘Look, the less you worry about it—’
Kirsten curls her hands into fists.
‘Less worry is not an option currently on the table. Please choose another fucking option.’
The chicken truffle with cocoa-chilli reduction and green peppercorn brittle arrives. It is beautifully presented but Kirsten is raging inside and can’t imagine she can swallow any of it.
‘Look,’ she says, pushing her chair back. ‘I’m meeting Kex for drinks tonight. I’m going to go.’
‘Kitty, please don’t be like this.’
She stands up. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Seth leaves the Fontus building at 20:30. He is enjoying the actual work of the new job, the flavour-mapping and production process modelling, it’s like grinding at Disney World after the serious chemical engineering he did at Pharmax. Plus they have everything you could possibly want on the campus: a gym, a spa, a drycleaner, a download-den, communal bikes, restaurants, a (mostly empty) childcare centre, a virtual bowling alley, a Lixair chamber, SleepPods, all complimentary for staff. They even have wine tasting and book club evenings. Golf days, gaming nights. Infertility support groups. Overnight accommodation. The huge property is not dissimilar to a full-board holiday resort. It’s as if they don’t want their employees to leave the premises. Seth is surprised that they don’t run a matchmaking service to keep all the creeps in the family. Or a brothel.
The employees themselves seem to be extremely clean-cut: professionally dressed, well-groomed, clear skinned. Not a lot of individual style – no Smudge or ink in sight. Certainly no recreational drugs as far as he could tell.
The Weasel is turning out to be even more of a pesticle than expected, literally leaning over his shoulder as he works. He finds it difficult to be constructive when he’s being watched, especially by a bag of dicks. He needs to experiment and play around, and this includes swapping and swerving in between a host of different programs and apps, and you can’t do that when you have those watery eyes glued to your screen.
Worse still, it makes it almost impossible to do his real job – his Alba job – the reason he is here is in the first place. Seth feels a hot rush of irritation, almost anger; he needs to blow off some steam. He has a cocaine drop, his third for the day, and decides to head to the SkyBar.
Kirsten catches a tuk-tuk for the short ride into the inner city. She has the feeling that someone is watching her, and keeps looking over her shoulder for James, thinking he must have followed her out of Molly Q’s, but each time she thinks she hears something, or sees movement out of the corner of her eye, there is no one there. Despite the reassuring company of her fellow passengers, she starts to feel quite spooked.
Kekeletso is already at the bar when Kirsten gets there, and is getting some girl’s number. Once she has it, they smile at each other, and the woman kisses Keke’s cheek, strokes her arm. Keke is wearing a lacy tank top that shows off her nano-ink tattoo beautifully. It’s an antique grey colour now, so Keke must have shot up quite recently.
The SkyBar is on top of the tallest skyscraper in South Africa. It’s five hundred floors, and has a glass elevator on either side. They used to have a C-shaped infinity pool outside, running almost all the way around the venue. Now it’s dry and filled with exotic-looking plants with larger-than-life leaves and trailing tendrils. The club’s main attraction is that there’s always an interesting crowd, a good mix of BEE and reverse-BEE millionaires, bohemians, sports celebrities, tourists and race-car drivers.