I don’t know if it’s the pills or the sessions with my shrink or just the fact that the twins are sleeping through the night but I feel SO MUCH BETTER! I feel almost like myself again. It is like coming up for air after a long, deep dive in some cold black lake.
P hired a domestic worker / nanny to help me with the kids. She comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays and does all the washing and cleaning (usually with one of the twins strapped to her back!) It gives me time and space to just ‘be.’ Who knew you needed time for that? But I do. I work in the garden and read books and then I feel ready to be a mom again. I no longer feel as though I am being consumed.
I feel better, I look better, I even put on a new dress the other day and took the kids for a walk. I am hungry again and it feels good to cook and eat.
P is so happy he is spoiling me. Buying me clothes and a nice necklace, and we even got a babysitter the other night and went to dinner like we used to. I had a sirloin and a baked potato with sour cream and P just watched me eat as if he had never seen anyone eat steak before.
My shrink says I’ll have good days and bad days while I’m getting better and soon the good days will outnumber the bad days. I think that is starting to happen.
I planted some new flowers – arums this time – they flower beautifully in winter instead of dying like some other annuals. Also planted some other things. P says I’ve got green fingers now. I laughed. It felt good.
TSOTSI
23
Johannesburg, 2021
Seth is in a communal taxi heading towards his apartment. His fellow passengers give him a wide berth as he tries to stem the flow of blood from his forehead. He was lucky the driver let him on. A pearl-clutcher wearing thick glasses clicks her tongue at him and calls him a tsotsi under her breath. He bumps Alba.
SD> In some trouble here, position at F compromised.
LL>> What do u need?
SD> Security check & bugsweep ASAP at my place. I’ll remotely disable my BM-retina access.
LL>> Motioned, will contact u when it’s confirmed clean. You need a bodyguard?
SD> Ha. Since when does Alba hve budget 4 bodyguards?
LL>> Worried about u. It can b arranged.
SD> I’ll b fine.
LL>> Famous last words.
SD> Hopefully not LAST words.
LL>> ROFLZ! Danger suits you. Never knew u had/sense/humour.
SD> Funny. Also, I’ll need someone/labs, I’ll b bringing in samples.
LL>> Excellent. Will have someone here ASAP.
Seth’s head stops bleeding.
Kirsten’s head stops bleeding. She switches on the shower and doesn’t wait for the water to get warm before she blasts her face, neck and back, then quickly towels off, leaving a Pollock of red and pink behind (Blood Marble). She throws on some fresh clothes: black, and steps into her dark trainers. Grabs her bag but leaves her Tile behind. Just as she is out the door she remembers the envelope and goes to fetch it, stuffs it in her bag along with a clean plaster and the pocketknife. She doesn’t have time to think, she just moves.
HER ABDUCTOR’S HANDWRITING
24
Johannesburg, 2021
Kirsten puts her watch up to the screen so that the ATM can scan it. She draws her daily limit of ten thousand rand, hoping it will keep her going for the next few days. The machine thanks her for her business and ejects 20 perfumed five hundred rand notes. The cash is bulky but she can’t leave a credit trail. She checks over her shoulder for anything suspicious but everyone seems to be going about their regular life without a clue of what hers has become.
She catches a communal taxi to Mbali Mall in Hyde Park. She can’t think of anywhere safe to go but when the taxi driver stops outside the shopping centre for another passenger, Kirsten jumps out, leaving the microchip hidden in the fold of the seat.
Usually she hates malls, but for now the soulless space and dazzling lights seem like a good idea. Polished floors, store staff too tired to smile and shopzombies bleached by the artificial light. The killer wouldn’t pump her full of bullets in front of all these people, would he? Still, she is cautious, keeps her head down and walks along the shop fronts, gazing at the window displays without seeing anything. She grabs a mask off a rotating display and covers her face with it.
Seth is walking, to kill time and get some air, and is twenty minutes away from home. Tuk-tuks and bike-cabs hoot at him as they pass, offering him a ride. Alba had just confirmed that their bugsweep has entered his apartment, so by the time he gets there it should have been given the all clear. It was just a precaution: as far as he knows, no one at Fontus knows his address, but he had been born with a healthy sense of paranoia and it had kept him alive and (relatively) unscathed up until now. What the fuck was going on at Fontus that they would remove Fiona and set armed security guards on him? Numbers stream through his head as he thinks of the files he had accessed there, the graphs, the summaries, all seemingly in order. What is it that they’re so desperate to hide? He would find out soon enough: he needed to get the samples to Alba HQ.
Her adrenaline flagging, Kirsten looks for a place to sit but is accosted by a Quinbot, AKA Stepford Wife. Despite side-stepping it, the mannequinbot sidles up to her.
‘Hello KIRSTEN,’ it says, ‘How are you? Isn’t it a wonderful day?’
‘Jesus,’ says Kirsten into her mask. ‘Really?’
‘I’m sorry. Hello JESUS. How are you? Isn’t it a wonderful day?’
‘Leave me alone,’ says Kirsten.
‘Jesus, would you like to try on this SaSirro alpha-cut dress? It has a built-in corset that will accentuate your lovely body shape.’
‘No.’
‘The shimmer in the hemline adds grace to your movement, and—’
‘No, thank you, not interested.’
‘Jesus, if you look at the detail, you’ll see—’
‘Stop calling me Jesus.’
‘I have scanned your measurements. You have a lovely body shape. This is how the dress would look on you.’
The Stepford Wife grows a little taller, her bust shrinks by a cup, and her waist grows by a few centimeters. Her abs get softer, and her calves become more pronounced. Her hair is reeled into her scalp. Kirsten picks up her pace, but the bot keeps up.
‘Leave me alone,’ she says. ‘Scram.’ She looks around to see who is watching.
‘It has a built-in corset that will—’
‘Fuck off!’ she shouts, causing some nearby shopzombies to look at her. The bot stops and reverses. Its wide lipstick-smile doesn’t falter.
‘Thank you for your time,’ says the bot, ‘It’s always lovely to see you.’
‘Fucking bots,’ mutters Kirsten, jogging away. The last thing she needed was to cause a scene.
‘Don’t be a stranger!’ it calls out after her.
Mannequinbots are always getting abused: fondled; defaced; hacked; taken for trolley rides that invariably end up in some kind of accident; shoved into garbage removal chutes; stolen; decapitated. Kirsten has little sympathy.
She finds a hoverbench outside a Talking Tees shop. It seems to be a politically themed store; usually they’re more light-hearted. The 4 shirts in the window tell her, via rather basic animations, to ‘Beware The Net,’ ‘Boycott Bilchen,’ ‘Ban the SkyCar,’ and ‘Pray for Peace in Palestine.’ She prefers the more light-hearted shirts, ones with beautiful, evolving illustrations, and ones that tell you jokes. The problem with the joke-shirts, though, is that you have to walk past the person before you hear the punchline.