Chapter 6 - The Wrong Number

I caught myself humming. That should have been my first warning.

Two weeks of being a real couple — of being his — and the only thing that wasn't easy was the silence after his phone rang.

The mornings began with him. Coffee at the lemon tree before my first machine. His hand on the small of my back when I bent over to load the next basket. Hayikhona, sis. Let me. The way he made his coffee — strong, no sugar — sat on my counter in a Defy mug we both used now. His razor was in my bathroom. His watch on my bedside table. The bed I'd slept alone in for two years had a man in it most nights, and his body had memorised mine the way a tradesman memorises a tool he uses every day.

I caught myself humming. Hymns. A Bra Hugh song my father used to play. A line from one of those old Brenda Fassie songs that came on the radio when I was making pap.

One morning he came up behind me at the kitchen counter while I was stirring porridge in only one of his white work T-shirts and his hand slid up the back of my thick thigh and that almost ruined my morning's wash.

Xoli came through one Tuesday. Saw the change in five seconds.

Sis. You're getting laid.

Xolisile.

That's not a no, neh.

She drank my wine and watched me at the stove and said, slowly, after a long pause, Just remember what I said. A man this convenient is a man with a reason.

He's not convenient.

He's the most convenient man you've ever known and you know it.