Knocking on the front door of the Salem Inn on Saturday morning and calling for help, was a Gogo, with two small children sitting a few metres behind her on the grassy verge. Lucy had been alone since Friday lunchtime in the house that Dieter had taken over in the Eastern Cape after leaving Stellenbosch the year before, renting to Pumla and Lucy, while they studied and taught at the university in Grahamstown. Various local drunks and old women had come to the house that morning; one young man was selling chickens, which Lucy declined, only to find out later he had stolen them from his own grandmother to pay for home-brewed beer, umqombothi. There was a faint singing beneath Lucy’s window, she was reluctant to get out of bed again with the house to herself, and planning a calm weekend reading alone, but the erratic calls for help persisted accompanied by the sound of crying children.