When I was sixteen this man, my father’s friend, stood swaying in the front garden late one Friday night, trying to focus while he interrogated a young man who’d been drinking bad instant coffee and talking deep adolescent nonsense with me in my room for hours.  It was kind of funny because we hadn’t done anything wrong – I remember wondering why he was so protective when it came to boys in my room, but apparently unconcerned that I was getting beaten up by my stepmother almost on a weekly basis.

Twelve years later, having fled my homicidal marriage, while hiding out in Cape Town desperately trying to find work so that I could have my daughter with me – this man, my father’s friend, offered to look at financing a small (really small) business to help me. 

Trembling, I met him and my father at the venue and we walked through the proposal.  Later my father met with me to break the news:  this man would not invest in the business because I had left my daughter with her grandmother, and mothers must never leave their children.

Sixteen years after that, I am back in Cape Town.  I’d returned to Horrorsville, tamed the monsters, seen my daughter through school and into a career – I’d starved and fought, lost my womb, skirted the edges of craziness without falling in and, by God’s grace, found a small and quiet bay of peace back in the city of my childhood. 

This weekend my father asked if we could do him a favour: a friend who is dependent on others for accommodation needs a place to stay for one week – can we help? Even though the concept of sharing my relatively small space with a stranger for eight days is less than appealing, we said: “Sure”.

And, that is how I come to have this man sitting reading the newspaper on my sofa…