Chapter 30 - Chapter 29

"Ma, what's for supper?" Sphe asks, leaning through the French doors of my office.

I glance up from an email from the Parents' Association about new kit for the concert band. Thirty thousand rand a month between the two of them, and still the form comes. You wouldn't catch Zinhle dead in a band uniform, but Sphe keeps threatening to take up the trombone, so I may yet get involved.

"What's for supper?" I lean back in my chair and tease him with a smile. "Why am I the only one in this house cooking all the time?"

Sphe looks abashed, his eyes going wide and his mouth dropping open a little. "Hawu ... well ... because I can't cook?"

"You're telling me you can build a robot from scratch, but you can't follow a simple recipe?"

His brows lower, furrow. If something is "simple", Sphe assumes he should be able to do it.

"Maybe spaghetti?" His voice evens out and his shoulders square with determined confidence.

Today, spaghetti. Tomorrow, the world.

"I've already ordered Indian." His features relax with what looks like relief, and I laugh. "But thanks for the offer."

My phone rings on the desk, and Mark's contact flashes up at me onscreen. Ao. I frown, tempted to let it go. We were never exclusive and we were never serious — I was completely honest with him about that — and it still feels wrong talking to him when I can't move without long-unused screwing muscles aching from my night with Siyabonga. That man still knows exactly what he's doing. I've been shoving away memories ... okay, fantasies ... spawned by that night in Durban since he dropped me at home from OR Tambo yesterday and carried on to his own house.