Chapter 3 - Peace Of Mind

"There's no way your mother and Mzwandile are going to let you come out here at night, two and three times a week," Neo said, hugging his stylish denim jacket around him even though it had barely cooled off.

The converted warehouse Mxolisi Mnisi used as his studio was a brick-faced building a few streets from Victoria Yards, in a part of Lorentzville that had been industrial once and was now halfway to being something else and not there yet. The space was vast, and the huge metal delivery-bay doors gave nothing away from the street about what was happening inside. Neo and I sat on the aluminium benches, watching a dozen people work on the mats below.

Ten of them were women.

"Ouch." I winced in sympathy as a man took a knee to the groin from a woman two-thirds his size. Even with padding, that had to sting. "How's Mzwandile going to find out, Neo?"

"Because you'll be in casualty?" He glanced at me. "Eish, I'm serious. Krav Maga is brutal. They're just sparring and it's full contact. And even if the bruises don't give you away, your stepfather will find out somehow. He always does."

"Because of my mother; she tells him everything. But I'm not telling her about this."

"Why not?"

"She won't understand. She'll think I want to protect myself because of what happened, and she'll feel guilty and give me grief about it. She won't believe my main interest is exercise and stress relief."