Police came in the middle of the night, banging on the door. Albertina scolded the men who messed up her house. “How rude you are!” she said, “trampling mud inside my home.”
In the morning Albertina’s favourite flowers lay crushed beneath their footprints. She remembered chasing the chickens from her vegetable garden back in Xolobe and set about replanting her garden. The earth, she knew, would recover.
She would support her husband who kept many secrets and hid from the police.