Jamie’s heart was beating so hard and so fast she could feel it in her throat. Her hands were shaking, and she had to squeeze her lips firmly together so they didn’t start shaking too. She took a deep breath. It sounded like a quavery sigh.

Live radio.

She’d thought it would be easy. It wouldn’t be like talking in front of a big audience because you couldn’t see who you were speaking to. It would be like sitting in a small room and chatting to a couple of people. Or so she’d thought.

The reality was different. Once her headphones were in place and the “on air” light was blinking, she was struck by a vision of all the thousands of people out there listening to her. There they all were, driving around in their cars, sitting in dentist’s waiting rooms, working in their kitchens – all with their radios turned on. Waiting for her to fluff her lines or dry up completely.

If only she hadn’t told every single person she knew, including everyone on Facebook and Twitter, that she was going to be on the radio today. How could she have been so stupid?

Pumla would have the radio on in the kitchen at Delucia’s, assuming she wasn’t throwing up at the time. Tom had said he would livestream the broadcast on his laptop at the university. Jamie’s parents had promised to listen in, and so had her sisters.

Her throat was dry and her tongue felt thick. The host of the show, Thandi Thandeka, seemed to realise this, because she gestured to a carafe of water and some glasses. Jamie soothed her throat with little sips of water, and darted a glance at her fellow guests.

The radio psychologist, Dr Erik, looked relaxed. As well he might, since he’d been doing this for a long time. He had a regular Monday slot on the show where he took questions from listeners about their psychological problems. This would be a piece of cake for him.

Next to him sat a woman known only as Seena. She was South Africa’s most famous victim of stalking and had often appeared on radio and television. She had been stalked by an ex-boyfriend for several years before she shot him dead on the night he broke into her home and tried to rape her. The trial had gone on for months, and had turned into a full-blown media circus before she’d been acquitted on the grounds of self-defence.

The other guest was called Margie. At first sight, she looked like a classic victim, with her hangdog expression and shrinking demeanour. Jamie was shocked to hear she had several restraining orders against her, all issued by men. She’d been invited onto the show to give the stalker’s side of the story.

Margie was the most nervous of them all, constantly taking a balled-up tissue out of her cardigan sleeve and dabbing at her nose with it before tucking it away again.

To Jamie’s great relief, she felt herself relax once the discussion began. Thandi Thandeka and Dr Erik took the lead, talking about stalking as a social phenomenon that had only recently been taken seriously by the authorities. Then Seena was invited to tell her story, which she did with the ease of long practice. Much of it was familiar to Jamie. It had dominated news headlines only a few years ago.

Margie was less poised, but very willing to talk about herself and her various neuroses. Dr Erik gave her advice about conquering her compulsion to stalk men, which she accepted with an unconvincing show of humility and a promise to do better in the future. Jamie had a feeling none of the men she stalked would be rushing to cancel their restraining orders.

“Our fourth guest on the show is Jamie Burchell,” Thandi said, smiling across the console at her. “She is a restaurant owner and would-be writer who uses social media to publicise her work. It was social media that got you into this fix in the first place, wasn’t it, Jamie?”

“Well, Thandi, you’re right in the sense that my stalker seems to have found me via social media. That’s how he became obsessed with me, and how he continues to track me today.”

“Do you still leave a trail for him to track? If it were me, I’d delete all my accounts until the stalker lost interest.”

“It’s not that simple. Taking a break from social media now would mean giving up all the progress I’ve made in the last year. I’ve never been closer to getting my novel published. I actually turned down an offer to publish it digitally just a few weeks ago because I felt it wouldn’t do justice to the story.”

“Interesting. So what exactly is your novel about, Jamie? Can you tell us a bit of the plot?”

Jamie smiled. The one condition she’d made before going on the show was that she would be allowed to talk about her novel on air. The producer hadn’t been thrilled, but she’d agreed.

“It’s a dystopian fantasy about a world in which the environmentalists and vegetarians and natural health freaks have taken over everything. The earth has been driven backwards into a pre-industrial age. People can only earn their living through farming and are forced to worship nature. Animals can be kept for milk and eggs, but are not allowed to be slaughtered.”

“Sounds perfect!” said Thandi, a well-known vegan and health-food fanatic.

“Not really, Thandi. You see everything is run by these people called the Controllers, who keep all the good stuff for themselves, like modern medicine, antibiotics, electricity, clean running water and so forth. Women die in childbirth and children die of preventable diseases, even though the technology exists to save them. The story is really about a cell of resistance against the Controllers that starts to form in one of the poorest districts.”