Lael and I take turns reading over the latest diary entry in the car. It is Saturday morning and Lungile is driving us to Kroondal. Luckily, it’s a long weekend, so we aren’t missing any school sport. The roads are busy, with lots of people are heading to Sun City for the three-day week-end. I wouldn’t mind popping into the Valley of the Waves for a quick swim myself, but a) I didn’t bring a swim-ming costume, and b) we have more important things to think about.

“Every time I read one of these diary entries, I kind of want to burst into tears,” Lael admits, handing my phone back to me.

“Me too. She had such a hard time, the poor girl. I mean, in a middle-class sort of way.”

“That’s true. At least she had a roof over her head and food on the table. Lots of girls in South Africa don’t even have that while they’re pregnant. But I still feel sorry for her.”

“It must have been so weird not knowing what was going to happen to you,” I say. “Just waiting for your parents to decide your fate and not having any say in the matter.”
“That’s kind of what being a kid is like though, isn’t it? Your parents are always the ones who get to decide stuff.”

“I don’t know. I think kids these days have more say than they used to. Most parents at least take our wishes into consideration.”

We sit in silence and watch the countryside go by. Thinking about all the bad stuff that happens to people is making me depressed. I remind myself that being depressed is not going to help me find the truth about Jim and Amelia. I need to stay focused.

Why does it even matter so much? asks a little voice in my head. It all happened so long ago. What possible relevance can it have now?

Which is true, but somehow it does feel relevant. Not just for Jim’s ghost, because it’s been so long since I last saw him that I almost don’t believe in him anymore. There is something else pushing me on to discover the truth behind this mystery. Something is telling me that it does still matter. It matters a lot.

“This is Kroondal up ahead,” says Lungi, pulling me out of my thoughts. “It’s one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it places.”

Lael and I sit up and press our noses against the win-dows.

“Look at that gorgeous little church,” she says, pointing.

“It’s so cute. I want to pick it up and put it in my pocket.”

“You’ll have to fight me for it.”

“Look, there’s another church,” I say. It’s not nearly as cute as the first one. It’s all sort of gloomy and austere.

We pass a couple of shops, a school, and a general store, and the next thing we know, we are heading out of town again. This place really is tiny.

“Are you sure we haven’t passed it?” I ask Lungi. “No, it’s up ahead on the left. Look, there are a couple of houses there.”

Sure enough, there is a gravel road off to the left that leads to some higgledy-piggledy cottages. We turn down the road slowly because of the ruts.

“There it is,” says Lungi. “Number three, with the rose bushes at the front.”

Lael and I climb out the car, yawning and stretching. Lungi parks in some shade and takes out his iPad and the lunch our cook packed for him this morning. He will wait for as long as it takes. I really hope this will turn out to be longer than five minutes, considering how far we’ve driven to visit this lady.

“Now that we’re actually here, it feels weird to pitch up at someone’s door like this,” says Lael.

“I know. And then to say, ‘Hi. We’ve just driven two hours on the off-chance you might be in.’ It makes me feel like a stalker.”

“There’s no way we came all this way for nothing. We need to make this happen.”

“Agreed. So, knock on the door.” “You knock on the door.”

“No, you knock. I’m shy.”

Lael laughs. “Nice try, Trinity. You’re the one who’s been taught to speak to strangers since you were tiny. Cabinet ministers, CEOs, ambassadors – you’re used to talking to all of them. And besides, this is your show.”

“What makes it my show?”

“Your ghost, your show. I’m pretty sure that’s an ac-tual saying. Jim appeared to you. He wants you to find out the secret of his death.”

“Aargh!” I clutch my head. “Okay. All right. But what do I do if there’s no answer?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now knock.”

I step up to the front door and grab the brass lion’s-head knocker. I give three medium-firm taps with the knocker, and then we wait.

Within a few seconds we can hear rustling on the other side of the door, so someone is home, thank good-ness. An oldish white lady opens the door and looks at us enquiringly.

“Hello?”

I put on my best speaking-to-cabinet-ministers voice.

“Good morning, Ma’am. We’re sorry to trouble you. We would have phoned ahead if we could, but your num-ber isn’t listed. May I ask if you are Loretta Backeberg?” “Who wants to know?” She is suspicious, but not actively hostile. I think she thinks we’re trying to sell her something.

“My name is Trinity Luhabe and this is Lael Lieberman. We are Grade Ten learners at Brentwood College – your old school. We’re doing some research into something that happened in the 1960s and we think you might be able to fill in some details for us. I can give you the name and number of our History teacher, Ms Waise, if you would like to confirm with her.”

The lady peers at us for a long moment, possibly try-ing to figure out if we are axe-murderers. She seems to decide we’re okay.

“No, that’s all right. You’d better come inside. I’ll put the kettle on.”

As soon as we walk into the little house, I am reminded of the time my parents took us skiing in the Black Forest in Germany. It’s the smell mainly – pine needles and wood-smoke and something spicy baking in the oven. The rooms are cluttered with furniture – lots of high-backed chairs, with those things that look like white doilies on the arm-rests and head-rests. Antimacassars. That’s what they’re called.

“Backeberg is a German name, isn’t it?” asks Lael, thinking along the same lines as me.

“That’s right. My late husband was German. His family has lived here for generations. This cottage was part of the original farmhouse from 1897.”

“My mother’s family are Ashkenazic, and my dad’s family came from Germany,” says Lael. “Your house reminds me of my bobba’s place in Durban.”

“Then this should remind you even more,” says Mrs Backeberg, putting some freshly baked cookies on a plate, three-cornered pockets of pastry stuffed with Nutella.

“Hamantaschen!” Lael says. “We have them every year at Purim. I love that you’ve put chocolate paste in them instead of poppy seeds.”

“I have a sweet tooth.”

We settle in the sitting room as Mrs Backeberg pours out some milky looking tea. I decide to concentrate on the hamantaschen instead.

“Well, young ladies, tell me about this project you’re researching,” she says.

I glance at Lael, who signals me to go ahead.

“Okay, well, first of all, can we confirm that you are in fact Loretta Mainwaring? The one who attended Brent-wood in the sixties?”

“I am.”

“And you were friendly with a girl called Amelia Lucite?”

Mrs Backeberg freezes with a pastry halfway to her mouth. A look of terrible sadness crosses her face, and I know that however this story ended, it was not happy. Nothing good ever brought such sorrow into someone’s eyes.

“Amelia,” she says slowly, lowering the pastry to her plate. “My poor Amelia. We were friends from Sub A, you know.”

I’m puzzled for a second, and then remember that Sub A was what some schools used to call Grade One.

“Then we have definitely come to the right person,” says Lael. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Amelia, and also what happened to her boyfriend, Jim Grey.”

Mrs Backeberg has a faraway look in her eyes. It is as though she is staring into the past, looking at a time and place we can’t possibly understand.

“I haven’t heard that name in fifty years,” she says.

“Jim Grey. I was so angry with him at the time. So angry and resentful. And then he died. Snuffed out at sixteen years old. Well, you can’t stay angry at the dead, can you? Poor boy. Poor, poor boy. It was a dreadful situation all round.”

I swallow a lump in my throat. That is exactly how I feel about Jim. When I read how he treated Amelia – how he reacted to her pregnancy – I get so mad at him. I want to grab him and say, “Hey! How can you do that? How can you not accept that you’re at least fifty per cent re-sponsible for this situation?” Then I remember that he’s been dead for five decades – that he never had the chance to become a better man, or to become a man at all. And then I just want to weep for him.

“Do you have any idea of how he died?” Lael asks.

“No, none. It was a mystery. He was found dead in a
chair in the common room by one of the cleaners during the school holidays. No one could understand why he was even there. The school had broken up and everyone had gone home a few days earlier.”

“Yes, we read that in the news reports,” I say. “We were hoping that someone who knew him personally might know more.”

***