July 2017

16 July 2017. Wow! The holiday turned out wonderful – well most of it. Until the second last day.

Jonas booked us our own little chalet – just the two of us alone – far from Vusi and Tebogo and their kids. For the first time in a long while, we had the chance to talk. Really talk. Really communicate.

You know the saying: ‘Speech is silver but silence is golden’? Well, that’s not always true. Sometimes speech is more valuable than silence. Every evening at sunset, Jonas and I sat outside our chalet talking. Talking honestly. And the words we spoke were like diamonds shining between us.

“Jonas, why have you got that IVF leaflet? Did you go to the fertility clinic on your own? Did you get tested?”

“No, Harmony, Love. My manager at work is doing IVF with his wife so he let me have it. I just wanted to know how it worked. And how much it cost – in case we ever need to go that route. But they’ve been trying for a baby for six years. Much longer than us. And no – of course I didn’t go to the clinic without you. That is something we must face together, right?”

“But what if there’s something wrong with me, Jonas? What if it’s my fault? After all those years on the Pill? After all those hormones I pumped into my system?”

That worried me a lot. All through College, I was careful to take the Pill regularly. I didn’t want to fall pregnant while I was studying. And Jonas agreed: College was not the time for having babies. He quoted from the Bible: To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven.

“Well, then it’s both our faults, my love!” he said now. The last rays of sunset were shimmering across the bush “We both agreed together about the Pill, right? We both agreed it was best to wait, right?”

I loved him for saying that. There outside our little chalet, I hugged Jonas. And I thought how lucky I was to have such a kind, loving, understanding husband.

I barely thought of Christo those two weeks. No doubt he was still at the Waterfront in Cape Town with whomever he was involved with – and good luck to the pair of them!

But then Christo phoned.

I was in the shower at the time.

“Harmony,” Jonas called, “Nantze on your phone. Do you want me to answer?”

Like an idiot, I forgot about my contact saved as ‘Nantze 2’.

“Yes, love,” I called back through the cascading water. “Tell her I’ll be out in a minute.”

But when I got out of the shower, wrapping a towel around me, Jonas stood glaring and suspicious.

“Since when does Nantze have a man’s voice? Since when does Nantze want to tell you about the script for Ipi Ntombi? That was Christo, wasn’t it? Why do you need to disguise his name?”

That was the end of our happy holiday filled with diamond words. We hardly spoke after that. When Vusi and Tebogo came to say goodbye, we tried to act as if everything was fine. But it was hard.

“What’s going on, Harmony?” Tebogo asked when we were alone.

I shrugged. “Just a little disagreement,” I lied. Tebogo is not someone I can confide in.

18 July 2017. Jonas and I are still not talking. I think I must start hiding my diary too.

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Tell us: ‘College is not the time for having babies.’ Were Jonas and Harmony right to postpone starting a family?