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Has the cake been iced? you’d asked.

Done, she’d said. Pink and green. Children’s cake.

You two and your everlasting cake! Jak had said and got up and walked out.

And so then the crisis the following day, the lamb, the knife, was the beginning of a new alliance. If not the beginning, then a discovery of the possibilities.

You played along willy-nilly. You didn’t know how else. You could find nothing to say.

Jakkie was white-faced, his head hunched between his shoulders.

Agaat pinched him in the shoulder until he bent his back. She put the knife in his left hand and held it there with her strong hand. So that she could help him, she said. Was it help? Jakkie’s kneecaps were trembling.

Mamma, no, he whined, please, Gaat, please, I can’t.

You can, Boetie, Agaat said, she looked at you, she was speaking for both of you, pretending to be speaking for both of you, and there wasn’t a splinter’s worth of space between her words.

You’re Gaat’s big boy aren’t you! Your même is here, she’s holding him nicely, and I’m here, a sheep can’t walk around with such a long tail, it gets worms. Shut your eyes tight and make limp your elbow, then I’ll help you.

The last she said softly, quickly, next to his ear.

But it was you she was looking at. Full in the eyes. Hold tight, here it is, the look said. One hanslam for you. And one for me.

Agaat cut, one quick stroke. The tail was in her hand. Jak led the applause. The blood spurted on Jakkie’s legs. The lamb jerked loose, ran head-first straight into the wall of the backyard.

Take your bloody knife! take it, I don’t want it! Jakkie cried. He threw the knife as far as he could. With long strides he ran out of the backyard.

Girlie! they shouted after him, girlie! Little hanslam! Pietertjie!

Rinse the blood from the cement, but this instant, you said to Agaat. And see to it that that sheep is given wound ointment.

This instant, she mocked. She went and picked up the knife where it had fallen, wiped the knife on her apron where you were standing by, the one side and the other side, two red gashes over the white cotton, and folded the blade back into the knife.

You know it stains, you said.

There is nothing, said Agaat, that you can’t get out with cold water and Sunlight soap and a bit of Jik.

You woke up later that night. A floorboard had creaked in the passage. Jak had sent the child to bed without supper for bad behaviour and now he’d come out. To the bathroom you heard him pad on bare feet. You heard the lid of the toilet, thought you heard the door of the bathroom cabinet. Then a window opening, a soft thud in the backyard. The grandfather clock struck quarter past one. You’d known for a long time that they spoke through his bedroom window at night, he on his elbows at the window, she on the butcher’s block against the wall. You knew that he sometimes climbed through the window and went and crawled into bed with her. From when he was very small you’d found him sleeping with her.

They both knew that it was against the rules, Jak would have a fit. Comfort is what he went to seek after his terrible birthday.

You lay listening with open eyes. You were sad. Who was there to comfort you? You’d had to eat Jakkie’s birthday food alone with Jak at table that night.

Don’t you think that was enough for one day? you’d asked. Can’t he just come and have his food?

He must learn he doesn’t disgrace his father in front of guests, Jak had said.

Agaat had served you silently. Her roast chicken and browned oven-potatoes and pumpkin fritters, Jakkie’s favourites. You saw her afterwards dishing up her food in the kitchen. But she didn’t eat. She washed the dishes and went straight to her room and left the two of you there without serving the dessert. When you took the trifle out of the fridge there was a big hole on the one side. You dished up in the kitchen so Jak shouldn’t see it.

You couldn’t sleep. You heard the outside room’s door open and close again, more softly. It still scuffed, ghrrrr over the cement floor. It had subsided