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I wish we had had more time to talk. Do you remember how we used to talk when we were children? It is so precious to me, the memory of those times. How sad that when our turn comes to die our story, the story of you and me, will die too.

I cannot tell you what tenderness I feel for you at this moment. You were always my favourite cousin, but it is more than that. I long to protect you from the world, even though you probably don't need protecting (I am guessing). It is hard to know what to do with feelings like these. It has become such an old-fashioned relationship, hasn't it, cousinship. Soon all the rules we had to memorize about who is allowed to marry whom, first cousins and second cousins and third cousins, will just be anthropology.>

Still, I am glad we did not act on our childhood vows (do you remember?) and marry each other. You are probably glad too. We would have made a hopeless couple.

John, you need someone in your life, someone to look after you. Even if you choose someone who is not necessarily the love of your life, married life will be better than what you have now, with just your father and yourself. It is not good to sleep alone night after night. Excuse me for saying this, but I speak from bitter experience.

I should tear up this letter, it's so embarrassing, but I won't. I say to myself, we have known each other a long time, you will surely forgive me if I tread where I should not tread.

Lukas and I are happy together in every possible way. I go down on my knees every night (so to speak) to give thanks that his path crossed mine. How I wish you could have the same!

As if summoned, Lukas comes into the kitchen, bends down over her, presses his lips to her head, slips his hands under the dressing gown, cups her breasts. 'My skat,' he says: my treasure.

You can't write that. You can't. You are just making things up.

I'll cut it out. Presses his lips to her head. 'My skat,' he says, 'when are you coming to bed?' 'Now,' she says, and lays down the pen. 'Now.'

Skat: an endearment she disliked until the day she heard it from his lips. Now, when he whispers the word, she melts. This man's treasure, into which he may dip whenever it pleases him.

They lie in each other's arms. The bed creaks, but she could not care less, they are at home, they can make the bed creak as much as they like.

Again!

I promise, when I have finished I will hand over the text to you, the whole text, and let you cut out whatever you wish.

'Was that a letter to John you were writing?' says Lukas.

'Yes. He is so unhappy.'

'Maybe that's just his nature. A melancholy type.'

'But he used not to be. He used to be so happy in the old days. If he could only find someone to take him out of himself!' But Lukas is asleep. That is his nature, his type: he falls asleep at once, like an innocent child.

She would like to be able to join him, but sleep is slow in coming. It is as if the ghost of her cousin still lurks, calling her back to the dark kitchen to complete what she was writing to him. Have faith in me, she whispers. I promise I will return.

But when she wakes it is Monday, there is no time for writing, no time for intimacies, they have to set off at once on the drive to Calvinia, she to the hotel, Lukas to the transport depot. In the windowless little office behind the reception desk she labours over the backlog of invoices; by evening she is too exhausted to pursue the letter she was writing, and anyhow she has lost touch with the feeling. Am thinking of you, she writes at the foot of the page. Even that is not true, she has not given John a thought all day, she has had no time. Much love, she writes. Margie. She addresses the envelope and seals it. So. It is done.

Much love, but exactly how much? Enough to save John, in a pinch? Enough to raise him out of himself, out of the melancholy of his type? She doubts it. And what if he does not want