Homing by Henrietta Rose-Innes Page A

listen. Her eyes sought out the damage. In the past, she had come back to find dislocated plumbing, doors pulled off hinges, pictures from frames. Thom directed his despair always against material things. It was not a chaotic violence, but rather a grimly driven dismantling. This time, the backrest of the sofa had been laid open, the stuffing protruding from a slit like something that had long desired release. Beneath the expensive upholstery were folded wads of yellow foam, cheap pine boards tacked together. In one place the skirting board had been levered away from the wall, revealing a black gap that went down who knew how far – perhaps beyond the concrete and pilings of the building and into the cold earth itself.
    She felt distant from the damage. It had always been Thom’s flat, really. Designed by him, paid for by him. Daniela thought rather, and for the first time, about the people who’d built these rooms, and who would repair them. She had seen blueprints, of course, but had never before been curious about the process of building, of raising the plans off the page. Someone must’ve laid bricks, one by one; someone must’ve covered them with these smooth coats, these tiles and plaster and paint.
    She wished that Thom had gone further this time, had ripped the skin right off.
    The air was rank. He would have stayed inside, not eating or bathing, with the windows closed. She moved around the flat, opening up, letting out the musty smell. Again she felt the passing of black spirits over her hands, as she had in the night at the leopard trap. With every bolt undone, there was release; some pressure was relieved.
    She cleaned a little, righting chairs and closing cupboard doors. Some of the damage – the cuts in the sofa, the dents in the wooden floor – would not be so easy to undo.
    She circled slowly, wiping, fixing, setting to rights. Her circle turned closer and closer around the bedroom, the bed, the man, until she could no longer avoid him and she knelt by his side at the edge of the mattress, hands resting on her thighs. She felt quite calm now, even tender. She could smell the spent arousal coming off his flesh.
    Thom was lying quietly, fully clothed, under the covers. She knew the exhaustion that overtook him, afterwards. He would not remember everything. He would wake soon and have to piece it together from the evidence.
    He opened red eyes.
    Thom, she said.
    He blinked at her.
    She put out a hand and pressed a strand of damp hair back behind his ear. Thom, she said again.
    Behind her she could hear the sounds of the day coming in through opened windows. She sensed, too, a door that might be opened, that she might pass through if she chose. He turned his head so that her hand lay over his lips. Opened his mouth slightly around her fingers.
    And even at that moment, reaching out to touch his face, she could not tell exactly what she was: leopard or hunter. The one inside the box of stones, or the one who stands and watches as the trap falls closed, over and over again.

Tremble
    Really, Erin couldn’t stand these things. It was only because of Alice that she was here at all – Alice with her schemes.
    “A singles weekend? Madness.”
    “Come and keep me company, at least,” Alice had said. “No pressure. And if you do meet someone, bonus. I mean, when last?”
    Truth was, an extremely long time.
    And so here they were, Friday afternoon, driving up to the gates of the wine farm for a Getting-to-Know-You Weekend. The place turned out to be luxurious: a Cape Dutch farmhouse with a steep backdrop of mountainside vineyards. Below were a sloping lawn, a pool and what the brochure called a “Dining Pavilion”.
    After they’d unpacked their bags, the two friends drifted down through the landscaped lawns towards the pavilion, where, according to the programme, cocktails would be served and they’d meet a likely crop of single men. As they walked, they were joined by two or three other women, also in