Does it Hurt to Die (29 page)

‘
I thought she approved of me?’

‘
She does, but for some reason she’s repeatedly warned me that we should only be friends.’

‘
OK, well we are—we’re just friends, just a little closer than most,’ Christian said, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Maybe she wanted us to wait until we knew each other better.’

‘
Maybe, or it could be just the trust thing that has upset her. We’ve always been very close and my letting her think that Mike and Sian were here will be seen as a betrayal of that trust. Let’s get dressed and go and see her. Just be prepared; she can be quite harsh when she’s upset.’

‘
Come on in, you two,’ called Nadine as they unlocked the front door. The coffee is made. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

They followed the rich coffee aroma into the kitchen. As Isabella arranged the cups Christian grabbed her playfully from behind, spun her around and kissed her firmly on the mouth.

‘What was that for?’

‘
Two things: one to let you know that last night was wonderful and something I want to do with you again; and second, whatever it is Nadine wants to discuss with us, we’re in this together.’

She grabbed him by the shirt collar and kissed him gently on the lips and said
, ‘I love you too, you big Aussie hunk.’

A small cough made them aware that Nadine had quietly entered the kitchen.

Isabella thought she would pre-empt her talk with an apology. ‘Mum, I’m sorry about last night.’

‘
Bring the coffee to the table and sit down, please. Isabella,’ Nadine said, looking anxiously at her daughter, ‘I’m obviously cross about last night, but it’s not about the fact that you didn’t directly tell me that Mike and Sian were away. Of course, I’m concerned about that, although it’s not of prime importance. I’m going to tell you something I should have told you before now but your relationship has moved faster than I suspected. I observed this relationship developing between you and Christian and it seemed so perfect that it didn’t seem right to initially interfere. There’s no easy way of saying this and it needs to be said before it’s too late, and I’m hoping that it’s not too late.’

Nadine hesitated and Isabella moved to put her arm around her mother. Nadine removed her arm and told her to sit next to Christian.

Isabella had not seen her mother look so serious or concerned before.

‘
Isabella, I’ve never told you who your father was. You’d often asked, but I told you no useful purpose would be served, as he was dead. I also wanted to hide his identity from you because of the shame I felt and my fear of how you might react. That was selfish, and you had a right to know, but I didn’t want to take the risk of anything affecting our relationship. Because I haven’t told you, it may do just that. I had a brief affair with Christian’s father.’

‘
What?’ said Isabella. ‘You mean we may be brother and sister?’ She stared at her mother; the full impact of what she had been told slowly penetrating.

‘
No, it can’t be true,’ she cried, putting her head in her hands and sobbing uncontrollably.

‘
Christian, no one knows he’s Isabella’s father, and I denied it to everyone, including your mother. Your father was doing such wonderful work that I didn’t want to complicate his life. I’d always wanted a child and my partner at the time, another doctor in the hospital, had had a vasectomy. He obviously realised it couldn’t be his child and left me. Therefore, in a way, I was thrilled to be pregnant. I knew also that your father still loved your mother and that we couldn’t have a life together in apartheid Africa, even if he didn’t. Then, when he was killed, I thought the secret would be safe.’

Christian sensed how incredibly difficult it was for Nadine to tell her daughter of her relationship
. ‘You must have loved him very much,’ he said.

She nodded, the tears now rolling down her cheeks.

‘What are we going to do?’ whispered Isabella, looking desperately at Christian. ‘What are we going to do?’

Christian saw how devastated Isabella was, her eyes pleading with him to make this alright, to return their love to where it belonged, and to remove this contagion from their pristine love. He knew that nothing he could say would help—not that there weren’t some half brothers and sisters previously who had loved each other. No solution could deal with the contamination that they both now felt. He moved towards her, but she pushed him away.

‘Why, why did you have to do that?’ she angrily demanded from Nadine. ‘Why couldn’t you have chosen an unmarried man?’

Christian had not seen her so distraught. He searched desperately for the right thing to say, but nothing came.

‘Christian, why don’t you leave us for a while. I’ll get Isabella to call you later.’

Isabella nodded without looking at him.

Christian closed the door of the BMW and sat for a while. He did not want to leave. He looked up at the house, trying to will Isabella to come to the window and beckon him back. If he had not come back to South Africa to try to find out more about his father, this would never have happened. Now, not only had he not discovered what his father was involved with, but he had potentially ruined the life of someone he had started to love. About to open the door of the car to go back and ask for the security gate to be opened he saw Nadine at the window. She didn’t look down but pointed the remote control directly at the gate, which he then heard opening. She wanted him to leave. He drove slowly towards the gate wondering whether he would ever return, or after tonight whether he would ever want to return.

On the drive back to Mike and Sian’s, he tried to rationalise the feeling that now existed. Isabella was his half-sister whom he had now made love to. The relationship was now contaminated in a way that made the experience seem unlawful and perverted. Feeling more despondent than he had in quite some time, he hardly noticed as he approached Mike and Sian’s front gate that it was wide open. They were not expected back from Hermanus for another two days, and even if they were early, he could not remember them ever leaving the gate open. He drove in through the gates and immediately sensed that something was not as it should be. The front door too was wide open and all the lights in the house were on. He parked in front of the driveway, remembering Mike’s words that it was often your intuition that saved you in South Africa. His intuition was, despite Nadine’s confrontation, shouting at him to be careful.

He got out of the driver’s side and quietly closed the door. He listened, but there was no noise coming from inside the house. If anyone was still in the house, they must be down towards the back where the library was. He took out his mobile phone and quickly scrolled down to find Mike’s number. He was about to dial when he heard voices—loud agitated voices, speaking in Afrikaans. He moved further along the veranda hoping to be able to see who it was. He reasoned that if they were speaking in Afrikaans they were probably white and this was therefore not a simple robbery.

He snuck up to the library window and saw that its contents had been turned upside down. All the books had been pulled out of the shelves and lay half open on the floor. Drawers had been emptied and paintings pulled off the wall. All the carpets lay rolled up untidily in one corner. The two men in the room were concentrating all their attention on the safe that they had found behind one of the pictures. Christian noted that both the men were white; although they were wearing ski masks and gloves, he could see the colour of their skin in the gaps of their clothing. He thought it was strange that they had left the gate wide open, signalling to anyone passing, as well as the security patrol that frequently passed, that something was amiss. They must be supremely confident that no one was going to disturb them, he thought, and they were therefore capable of dealing with any situation.

Christian decided to retreat and call Mike. ‘Mike, it’s Christian,’ he said very softly from behind the giant palm in the back of the garden.

‘
Christian, I can hardly hear you. Can you speak up?’

‘
Mike, I arrived home early from Isabella’s and there are two men inside ransacking the house.’

‘
Stay exactly where you are. Don’t move. I’ll call the police. We’re on our way back from Hermanus but won’t be there for another twenty minutes.’

‘
I left the car in front of the house when I came home, and so they’ll know that there’s someone here when they come out,’ whispered Christian.

‘
Don’t worry; hopefully the police will arrive before they come out. Just make sure you’re behind something solid in case there is any shooting. And put your phone on silent so that I can update you if necessary.’

Christian crouched down behind the palm tree and quickly switched his phone to silent. Sitting in the dark at the bottom of the garden, his thoughts went back to Isabella and what she must be feeling at this time and he wished that he was there to comfort her. He was thinking about sending her a text when he felt his phone vibrate and saw a text message from Mike
. ‘Police delayed for twenty minutes—leave the keys in the car,’ it read. Christian quickly deleted the message and looked up. Leaving the keys in the BMW meant they would probably take the car and not worry about searching for anyone. Mike was obviously also thinking it would be easier to trace.

Perhaps he could get back to the car unseen through the back of the garden. There was only one point where the light shone through one of the windows that might make him visible. He made his way forward and when he got to the one area where the light shone into the garden, he waited. Although the men were no longer visible, he could hear the sound of drilling and hammering and knew they were still preoccupied with the safe. He opened the driver’s door and slid the keys into the ignition. The remote control for the front gate was sitting between the two front seats; instinctively he grabbed it and retreated back into the darkness of the garden. From behind the large hydrangea bush, he aimed the remote at the gates. If the police were going to be delayed for twenty minutes, closing the gates might slow them down.

Nothing initially happened, not even the slightest movement of the gates. He must be too far away, he thought, to activate the gates. However, to move closer meant exposing himself to the light from the front window. As he was contemplating creeping forward to try the remote again, he became aware that the noise inside had stopped. He looked up and could see one of the men agitatedly throwing books around the library. They had obviously not found what they wanted and could be leaving sooner than he thought. While they were distracted, he decided he had a few minutes to get closer to the gate. He moved forward quickly just visible in the light from the front window and aimed the remote control at the gate again. He pushed the close button and held it down for what seemed like an eternity until it started to creak. He then retreated quickly to the relative safety of the hydrangea bush.

He peered through the darkness, trying to see whether the gate was closing. As he moved closer with the remote, he could see that the gate had been damaged. Perhaps it now would not close. Then, like some behemoth awaking from slumber, it gave a mighty creak and shook its foundations, the sound reverberating all the way round the garden as it attempted to close.

The house suddenly went silent; the men inside had clearly heard the noise from the gates. Christian felt he needed to be as far away from the car and the gates as he could possibly be. Crouching, he quickly made his way along the side wall in the darkness to the safety of the giant palm. From that position, he could just see the edge of the veranda and hear the agitated discussion in Afrikaans and the cursing as the men stood on the front step. The gate made a final crunching sound as it engaged and locked closed. One of the men appeared at the end of the house and shone a torch over the back lawn and through the garden. As he started to advance towards Christian’s tree, he heard the sound of the BMW start-up. He looked around the tree to see the man with the torch retreating, and with the tyres screeching, the BMW rammed through the gates dislocating them from their mountings.

As Christian watched from the garden, he could hear the BMW and the gates scraping along the road for a few minutes before everything went silent. In the distance, he could hear a police car and decided to retreat back into the garden and phone Mike.

‘They left,’ he said.

‘
Are you OK?’

‘
Yeah, but they took your BMW and collected the gates on the way out.’

‘
Have the police arrived yet?’

‘
I can hear them in the distance. They sound like they’re about five or so minutes away.’

‘
OK, go and sit on the front step. I’m phoning them to tell them that it’s you.’

‘
The house is a mess, Mike,’ said Christian as he made his way towards the front of the house. ‘I wonder what they were looking for?’

‘
I suspect it’s the folder, which I took with me in case something like this happened. Hang in there, my friend. You’ll be fine. Sian is on the other phone and is telling me that the police are two minutes away—they know that you’re sitting on the front stoep.’

Shortly after, the police drove in. Christian, sitting on the top step, waved vigorously as the light was trained on him from the police car.

‘Are you all right, son?’ said the first police officer.

‘
Yes, I’m OK,’ said Christian, standing up as Mike and Sian drove in.

Mike quickly got out of Sian’s Audi, greeting the first policeman in Afrikaans before looking Christian over and giving him a hug.

‘Maybe not something to tell your mother about,’ said Mike, giving Christian a knowing smile. ‘Glad that you’re OK. Maybe it’s time to find out what’s in that folder and decide what to do with it.’

‘
What about the BMW?’

‘
That’s parked ten minutes down the road, with the gates jammed underneath. I locked it on the way past and it will be picked up in the morning, although the wheels will probably be gone. I’ve already called one of the security firms to supply a guard for the front gate until we get that fixed tomorrow.’

‘
Darling, we’re going to need a lot of help to clean up this mess,’ said Sian, returning from inside the house to join them.

‘
Ruby has lots of friends who can come and help. Why don’t we just tidy up as much as we can and try to get some sleep,’ said Mike, before looking at Christian and adding, ‘It’s been quite a day for you, young man.’

Christian looked at Mike and half smiled wishing he could talk to him about what happened at Isabella’s but realising he would have to wait until some other time.