Now the moment is here, Irma doesn’t know quite what to do. She pushes the intercom again, careful of her new nails.

‘They for sure know we’re coming, ja?’

‘Just leave it,’ says Jan, fussing with his camera. ‘Get in the picture, eh. Willem, shades off, arm round your ma.’

Willem’s eyeroll is almost audible. No, he won’t hold her. He feels her neediness and it grosses him out — if she really loved him as much as she’s always saying, she wouldn’t be leaving him here. For the whole three-hour drive he bored a deep hole in the back of Jan’s thick bald head. Finally, Jan — who he’ll never call Pa — leaned back and snapped Answer your mother but Willem just pushed his earbuds deeper, gloried as Harry was chosen for Gryffindor yet again. He didn’t realise he was moving his lips to the words till he caught Jan smirking in the mirror and shuttered his face with his hoodie. Willem needs magic today, even if he is too old for it.

‘Closer,’ says Jan, edging them towards the white ex-demonstrator four-wheel-drive Ford with good fuel economy that his boss cut him a deal on. ‘Let me get the truck in.’

Irma nudges Willem: ‘Smile nice.’

Willem slides his Oakleys off and half opens his eyes — pilot-light blue, like his pa’s. People are always telling him to smile. He’s not been up this early for what, months, years? His ma swipes his hood off and curls the exact colour of Easter chicks spring away from his face. He’s got a perfect library tan. He’s hiding in his baggiest black hoodie and track pants and his feet flop in bright white Adidas Hi Tops, a puppy growing into his paws. The crappy Casio he got for his sixteenth is back home because who wears a watch now and he’d still be late anyway, Jan says. Willem braces for the flash.

‘Smile,’ sing-songs Jan, cutting the word in two: SMY-ILL. He holds the camera out, pushing Willem away. Irma turns her engagement ring, hopes it shows. Her eyes, smudges of no-run mascara, brim with her boy. When did he get so big? Will this place fix him? She tugs at the sleeveless white top that doesn’t hug her where she doesn’t want it to and loops her right arm through Willem’s left. She pulls him closer. They’ve not quite finished arranging their faces when Jan clicks the button. The flash is lost in spring sunshine.

Willem bolts over to the gate. It’s barbed wire, but barely man-high. Out here walls are lower — you can see gardens. Only the ground-floor windows have bars. There’s no movement from the low redbrick homestead up ahead. A shady stoep wraps around it waiting for rocking chairs. A pocked satellite dish clings to the stone chimney. There must be security. Willem identifies some kind of Prunus guarding the gate, but the crows have had its fruit.

There are no other houses. No other people. A heavy-shouldered red barn squats on the horizon opposite. Behind it a vast dark steelworks blots out the sky. Clouds belch from giant cooling towers with the ghetto curves all the girls want. Lightsaber-green flames —bright even on a day like today — flicker from skinny sky-high pipes. The air tastes of old torch batteries licked on a dare.

While they stand around waiting for the buzz-click of electric locks Jan checks for cameras. Weekend by weekend he’s filled their bungalow with them. He bribed Willem to put the feed on his phone and is gripped: watching empty rooms, waiting for people he knows to walk in and do what they always do. Jan dreams of a panic room. He gives Irma a look as she lights another menthol. She feels her boy moving further and further away. In her head, she goes over all the bits she’s packed. The list from New Dawn was detailed, extensive and expensive: two pairs of trousers, two T-shirts, a cap and two dress shirts (all khaki), then boots, running tekkies, trunks, towels, sheets, sleeping bag, tin plate, mug and bowl and a Bible (travel size). No mobiles but she won’t be the one to tell him. A hunting knife will be provided but used only under strict supervision. Safety First At New Dawn!