TWENTY : A Heart Colder Than Ice

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The call came at seven forty New York time.

Yolanda was still in bed, the Egyptian sheets pulled up to her chin, the city skyline grey and cold beyond the floor-to-ceiling window. Her phone lit up on the nightstand. Sofia’s father.

She answered.

He said very little. He did not need to say much.

Long after she had ended the call, she lay still, staring at the ceiling. After a while she reached for her phone and opened her gallery. There was only one picture of Luthanda saved on it. The girl was laughing at something off-camera, her cheeks round and full, her grandmother’s eyes.

Yolanda stared at it.

The tears came without warning.

‘I am sorry,’ she whispered to the photograph. ‘’They forced my hand, baby girl. I am so sorry.’

She set the phone face down on the sheet and turned to look at the snow falling silently against the glass.

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Gershom was in the middle of a meeting with investors when his phone vibrated across the table. He glanced at the screen out of habit and looked away. A second later he looked back.

The caller ID stopped him cold.

He stood up so fast his chair scraped back. Every face in the room turned to him.

‘I apologise. I have to take this.’ He was already walking towards the door.

‘Mr. Chomba, we are in the middle of-‘

The door closed behind him.

He answered in the corridor, one hand pressed flat against the wall.

‘Hello? Hello, who is this? Slow down, I cannot – what happened? Where? Which hospital?’

He was running before the call ended.

In his pocket his phone began to fill with missed calls and messages. He did not see them. Outside he flagged down the first car he could find, gave the driver the hospital name, and sat in the back seat staring at his hands while the city moved past the window.

He tried Yolanda’s number.

It rang out.

He tried again.

It rang out.

He sent a message. Then another. Then several more, his thumbs moving frantically across the screen as the car wove through traffic.

Yolie please pick up. Something happened. Please.

Yolie, it’s dad and Luthanda. Please call me.

YOLANDA PLEASE.

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In New York, Yolanda’s phone lit up on the glass table in front of her.

She was sitting at the floor-to-ceiling window, her legs drawn up beneath her, a cup of tea going cold in her hands. Outside, snow continued to fall in slow, unhurried silence.

She looked at the screen.

Gershom.

She looked away.

The phone lit up again. And again. And again.

She watched his name flash and fade, flash and fade, until it stopped.

Then the messages started coming. She watched the notification count climb without opening them.

A lone tear made its way down her face.

‘You forced my hand,’ she said quietly to the window, to the snow, to no one. ‘You forced my hand, Gershom.’

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Mrs. Irene was in the kitchen when the feeling came over her.

She could not have said what it was exactly. A shift in the air. A stillness that had not been there a moment ago.

She reached for a glass and filled it from the tap. As she lifted it, something made her hand tremble and the glass slipped. It shattered on the floor. She crouched carefully and began gathering the larger pieces. One caught the edge of her finger. A thin line of red appeared.

She was still looking at it when a cold draught moved through the kitchen, sudden and sourceless, as though a window had been opened somewhere.

Then she heard his voice.

‘Irene.’

She straightened up quickly, her heart lifting. She had not heard the door. She walked to the kitchen doorway and looked into the sitting room.

He was there. Standing in the doorway to the corridor, the late afternoon light behind him, so bright it was difficult to look directly at him. He was smiling at her in the way he had smiled at her for over forty years.

‘Darling,’ she said, moving towards him. ‘You are back. Where is Luthanda? Did you buy the ice lollies she wanted?’

Her phone rang from the kitchen.

She paused. ‘One moment.’ She turned back to get it, looked at the counter, frowned. The phone was not ringing. She could have sworn it had been. She stood there confused, listening to the silence.

She went back to the sitting room.

He was gone.

She looked towards the corridor. The front door. She walked to it and tried the handle.

Locked from the inside.

She stood at the door for a long moment, her hand still on the handle, something cold settling in her chest that she did not want to name.

She went to the sofa and sat down.

Then she heard running footsteps from outside. Fast and urgent, getting closer. A child’s voice, high and frightened.

‘Ambuya! Ambuya!’

The pounding on the door that followed shook the frame.

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Ambuya – Granny / grandmother