huh,â Gorata said. âHeâs telling the truth, like always.â
âYeah,â replied Kelebogile. âWe know these thugs but we do nothing, since theyâre robbing other people. Some of us even buy the stolen stuff from them, thinking weâre not wrong because we didnât steal it ourselves. Weâre just as guilty.â
Gorata took the scissors from the kitchen drawer and cut out the column. She dropped it in her purse but wondered when she would see Ozee again. No one at the petrol station seemed to know where heâd gone. She had tried his cell number and either it was off or he wasnât taking her calls. How do you kiss someone like that and then disappear forever?
She guessed Alfred was part of the problem. Him showing up in his R4Â 000 suit couldnât have made Ozee feel very good. She felt awful when she saw Ozee across the garden, looking at Alfred on his knees proposing to her with that huge ring.
Maybe Ozee thought she said yes and that it was over between them before it had even started. Maybe that was why he wasnât answering her calls, why he had disappeared.
Ozee probably thought she said yes to Alfredâs big diamond ring. But Gorata was realising now that none of that mattered really. The job, the stuff, she didnât care about any of that. If there was love, real love between two people, it shouldnât matter what job they did or how much money they had. She knew that now.
She needed to find Ozee and let him know she knew it now too.
* * *
Monday morning, and the same old traffic to contend with. Minibus taxis diving and ducking. Horns hooting, tyres squealing.
Kelebogile had slept over at Markâs place, so Gorata was alone in the car. She was early, since she didnât need to pass by her friendâs school, so she took the next turn to make a stop at the petrol station to see if Ozee had shown up yet, even though it was out of her way and involved a significant amount of backtracking.
Sheâd passed there twice on Sunday, but never found him. It was as if heâd dropped off the face of the earth. She wondered if sheâd ever find him again.
Her mind kept drifting back to the night they were alone in her garden, under the moonlight with all of its promise. Thinking back about everything, she realised that was the moment when she knew Ozee was someone very special. There was a connection between them, something sheâd never felt with anyone else before. An honest connection, a strong one.
But now she had let him disappear without telling him the truth about how she felt. She wondered if sheâd ever get another chance with him.
She pulled into the station and was relieved when she spotted Ozee talking to some of the petrol attendants near the shop. He saw her and came up to the car.
âMorning, Lady Gorata,â he said, but not in his normal cheerful voice. Today he seemed depressed.
Gorata parked the car and got out. âHi, Ozee. Do you think we could go somewhere to talk?â
âSure, letâs go for a walk.â He shouted back at the other guys, âIâll be back soon!â
They walked to the park down the road. It wasnât a storybook park with jolly yellow rocking horses, green grass and a rainbow-coloured merry-go-round. This was still Soweto. It had a tall, wobbly slide kids could go down if they didnât mind falling onto the bare dirt at the bottom. There was a swing set with chains hanging and bits of broken seats that had waited so long for the fix-it man that they had forgotten their original purpose.
The greater part of the park was taken up by the dusty soccer pitch. A huge jacaranda stood to one side with a rusty metal bench under it; that was where Ozee and Gorata headed.
âSo where have you been? Iâve been looking for you,â Gorata started, suddenly nervous and unsure. She looked down at the ground, littered with purple flowers.
âI had some things