Mistress of the Game

Mistress of the Game Page 20

CAPE TOWN WAS UTTERLY UNLIKE ANYTHING GABE MCGREGOR had ever seen.

After a twelve-hour economy-class flight on SAA that was a circus in itself - a family of eleven tried to bring a crate of live chickens on board as hand luggage, and several grown men fell asleep in the aisles - Gabe emerged bleary-eyed into the arrival hall at Cape Town International Airport to begin the new millennium not just on a new continent, but in a new world. People of every different race and creed swarmed the marble concourse like multicolored ants. Men in traditional African robes and women balancing brightly woven blankets or earthenware on their heads mingled with Asian businessmen in bespoke suits. Half-naked street children skipped around the luggage carousel alongside towheaded American kids dressed head to toe in Ralph Lauren, visiting Cape Town with their parents for the glitzy millennium New Year's parties. Unpleasant, sour smells of sweat and travel were overlaid by the sweet coconut scent of shea butter, expensive aftershave and the delicious, barbecue tang of boerewors, the traditional Cape Dutch sausages sold by vendors outside. Every one of Gabe's senses was assailed by something new.

I wonder if this is what it felt like for Jamie McGregor all those years ago. Stepping off his boat, the Walmer Castle, onto a wharf of unfamiliar sights and sounds.

Like Jamie, Gabe had never been away from home before. Unless you counted three days in St. Tropez, or family holidays on the Isle of Mull in an RV when he was eight (Gabe didn't). Both men had come to South Africa to make their fortunes, determined to love the country, to make it their home.

Soon all these sights and sounds and smells will seem normal to me. I have Africa in my blood, after all.

"I hate sodding Africa. I want to go home."

Gabe was slumped on a bar stool in an Irish pub in Camps Bay. Did they have Irish pubs on the moon yet? Probably. At least one McGinty's. He'd been in Cape Town for a week, during which time he'd been mugged at gunpoint, had his wallet and passport stolen, developed a mysterious stomach bug that had him on his knees over the toilet bowl every night, and failed to find a place to live. Oh, and had every square inch of his white Scottish skin bitten to death by mosquitoes the size of small bats.

"Why don't you, then?"

The girl was American. A brunette with merry green eyes and a full, womanly body that Gabe couldn't take his eyes off of. After eight years in prison, he'd learned an even deeper appreciation of the female form, and this girl's form was exquisite.

She introduced herself as Ruby.

"Why don't you go home?"

"I can't." Gabe hoped he wasn't blushing. Christ, she was gorgeous. "I only just got here. I can't go home till I'm rich enough to pay everybody back."

"You're not rich, then?"

"Not yet."

"Why d'you hate Africa?"

"How long have you got?" Gabe locked his gray eyes onto Ruby's green ones and decided he hated Africa a lot less than he did two minutes ago. "Let me buy you a drink and I'll tell you about it."

They chatted for more than hour. Ruby was from Wisconsin. She'd come to Cape Town ten years ago to model.

"Ten years ago? How old were you then? Six?"

Ruby smiled. "I was thirteen. I quit the business at seventeen."

"Why?"

"Too old."

Gabe roared with laughter.

"And too short. At seventeen, your growing days are over."

Gabe glanced down at her endless legs.

"You realize there are NBA pros shorter than you? Hell, there are probably apartment buildings shorter than you."

Ruby laughed, a low throaty chuckle that made Gabe want to rip her clothes off there and then. He told her his own story, leaving out the part about living with a string of older women. No need to completely shoot himself in the foot. But everything else was the truth: his addiction, prison, Marshall Gresham, his family connections to South Africa.

"You're related to the Jamie McGregor? Kruger-Brent? You're not putting me on?"

"I swear on my mother's life. Don't get the wrong idea, though. I'm not from the Blackwell side of the family. My lot got nothing. That's why I'm here - to make my own fortune."

Gabe told Ruby about his ambitions for a career in real estate.

"I might be able to help you there. A friend of mine, a guy named Lister, is a developer out in Franschloek. He's still relatively small-scale, but I know he's on the lookout for a partner."

Gabe's eyes danced with excitement. At last! A contact. A start.

Ruby's hand was on his leg. Her eyes were on the bulge in his jeans.

Gabe blushed. "Sorry. It's been a long time."

Ruby grinned. He was even better-looking when he got flustered. "No need to apologize on my account." She downed the last of her drink. "Let's go to bed."

Gabe lived with Ruby for six months, the happiest six months of his life. Ruby introduced him to her friend Damian Lister, a local architect-turned-developer, and the two men hit it off instantly. Damian was tall and rake thin with a prominent nose and Adam's apple. He reminded Gabe of a Dr. Seuss drawing come to life. Luckily for Gabe, Damian was a soccer fan, which helped break the ice. They talked about Celtic's lackluster performance this season, and whether Ashley Cole deserved his place on the Arsenal squad, and suddenly they were old friends. Damian's own brother, Paul, had spent five years inside for embezzlement, so Damian was relaxed about Gabe's criminal record.

"We all make mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. You've clearly learned from yours."

Damian Lister was developing a new residential estate in Franschloek, a popular wine-route town and tourist destination about an hour outside Cape Town. He'd done well on similar investments in Stellen-bosch and Bellville, both local commuter towns.

"My problem is the bloody banks, you know? The rand's on the upswing, but they're still so cautious about lending, even to someone with a track record like mine."

"Why not borrow from a foreign bank?" Gabe asked. "I'm sure the Americans would finance you."

"I could," Damian agreed. "But I prefer to have a partner. Someone who I know and trust. Someone who won't pull the rug out from under me as soon as the blacks start kicking off again, making our economy look unstable."

The one negative thing about Damian was his racist way of talking. Gabe put it down to his culture and upbringing. You couldn't wipe out centuries of prejudice overnight.

Besides, it's a terrific stroke of luck for me that he wants a partner. With his local knowledge and contacts, I'll get a far bigger return on Marshall's money than I would on my own.

Gabe spent his days on-site at Franschloek, overseeing the construction, while Damian stayed in his Cape Town office, managing the finances. Gabe loved watching the development take shape, running his hands lovingly over the bricks and mortar that were going to make his fortune. Marshall had taught him so much, but it had all been book learning. This was the real deal. It filled Gabe with an exhilaration almost as strong as a heroin rush.

At night, Gabe went home to Ruby. She would cook them something simple, steak and salad or oven-baked fish with rosemary roast potatoes, and they would eat on the terrace of her light-filled apartment overlooking the ocean. After a glass or two of Cape wine, usually Stel-lenbosch, they would talk for hours about their lives, hopes and dreams. Ruby said little about her past. She talked only vaguely of her family, in broad brushstrokes. After a few weeks, Gabe realized that, despite all their talks, he knew almost nothing about the minutiae of Ruby's daily life when he wasn't with her. She was an art dealer and spoke about wanting to open a gallery in Spain one day. But Gabe never saw any paintings or heard her take a business call.

When he pressed her for more details, Ruby laughed and asked him: "Does it matter? I live in the moment. The now. When I'm with you, you and I are all that matters. It's the key to happiness."

Making love to her on the beach under the stars, Gabe began to believe it. So what if he didn't know what galleries she represented or the name of her first dog? Ruby was the most loving, sensual, incredible woman he had ever met. She had transformed South Africa from a nightmare into a dream. He should be grateful, not pestering her with questions.

The one-hour drive from Cape Town to Franschloek in the morning was the best part of Gabe's day. Rattling through the mountains and vineyards in his ancient Fiat Punto - determined not to waste a penny of Marshall's money, Gabe had bought himself the cheapest car he could find - he never failed to be moved by the breathtaking scenery. Franschloek means "French corner," named after the persecuted French Huguenots who first settled its steep slopes over three hundred years ago. They brought with them a culture and cuisine for which the town was still famous. Being a Scot, Gabe knew little of either culture or cuisine, but he still felt an affinity with the Huguenots. Like him, they were outcasts, come to this strange, distant place to make a fresh start. Most lunchtimes Gabe sat and ate his sandwich by the Huguenot monument at the top of the village. Main Street was packed with enticing coffee shops and restaurants offering some of the best food in the country, but Gabe always packed his own lunch. Until he had paid everyone back - Marshall, Claire, Angus Frazer - he had no right to indulge in luxuries.

This morning, Gabe parked the Punto as usual at the top of main street and walked the six blocks to his and Damian's development. They were building eight "executive homes," comfortable, ranch-style houses with pools and grassy backyards. The kind of house I wish I'd grown up in. Gabe knew it was foolish to feel an emotional attachment to a business venture. But now that they were starting to take shape, he was proud of the homes he and Lister were creating. He could picture the families who would live there, protected by the magnificent mountains on either side of them, secure within the strong, solid walls that Gabe had built.

I hope they're happy.

Turning the corner into the construction site, Gabe stopped. For a moment he just stood there, blinking, as if his eyes were deceiving him. The place was deserted. What should have been a hive of activity - men, drills, cement mixers, trucks full of gravel spinning their wheels in the summer mud - had been transformed into a desolate wasteland. It wasn't simply that no one was working. All the equipment was gone. The piles of sand and bricks. Even the foreman's office had been dismantled. All that was left were eight half-finished shells of buildings, their skeletal beams stretching up hopelessly toward the blue African sky.

Gabe's first thought was: We've been robbed.

He pulled out his cell phone, then remembered he hadn't charged it. He had to call Damian. And the police. Sprinting to the nearest house, Gabe knocked on the door, breathless, his heart pounding. A woman answered in a bathrobe.

"I'm sorry to disturb you so early. But could I possibly use your phone? It's an emergency."

The woman was middle-aged with short-cropped, bleached hair and a once-pretty face grown tired with the drudgery of motherhood. She looked at the Adonis-in-distress on her front porch and cursed the fact that she had not yet had time to put on her makeup. Straightening her hair and sucking in her belly, she gestured for Gabe to come in.

"I know you, don't I? I mean I've seen you around. You're the site manager of those Lister Homes."

Gabe nodded distractedly, looking for the phone. "I'm afraid we've been robbed. The site has been stripped bare."

The woman looked at him curiously. "But that was your guys," she said. "I thought it was strange, them showing up for work on a Sunday."

"My guys were here yesterday?"

"Yah, crack of dawn, with a load of trucks. My husband went out to complain, about the noise, you know? The foreman told him you and your partner had gone bankrupt and skipped town. They had six weeks of wages owing, so they took what they could carry and left." She pronounced it "lift."

Gabe felt weak at the knees. He sank down into an armchair and tried to think.

Why would they think we'd gone bankrupt? And why didn't Jonas, the foreman, call me?

Then he remembered his dead phone. He'd been unreachable all weekend. Ruby had persuaded him to accompany her on a boat trip and to leave his phone behind. It would just be the two of them, living in the moment. "The now," as Ruby liked to call it in that cute New Age American way of hers. They swam and fished and made love. It was a magical weekend.

Gabe dialed Damian's office number. There had obviously been some terrible misunderstanding.

After six rings, an automated voice announced dully: "The number you have called has been disconnected."

Panic rising in his chest, Gabe called Damian's cell. A single, long, no-such-number beep rang in his ears. He called the apartment, hoping to catch Ruby, but she wasn't home. He pictured their white cordless phone on the coffee table, ringing forlornly in the empty living room, and suddenly felt ineffably sad. Ruby's cell was switched off, too. Not knowing what else to do, Gabe finally contacted the police.

"And this is Gabriel McGregor I'm speaking to, is it?" The desk sergeant sounded excited, almost disbelieving, as if Gabe were some sort of celebrity.

"Yes, I've told you. I'm calling from a house across the street. My properties have been robbed, my partner seems to have gone missing - "

"Just stay where you are, Mr. McGregor. Someone will be with you very shortly, I promise."

While Gabe was on the phone, the lady of the house put on some lipstick and changed into a pair of frayed denim shorts and a pink Lab-att's Beer T-shirt that showed her nipples. Gabe didn't even register the changes. She made him a cup of hot, sweet tea, which he drank, his mind racing. After what seemed like an age, the doorbell rang.

"That'll be the police," said the woman.

"Thank God." Gabe got to his feet. Four uniformed officers walked into the living room. He extended his hand in greeting. "Boy, am I happy to see you."

"The feeling's mutual, mate," said the senior officer.

He slapped a pair of handcuffs onto Gabe's wrists.

Only a series of miracles kept Gabe out of prison for a second time.

Detective Inspector Hunter Richards, the officer in charge of the case, saw something in Gabriel McGregor's sad gray eyes that he trusted. The lad had been a fool. He'd lost millions of rand, played straight into Damian Lister's hands. But DI Richards did not believe he had intended to defraud anyone, even if he was an ex-con. The Franschloek locals spoke glowingly of Gabe's character. As the investigation continued, and more and more victims of con artists Ruby Frayne and Damian Lister came to light, the case against Gabe gradually began to unravel.

Ruby and Damian had been lovers and partners for over a decade. There was no art dealership, no imprisoned brother, no wholesome, small-town family back in Wisconsin. Every ounce of Gabe's happiness during the last six months had been built on lies. It was his first taste of the betrayal his London girlfriends must have felt when they discovered he was using them for their money. The irony was not lost on Gabe.

Not everyone was convinced of Gabe's innocence. For a terrifying few months, he lived with the threat of prosecution hanging over him. But any court case was going to be lengthy and expensive. In the end, the police decided it would be more cost-effective to focus on Lister and Frayne. At the end of the day, they were the ones with the money. Gabe had nothing.

The day the case against Gabe was formally dropped, he went back to the bar where he'd first met Ruby and drank himself unconscious. Even after everything that had happened, he still missed her. He couldn't help it. When he woke the next morning, he was lying in the street, laid out next to the trash cans like a lump of human refuse. Someone had stolen his shoes. There was nothing else to take.

This is it. Rock bottom. I can go back to the drugs, back to the streets. Or I can pick myself up and fight back.

It wasn't an obvious choice. Gabe was tired of fighting, tired to his bones. He blamed himself entirely for what had happened.

I can't become like my father, blaming other people for my own misfortunes. It's my own stupidity that got me here.

But in the end, Gabe told himself, he didn't have an option. Too many people had believed in him, Marshall Gresham most of all. What right did he have to give up before he had paid his debts? Until then, Gabe reasoned, his life was not his own to throw away.

I'll pay Marshall back. Then I'll decide if I've anything left to live for.

The first year was hell. Marshall Gresham generously assured Gabe he was in no rush to get his money back, but Gabe's own pride drove him on. He had to start earning money. With his record, no one was going to give him a white-collar job in real estate. His only option was manual labor, working on construction sites till he earned enough money to get back into developing.

I've done it before and I can do it again. I'm not afraid of hard work.

But this wasn't London. It was Africa. Nothing had prepared Gabe for the backbreaking work, hauling bricks and mixing cement in the hundred-degree heat, bitten to death by mosquitoes and sand flies. Often he found he was the only white man on a crew, which was lonely and dispiriting. The blacks all spoke Swahili to one another, laughing and joking as they lifted huge slabs of stone with no more effort than a mother lifting a baby. Gabe had always considered himself strong and physically fit. But at thirty, with a white man's muscle tone, he was no match for the nineteen-year-old local boys. Every night he crawled back to his filthy single-room apartment on Kennedy Road and collapsed on the bed, his body screaming with pain. For the first six months, before his skin hardened, Gabe's hands would blister and bleed so badly he looked like he had stigmata. Worst of all was the loneliness. It followed him everywhere, like a stalker, even into his dreams at night. Sometimes he could go an entire week without talking to anyone other than the foreman who paid him his wages. Gabe had to make a conscious effort not to slide into depression and despair.

I got through heroin. I got through prison. I can get through this.

And slowly, as the months rolled into years, he did get through it. Giving up drinking was the first step, not so much a choice as a physical necessity. Gabe's body was already stretched to the limits of endurance. There was no way he could work with a hangover. With the booze out of his system, he started sleeping better. His mood and energy levels began, imperceptibly, to lift. Once he raised his head and smiled at the black men working beside him, he found that they were not so standoffish after all. The thought struck him that perhaps it was he who had kept himself isolated, not them.

He made friends with a man named Dia Ghali. Dia was a joker, sunny-natured, with a deep, booming laugh that erupted frequently and incongruously from his skinny body. Dia was a foot shorter than Gabe, and as black as Gabe was white. Standing side by side, they looked like a comedy act. But Dia was every bit as serious as Gabe about making something of his life.

"I grew up in Pinetown. You know what happened last week, in the street where I lived? A baby girl, four months old, was killed by a rat. Killed. By a rat."

Gabe looked suitably horrified.

"The city refuses to collect the trash so the bloody rats are everywhere. They say the shack dwellers are 'illegals' and not entitled to services. As if we choose to live that way. Well, it's not happening to my child. No way. I'm getting out."

By pooling his money with Dia, Gabe was at last able to afford to move out of his single room. Together the two men rented a minuscule two-bedroom apartment downtown. It was a shoe box, but it felt like the Ritz.

"You know what we should do?" Gabe emerged from his first hot shower in a year and a half to find Dia watching cricket on their secondhand TV. "We should go into business for ourselves, in Pinetown. That's the problem in South Africa. There are shantytowns and mansions, but nothing in between. Low-cost, cooperative housing my friend. It's the future."

Dia nodded absently. "Fine. But you know what we should do first?"

"What?"

"Get laid."

Gabe hadn't had a woman since Ruby. Alcohol had deadened his libido. Since he gave up drinking, he'd begun, slowly, to notice women again. But he was too poor, and too exhausted, to spare much thought for dating. Cruising the bars of the Victoria and Albert Waterfront with Dia, watching the girls in their miniskirts and heels dolled up for a night out, Gabe felt like a tortoise emerging from hibernation. His first few attempts to chat up women were met with blunt rejection.

Gabe couldn't understand it. He'd always found flirting so easy.

"It's because you're with me," Dia told him. "Women don't trust a white guy who hangs out with a native."

"A native?" Gabe laughed. "Come on, Dia. Apartheid's been over for years."

Dia raised an eyebrow. "Really? Where have you been the past two years, brother? In a cave?"

He was right. Glancing around, Gabe saw that none of the groups hanging around the Waterfront were of mixed race. Whites and blacks might frequent the same stores and bars, but they each stuck with their own. Gabe thought of his ancestor Jamie McGregor and his lifelong friendship with Banda, a native revolutionary. A hundred and fifty years had passed since those days. But how much has really changed?

Happily, Dia was not in the mood for philosophizing. "Check out that honey standing by the fountain." He pointed out a tall, slender black girl in tight jeans and a sequined vest. When she looked up and saw him staring, she smiled.

Dia grinned at Gabe. "You're on your own, my friend. Don't wait up."

The black girl's name was Lefu. Less than a year later, Dia married her.

"Quit complaining," Dia told Gabe as he taped up the last of his boxes. He and Lefu were moving into their own place a few blocks away. "Now your crazy white women can make as much noise as they like through the walls."

Gabe would miss Dia. But it was true, he could use the privacy. It hadn't taken him long to rediscover his magic touch when it came to women. Cape Town, he quickly learned, was a mecca for Eastern European models. Girls flocked to join the hot new agencies - Faces, Infinity, Max, Outlaws - taking advantage of South Africa's year-round sunshine and perfect photographic conditions. Gabe McGregor made it his personal mission - more like his Christian duty - to ensure that the poor things didn't get too homesick.

"I'm providing a free service," he told an envious Dia and disapproving Lefu as yet another Amazonian Czech breezed out of the apartment in hot pants. "Someone has to make the poor loves feel welcome."

Now that Gabe had finally been promoted to foreman, he was working shorter hours and earning good money. He'd already repaid Angus Frazer and everyone who'd loaned him money for his appeal. On his thirty-fourth birthday, he put in a call to Marshall Gresham. Marshall had been released from Wormwood Scrubs the previous Christmas and was now living in splendor in a spanking-new mansion outside Basildon.

Marshall said: "I thought you'd done a runner."

It was a joke, but Gabe was horrified.

"I would never do that. It took me a wee bit longer than I expected to raise the money, that's all. But I've got it, every penny. Where should I send the check?"

"Nowhere."

Gabe was confused.

Marshall said: "I told you five years ago, didn't I? That money's an investment. What I want to know is when are you going to get off your lazy Scottish arse and start a new company?"

Gabe tried not to show how touched he was.

"Even after what happened? You'd still trust me?"

"'Course I trust you, you wanker. Just don't take on any more dodgy partners."

"Ah. About partners."

Gabe told Marshall about Dia and their plans to develop low-income housing close to the impoverished Pinetown and Kennedy Road areas. Marshall was skeptical.

"Your plan sounds fine. But I don't understand why you need this black fella. What does he bring to the party?"

"He grew up in Pinetown. He knows the area far better than I do. Plus, ninety-eight percent of the population in these dumps is black. I need a black face on the team if I'm going to get the locals to trust me."

Gabe didn't add that Dia's friendship meant more to him than any business. That even if it meant returning Marshall's investment, he would never leave Dia in the lurch. Luckily he didn't have to.

"Fine. You know what you're doing. Call me once you've doubled my money."

Gabe laughed. "I will."

He was back in business.

Gabe and Dia called their new company Phoenix, because it had risen from the ashes of their old lives.

At first, everyone thought they were crazy. Fellow developers laughed in Gabe's face when he told him Phoenix's business plan.

"You're out of your mind. None of the shack dwellers can afford a home. And anyone who can afford one isn't going to want to live within twenty miles of those areas."

Others went even further.

"You go home at night, the kaffirs'll torch the place. Those shantytown kids have got nothing better to do. Who d'you think's going to insure you in Pinetown?"

As it turned out, insurance was a problem. None of the blue-chip firms would give Phoenix the time of day. Just when Gabe was starting to give up hope, Lefu came to the rescue, introducing Dia to a boyfriend of one of her cousins who worked for an all-black building insurance agency in Johannesburg.

"The premiums are high." Dia handed Gabe the quote.

"High?" Gabe read the number and felt faint. "This guy must have been high when he came up with this rate. Tell him we'll pay half."

"Gabe."

"All right, two-thirds."

"Gabriel."

"What?"

"It's our only option. He's doing this as a favor to Lefu. As a friend."

"With friends like him, who needs enemies?" Gabe grumbled.

They paid the full rate.

By the end of their first year, Phoenix was 700,000 rand in the red. They had built thirty small, simple prefab houses with running water and electricity and sold none. Gabe lost fifteen pounds and took up smoking. Dia, with one baby at home and a second on the way, remained inexplicably upbeat.

"They'll sell. I'm working on it. Give me time."

Gabe had worked out a financial model for shared ownership that he knew a number of the shanty families could afford. The problem was that none of them believed it.

"You have to understand," Dia explained. "These people have been lied to by white men their entire lives. Many of them think it was white doctors who first spread AIDS here."

"But that's ridiculous."

"Not to them. They think you're trying to steal their money. The idea that they could afford a home - never mind a home with water and a roof that doesn't leak - it's totally alien to them. You may as well tell them you've found a way for them to live forever, or that you can turn horse manure into gold."

"So what do we do?"

"You do nothing. Go away for a few weeks, take a vacation. Show one of your Polish teenagers something other than your bedroom ceiling for a change."

Gabe shook his head. "No way. I can't leave the business, not now."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you," said Dia. "Bugger off. I know what I'm doing."

Gabe spent two weeks at Muizenberg, a local beach resort, with a girl named Lenka. Once the site of a famous battle between the British and the Dutch, Muizenberg was now the go-to resort for affluent Capeto-nians, an African version of the Hamptons.

"Gorgeous!" Lenka gasped as they strolled past the Victorian mansions on the promenade.

"Gorgeous!" she enthused, taking in the wide sandy beaches and turquoise water of False Bay.

"Gorgeous!" she cooed, when a spaniel puppy bounded up to Gabe on the beach and promptly urinated on his deck shoes.

After two days, Gabe was climbing the walls. One more "gorgeous" and he'd be forced to try to hang himself with the hotel sheets.

I will never, ever go on vacation again with a girl with the IQ of a dog turd. Even if she does look like a movie star.

Muizenberg was dull. Deathly dull. But it could have been one of the Seven Wonders of the World and Gabe would still have hated it. His mind had never left Pinetown.

The morning he got back to Cape Town, he raced to the office. He hadn't felt so nervous since the day he stood in the dock at Walthamstow, waiting to be sentenced.

"So?" he asked Dia breathlessly. "Did you make any progress?"

"A little."

Gabe's heart sank. A little? They didn't need a little. They needed a bloody miracle. He'd have to give up the apartment. Move back to Kennedy Road. Or perhaps the time had come to go home home? To admit defeat and go back to Scotland? There was no work at the docks, but maybe...

"I sold them all."

It took a moment for Dia's words to sink in.

"But...I don't...how...but..."

Dia teased him. "You know, after two weeks away, I'd forgotten how articulate you can be."

"You...but...all of them?"

"Every last one."

"How?"

"Faith, my friend. Faith."

Gabe looked at him blankly. Dia explained.

"I went to see the pastor at my old church and asked if he would let me speak there. He wasn't keen at first, but I persuaded him. Church meetings around here are packed."

"What did you say?"

"The same thing you've been saying, but in their voice. I talked about my own childhood. About the kids I knew who died as a direct result of the appalling living conditions, the lack of sanitation. I tried to let them know that I've been where they are, that I'm one of them. People started asking questions. From then on, it was easy. I talked them through your model, explained the financing. The next day I moved to another parish, then another.

"I actually sold the last unit three days ago. But I figured it could keep. I didn't want to ruin your holiday with the lovely Lenka."

Gabe thought about the nightmarish last few days in Muizenberg and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Aren't you going to say something?"

Striding over to Dia, Gabe picked him up in a huge bear hug and danced around the room, whooping for joy.

"Gorgeous!" He laughed. "Dia Ghali, you are bloody gorgeous!"