She checks her watch. She’s missed her show. She would always wonder what happened to the truck driver’s wife. She supposes being a serial killer wiped out everything else about her husband, anything good, any happiness they might have had. Certain secrets work like that. They become the only description of the person.

She feels herself getting drunk, but pours herself another drink anyway. OT sits down next to her. He’s calmer now, finally.

“I don’t know if I can continue in this relationship if it’s going nowhere,” he says.

“That’s fine, perfectly fine. You need to do what’s right for you.”

He takes her hand and kisses it. She hopes he’s not going to cry. He leans forward and pours himself a drink, swallowing it in one go.

“Can I spend the night?” he asks.

“Of course.”

In bed, they make sloppy, though competent, love. The man is soon asleep and Goitsemang gets up, slipping out her kitchen door into the garden. The moon is full and it turns her plain garden into a blue wonderland.

It was a full moon that night, too. When she lay the baby down in the grass at the side of the road, the tiny girl had immediately become quiet and looked up at it, mesmerised by its light in the black sky. Goitsemang had watched her for a few moments, wondering what she was thinking, and then she turned and walked away. Someone would love this child, she’d told herself. Better than she ever could.

Goitsemang was sure she’d moved on from that night, though sometimes she wondered. With each new academic year came a new group of students and each time there was that one girl. Sometimes short, sometimes fat; sometimes bright, sometimes not so much. Always light-skinned and beautiful. Always with inquisitive, moon-worshipping eyes.  Goitsemang would do her best to pay her no attention. She would stop herself each time from searching for information about her. She knew it was never her, but it was always her too.