When Time Fails (Silverman Saga Book 2) by Marilyn Cohen de Villiers

Author:Marilyn Cohen de Villiers [de Villiers, Marilyn Cohen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

2000

‘Hello. This is Bontle’s phone. Please leave a message.’

Annamari peered at the number in the contact list on her cell phone. She was sure she had dialled it correctly. She dialled again, slowly: 074 555 5679.

‘Hello. This is Bontle’s phone. Please leave a message.’

Now what? Annamari knew she should have written the number in her tattered, trusty address book with its faded floral cover. But Thys and De Wet had laughed at her. No one, they said, still used a proper address book.

‘Look Ma,’ De Wet had said, waving her little cell phone under her nose. ‘You enter the person’s name and phone number here; and when you want to phone them, you find their number in your contact list... like this, see? And then you just press this button. That’s it. Easy.’

But it wasn’t. Annamari hated the little phone that seemed to have a mind of its own. However with the real telephone being out of order so often – the copper cables kept being stolen, they said – these fancy cell phones had become essential. It was just as well Vodacom had put up that tower on thekoppie, Thys had said. Annamari was less impressed. She could see it, every time she looked out beyond the fields, past the poplars. It was ugly and it didn’t work. Calls were always cut off, right in the middle of a conversation. So Annamari always tried the proper phone first, just to see if it was working, before she resorted to her new Nokia. De Wet said it was the “coolest” phone on the market.

She replaced the real telephone and clicked on Beauty’s name in the Nokia’s phonebook, just as De Wet had shown her.

‘Hello. This is Bontle’s phone. Please leave a message.’

Annamari resisted the temptation to hurl the little device against the wall. She had to get hold of Beauty. This was urgent. They only had another twenty days to respond to that awful, awful letter. Beauty would know what to do, who to contact, even if she wasn’t a proper lawyer yet. Petrus, Thys and her, they had all agreed that it would be best to speak to Beauty before doing anything else. But that had been hours ago, just after she had got back from Driespruitfontein with the letter.

She had rushed down to the school to show it to Thys. He told her to take it to Petrus in the kibbutz office. He would just set some homework for the children, dismiss them and join her there.

Annamari panted into the office. Petrus got up and came towards her from behind the desk, as he always did. Annamari fiddled with her collar as they went through their ritual greeting, asking after each other’s health, their families’ wellbeing.

She held out the letter. ‘Look at this. Do you know this Thabiso Hadebe person? Who on earth are the Schekoera and Moilwa families?’

Petrus took the letter and stared at it. He wiped his glasses on his white handkerchief and put them back on his nose.

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