Mommy ✓

one

C H A P T E R O N E

☆☆☆

ROBERT HEARTH

1998

☆☆☆

I assumed other people knew when they're going to meet the love of their life, I reckoned that they woke up one day and the atmosphere was a little different. I think that they had perhaps rolled out of bed and cleaned up well and got out there and when they meet the love of their life, fireworks exploded in the sky and flock of birds flew in a heart shape above their heads and the whole world knew that they'd found the one. That's how the chick flicks my little sister used to be obsessed with would portray that, but the day I met the love of my life was a day ripped out of the book of commonplace.

As a twenty-four year-old guy who had grown up in a remote farming town in Free State, I had been born to be outside: to run through the endless mealie fields on my parent's farm and out into the veld beyond. to Climb the trees of the high veld during the day when it was hot so the leaves could protect me from the glare of the sun. To hunt birds with my friends during the holidays and swim in the Orange River and camp near its vicinity.

I had always imagined myself having a career in tennis since I was a little boy - to play and practice to my heart's content: travelling all over the world to participate in world tournaments and acquiring new skills and achieving the goals I had set for myself.

An unfortunate knee injury had made a pursuit in tennis impossible, so I'd had to settle for the next best thing. As much as I enjoyed Architecture and its components, the glamour of being an architect on paper wasn't as enticing in real life.

With an Honours degree and a position as a Junior Architect in Cotzee's Architectural Firm in South Africa's best city, I had made my parents very proud and they had something to boast about to their friends back at home - but the monotony of my day-to-day life made me miserable.

On that particular day, I had been on my lunch break with the intent to catch a break from the stifling confines of the office, but the heat, congestion and noise of the Pretoria CBD during rush hour made it impossible to find any semblance of peace and it only made me further agitated.

I supposed I shouldn't have gone into a Nandos of all places, but it had been my favourite fast food outlet ever since I was a little boy.

Our town had only had a KFC so I had only been able to enjoy Nandos whenever I my father would take trips into the next town for supplies for the farm.

Nandos had been a place of good memories for me and in the six months I had worked at Cotzee's, I had never left the office for my lunch break, so I figured I should have settled for something I was familiar with.

When I'd made it into the restaurant, I had managed to snatch the last table that was adjacent to the windows that looked out into the street. The place was abuzz with the voices of many patrons and it had gotten so busy that the cashier had to shout orders to be heard over the din.

I had half a mind to leave, but I'd already settled down: my blazer was draped over my chair and the day's newspaper was already opened to the crossword puzzle.

I waited for fifteen minutes to be served by a pudgy, disarrayed waitress. She had asked me to repeat my order so many times, I feared she hadn't gotten it right. She had toddled away and another half hour passed without any sign of my food arriving. I passed the time by solving the crossword.