Chapter One

Baby Cohen van Tonder, the proprietor of Goldberg Bottle Store in High Street, decided, on the morning of his thirty-second birthday, in his pistachio-green-tiled bathroom, which was hung with ferns and purple-leaved Wandering Jew, to do something about his life.

He also determined that people should henceforth address him as Reuben, the name his mother had given him and the one by which his grandparents had always called him. Why he had allowed Baby to stick was anybody's guess. What was certain, however, on the day in question, and after the night he had drunk a bottle and a half of Chivas Regal and fallen over unconscious on the back veranda, waking with a head that throbbed like mad, was that the name had to go; as did his paunchy stomach; and his heavy drinking. He admitted too that it was time to leave his wife.

Leaning over the basin, feeling nauseous, he looked at himself in the Oregon-pine-framed mirror. His eyes were red and puffy, his cheeks pale and gaunt, his hair lifeless and sticking up all over the place. He felt sick just looking at himself but stopped from turning away to light a cigarette, instead forcing himself to behold the ghastly, ghostly face leering back at him. He cleared his throat and spat into the basin. He took four pain-killers from the medicine cabinet and swallowed them, head bent, drinking from the Victorian brass tap. Then he turned on the shower, hard and cold, and stood under the water until his shivering made him stop and dry himself.

'Today,' he threatened his life, holding his arms around himself as though to give comfort, but also support, for it was a brave amendment he was preparing to address. 'Today.