The Children of the House
Copyright© 2026 by AjnViper
Chapter 7: The Woman from the Ledger
Josephine Radebe refused the first room Willem offered her. She stood in the doorway, one hand holding a brown leather handbag against her hip, and looked at the small speaker above the window.
“Is that where it listens?” she asked.
Willem followed her eyes. “Only when invited.”
“You answered a different question.”
He studied her again. She was seventy-two, neatly dressed and irritated by the journey from Pretoria. Her shoes were sensible. Her grey hair had been braided close to her head. Nothing about her suggested danger except the fact that she had brought an old photograph of Elias through three levels of security and had not once asked whether the house impressed him.
“There is a garden room without a speaker,” Willem said.
“Then that is the room I want.”
“You have not yet been admitted to the house.”
“I noticed.”
Lena, waiting near the inner door, looked down so Josephine would not see her smile.
Willem questioned the older woman for forty minutes. Josephine answered what she knew, corrected two dates in his file and told him when she did not remember. Ten minutes into the interview, she removed her shoes without asking and placed them neatly beneath the chair.
“Is something wrong?” Willem asked.
“Your driveway is longer than it looks.”
“We offered to collect you.”
“I did not know you.”
“You came to our gate.”
“I could still leave your gate.”
That answer made Willem stop writing. He asked who knew she had travelled, which route she had taken, whether she had been followed and why she had changed buses at Midrand. Josephine told him her daughter knew only that she was visiting an old pupil. She had changed buses because a man in a blue cap left Pretoria when she did and appeared again after the first stop.
“Where is he now?”
“He became bored or I became suspicious of the wrong person.”
“Description?”
She gave one, down to a torn seam on the cap. Willem sent it to the gate team before asking the next question.
Josephine allowed him to inspect her bag. It contained reading glasses, peppermints, a paper ledger wrapped in a tea towel, and a fountain pen that had leaked into one corner.
“You brought the original?” Willem asked.
“The copy machine at the library is broken.”
“You could have called.”
“I did not have your number.”
“You had the address.”
“I got the address in a letter. There wasn’t a telephone number.” Josephine pushed the tea towel back around the ledger. “I’m telling you everything I have.”
At the end, Willem opened the inner door himself.
The garden room was warm without being soft. Mara had selected it because Josephine had spent most of her working life in rooms with hard chairs and bad light. Tea waited on the low table. No recording device was visible because none was present.
Elias stood when she entered. Josephine stopped. For a moment neither of them spoke. She looked at the man, then at the faded school photograph in Mara’s hand.
“You still do that with your shoulders,” Josephine said.
Elias frowned. “Do what?”
“Lift them like that. You used to do it outside my office.” She caught herself looking at his shoulders again and turned to Mara.
Willem closed the door behind her.
Mara came forward. “Mrs Radebe. Thank you for coming.”
“Josephine.” She looked at Mara’s ring, then at her face. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Josephine’s glance dropped briefly toward Mara’s stomach. She asked no question. Mara liked her for that.
They sat. Elias remained standing until Mara touched the chair beside her.
Josephine opened the handbag and placed the ledger on the table.
“I was the school bursar when you arrived,” she said. “Your fees had been arranged by a foundation. That happened sometimes. What did not happen was the precision.”
“What precision?” Elias asked.
“Every account was settled three working days before it became due. Uniform allowance in January and June. Books paid separately so nobody could redirect the money. A small amount for you each month, but never enough for the other boys to notice.”
Elias remembered the allowance. He had saved most of it in an envelope taped beneath a drawer.
“Twenty rand at first,” he said. “Then thirty.”
Josephine nodded. “Forty in your last year.”
“I thought the school provided it.”
“The school could barely provide chalk by then.”
He remembered counting the notes after lights-out. He had bought soap before the other boys noticed he needed it, replaced a torn exercise book and once paid for a train ticket he never used because leaving had seemed easier when it was possible.
“Did you know I saved it?” he asked.
“I knew you never came to ask where the next payment was.”
“Would that have been wrong?”
“No. You were entitled to it.” Josephine pressed a finger against the ledger’s spine. “I should have told you that more clearly.”
Mara shifted beside him. It was not new information about Elias. Hearing that it had been visible in a boy was different.
“Who paid?”
“A trust. The trust used an administrator. The administrator used a lawyer. The lawyer knew how to say no.”
“And Anna Venter?”
Josephine took off her glasses and cleaned them with the tea towel. “Your father’s half-sister.”
Elias held out his hand for the ledger, although her answer was not written there. “Alive?”
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