I am in reception trying to make a decision about which of the cakes on the cake stand should find its destiny with me... surely all of them.... when I feel something... to my left. A change in the light, perhaps?And I turn to see that there are police horses, replete with police officers, drinking out of the fountain at the front of the hotel. The reception staff seem utterly unfazed - they come every day and stay for a loooong drink, apparently.
They don't really add to how odd I'm feeling. I'm already feeling very, very odd indeed and somehow they have exactly the right tone for... here and now. We have done our first show in Durban, had a day here, and now it is already the day we fly to Cape Town.
We see Lloyd, who is trying to get to the theatre again, Kline, Tafi and his colleagues in the restaurant at breakfast time. Then I manage to persuade my possessions - surely they are more swollen than in London due to the high humidity - into my rucksack and it's sitting in the coffee lounge looking at emails time. We treat ourselves to a walk on the beach. I wanted a swim, or one of those battles with the sea that Durban provides where you feel it is a victory just to get out alive with all your limbs, but there just isn't time.
Suddenly we're in the car and at the airport and in departures and boarding the plane and I'm climbing over a sleeping Jacques to get to the loo on the plane and arriving in Cape Town and into arrivals and there, across the room is Mark, my sister's best friend, and his six-month-old baby and there's Ikeraam as well, they're both here.
Somewhere in this process I lose my denim jacket. I hope someone's wearing it now. It took me a while to realise it was gone and not just under my pile of things by my bed. I bought that jacket the day before Kate was murdered. I bought it and another jacket very cheaply in Bayswater where I was working at pointing and croissants in the same hotel I was working in the next day when Kate was actually murdered. I had Kate so much in mind when I bought it - it was for our holiday together in South Africa, the one she was seriously messing with by going to Somalia.... and that is how my mind works. This item of clothing, neither here nor there - though I did like it - seems to carry such significance. It's just a jacket, lost in a country where endless people really need a free jacket, and I need to separate it from all this other emotional.... stuff. I have a problem with things and what you've just read will give you a brief introduction to one of the reasons I have this problem with things.
We drive in two cars into Cape Town. I travel with Mark and Zach. Zach is off-the-scale cute. Cape Town looks like Cape Town does: beautiful and strangely plonked down, looking as if it's slid down Table Mountain and the other hills surrounding the centre of town. I've done this drive a good few times, I've been thinking about this arrival for months, it's lovely to see Mark and Ikki and meet Zach... but guess who's not here? Kate's not here. What is Kate doing not being here?
We all arrive at the flat and Ikki cooks for us. Jacques and Martin go to look at their room in the flat above and then we eat. And then, of course, I head off into Cape Town, late, on a Friday night to meet an English friend of mine who is here on tour with another show. Of course I do. It's late and I'm tired and Long Street - the big party street - is full of partying young persons. Ah, I remember fitting in round here, at least age-wise, but not any longer. No one else in my crue is up for partying, but Jesse has turned 25 today and so I'm sure he needs a 40-year-old chum to help him work out how to celebrate. I stride into town, the always-familiar-never-recognisable centre of Cape Town, and head for the pre-arranged bar. Neither he nor I has a mobile so we are doing what we used to do in the early 90s, back when I was his age: making a plan and hoping it works.
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