In which I wonder at the significance of position in the family

It is Passover. I know about Passover, you're not brought up a Christian without knowing all about Passover. Well, I say that, but I am about to learn a thing or two about Passover and grains that swell, it turns out.

I made a friend at drama school and it was great to learn that she came from Johannesburg. At the time I didn't realise she lived about fifteen minutes' drive from my aunt's place. I have always had an open invitation to stay with her, but have never taken her up on it as I have family and other friends in Joburg. In the time since Kate died I have wanted to stay with her friends, spend time with them. But one of the terrible corollaries of loss for me is that although I have got access to some of Kate's mate's in a way probably impossible had she been alive, I have also found that many of those relationships were tremendously ephemeral. More ephemeral than I had wanted. Something about the desire to connect at the time of her murder to rediscover Kate, maybe to be with someone we'd heard so much about or to be with someone who was enduring something similar to our own pain.

Being a hoarder, being desperate to keep my sister, to find something, someone who would, basically, I suspect, be my sister, I had wanted to continue those relationships, but mostly they have fallen by the wayside, which in itself has caused me distress. I think this is my problem, not theirs, that they are just doing the right thing and what comes naturally, and I am misguided, needy, mistaken. Thinking about it, it all sounds rather..... well... barking. And I'm loathe to write about it really, but two months in and now confronted with Johannesburg I am feeling pretty.... peeled-back skin-wise and I have a desire to be honest. And so, I think I have been blinded by grief and fear, by a terrible knowledge that without my sister I am nothing. I always knew I was rather an insubstantial creature, but the severing and expunging of my other self, my better self, my sympathetic, loving, resilient sister, has left me over-keen to find or make life and love and understanding on the barren territory of surprise and loss and desire for the utterly gone.

Add to this the fact that some of Kate's mates are no longer in Johannesburg and my familial homes are full, I find myself with the chance to take up my friend on her open invitation.

She is full of apologies as I arrive, late into the evening for parents with a baby who is not fond of sleeping. She's sorry because it is Passover, and so there is very little food in the house, she says, food of the kind she clearly thinks is right for a guest. I do not know how to reassure her: I've come to stay for... up to a few weeks and just a bed and somewhere to wash is enormously generous. I admit, being far less knowledgeable about Passover than I'd thought, I didn't realise that there would be unusable crockery and many un-eatable swelling-grain-based foods in the house, but there is tea and there are matzos. And boiled eggs. And salad and fruit, mountains of fruit and, as I mentioned, tea. AND the warmest welcome. Actually, it looks like a pretty healthy diet, to me, this Passover diet, especially when you add the lovely people with whom I'm about to stay.

When I see her husband later, he looks me in the eye and tells me, essentially, that his home is my home and that I must simply treat this house as such, he'll have no standing on ceremony. He and I have only met twice before, both times pretty fleetingly, and as I go up to my room I do, indeed, feel at home. And I feel happy that my friend has married such a very lovely man, a man who put me at my ease and who is genuinely happy for me to drink his beer even tough he can't - it's Passover.

And yet there's an 'and yet' in the mix. Will I always live he life of this single woman, the interesting, perfectly pleasant (if you like that sort of thing), woman, with a good sense of humour, who will eat anything (anything I tell you! and love it) and be a houseguest in the homes of her friends, in their couples, maybe with their children in tow? Will I tramp around, never fixed, always looking for whatever it is that's missing?

It's Passover. And I think about the first born in my family, the oldest brother who died before he was born, and the oldest sister, who died as she was starting to live the life she'd hoped for. And I remember I can get very maudlin indeed if left to my own devices. Maybe I will always be itinerant, but if the homes I visit have matzos, or similar, and fruit and tea and boiled eggs and beer, maybe it won't be so bad.

I can feel the love wrapped round my neck

Firsts are the stuff of childhood, obviously. As I age, though they come thinner and slower, still they come, and I notice them a lot more than ever I did when they were the stuff of life.

We are driving into Johannesburg. I have never entered Johannesburg for the first time on any trip like this before, I have always flown in. I did fly into Johannesburg, just over two months ago, but I flew straight out against to Durban to begin the tour, my feet never touching the outside of OR Thambo International.

Two months ago. That's, like, two months. Two of them, for crying out loud.

Now, Mama, my Littlest Aunt and I have been on the road about eight hours. We are about to drive to my cousin's house but currently we are in a bit of the city we do not recognise and after eight hours on the road we are calmed considerably by the gentle ministrations of Tracey's satnav. It would be a whole other ending of wrong turnings and stress and extra hours of snappy panic without it. All hail satellite technology, plastics and microchips in general, and this particular stanav in particular.

The thee of us got on the road this morning, slightly later than intended because we were staying in a fabulous place. Nieu Bethesda is a tiny settlement located, roughly speaking, somewhere between Oudtshoorn and Johannesburg. Mum, Auntie and I have overnighted in the loveliest of little cottages and in the morning we visit the very famous Owl House and Camel Yard. We buy gifts in gift shops and look at the second hand bookshop. I rue the chance we have lost to do the show here, for despite a population of only 1,000 souls, 900 of those living in the township nearby, there is a theatre and the woman in the bookshop tells me that they love to go to the theatre. I'm not surprised: this place is bijou in the extreme, no sealed roads and only in existence because the local farmers not that many decades ago needed somewhere to build a church so that they didn't have to go all the way to Oudtshoorn to worship. Any entertainment whatsoever must be welcome, even if it is a woman doing a show about her own sister's murder.

Seven of us, plus my tiny roommate, had celebrated my birthday in a very idiosyncratic self-catering place, run by a German couple, in Oudtshoorn. Their living quarters, their kitchen, the contents of their fridge mingled with ours as Martin eeeeeked out the story of their being here. Buying the farm without ever having seen Oudtshoorn, previously never having lived in South Africa, never having run a farm, they gave up having a manager for the farm and started, in their late fifties, to learn to be farmers. He speaks no English at all, or Afrikaans, or Xhosa. He speaks German. They are welcoming and solicitous and interesting and.... individual.

On these few days' holiday to celebrate my inexorable age journey I had a trip to the caves, some ostrich visiting, eating out, eating in, a spectacular electric storm with angry rain and blood-curdling sound effects, a power cut which lasted and lasted, tickling a cheetah, lying by the pool, finishing the antibiotics for my infected ear and enjoying Precious the boa constrictor round my neck, amongst many other fabulous activities. I am loved, I can tell. I could tell before, but, well, a boa constrictor! Round my actual NECK!!! It is as wonderful as I hoped it would be when I did that (very poor, as usual - I am no researcher, no academic) project on snakes when I was eight.

Only a couple of days after my abrupt ageing, it had been, suddenly, time to say goodbye to my tiny roommate and his fathers. It's tough. I've been with them for two months and Mark is.... was, after all, Kate's best friend. There is something about the nature of our relationship which incorporates her without us speaking about her that much. I am lucky to have a brother whom I love and loves me. On top of this I have these extra brothers who have had me in their home for two months: count them. That's love, or at least amazing tolerance.

And I am aware that the heartbreak I'm trying to metabolise about that man is inextricably linked to Cape Town. In spite of all the wonder of the place, every metre I get away takes me from what now feels like a terribly embarrassing mistake, or at least that seems to be the current coping strategy adopted by my psyche. So it is partially with alacrity that I put everything to do with the city behind me. I cannot imagine never going back, but neither can imagine ever being able to face it again.

Johannesburg, on the other hand, looms large and lovely over the whole trip. This is a bit odd as it is where Kate and my now dead South African Aunt lived, it is the place I have been coming to since I was seven. I resist the idea but there is no denying that it is one of the places I call home, though these days it is irrevocably marked by loss, nausea and fear. Not the usual Joburg fears of carjacking and brutal burglary, though. My more prosaic fear of simply unravelling emotionally stalks me hard and close in Joburg, although on previous visits I have outrun it. But then maybe that is partially what home is for me. I've never properly understood the relaxed comfort which the idea of home seems to bring some of my acquaintance. Maybe one of the reasons I am drawn to doing things that scare me is that home is not a place of safety. Why stay home, full of fear, when one could be out there experiencing the real thing?

But I'm not into the real fears, things that might bring me genuine misery, which is why I am very happy when I realise the three of us are nearing Linden in the northern suburbs of Joburg, the end of our journey, at least for now; the safety of my cousin's place and the promise of some good times to come with my South African family. And the Joburg shows. The location of the heartbreak, all the great new - and old - friends, each Cape Town show, the lovely moments with my tiny roommate, are behind me and what is left is the here and the now and the whatever comes next.