Old Lovers Don't Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

head: he was now a full head and shoulders taller than his mother and her head fitted perfectly on his shoulder. Although when he hugged her it now, with their height differences, it felt a little awkward, as he looked straight down on the changing colour of her hair. He momentarily thought about playfully lifting her off the floor when he felt a dampness seeping through the top of his shirt.
    “Are you okay, mum?” he said as he disentangled himself and held her at arm’s length.
    Renata wiped her eyes before turning and heading towards the kitchen.
    “Yes, I’m fine; sometimes I forget how grown-up you have become and how capable you are of dealing with life.”
    Christian followed her into the kitchen. Cook books, mostly Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, lay open at various pages at the far end of the bench. Next to them were multi-coloured chopping boards, green for vegetables, red for meat, yellow for chicken, and white for fish. The colour coding was part of his mother’s belief that cooking needed science; colour separation was a memory aid, which she argued reduced cross contamination of the bacteria in foods. His mother loved cooking and Christian had been the recipient of many of her wonderful cooking experiments throughout his life. Garlic was an ever-present smell in the house, and there were few dishes that garlic did not find its way into. Christian, however, was not certain from the large amount of garlic that his mother used, whether it was added to each dish purely for flavour, or because she believed that it had certain medicinal properties. Garlic was one of those strange quirks, which was his mother. Her training was in evidence-based medicine, which she normally insisted on if he was to convince her of his argument. Moreover, being the Gradgrind that she mostly was, it fascinated him that she would put her faith in the medicinal properties of things like Echinacea and garlic for which he could find no evidence. When he had started studying medicine, he had done Medline searches to try to convince her. Quoting the research to her in this instance had made little difference. After a while, he no longer puzzled as to how that exception worked and just accepted that is how it was with his mostly scientific mother, and no one was perfect.
    Renata simmered the chopped garlic and onion for a few minutes in the frying pan. As she added the pasta sauce and basil leaves, the aroma again changed. The new smell distracted Christian from the discussion and reminded him of when he came home late from university. Opening the backdoor, the various aromas would envelop him stimulating his hunger. He watched as his mother fiddled with the arms of the pasta maker, sensing her uncertainty about how to proceed after his question. Throughout his life, she had never been comfortable with emotional statements. Any small emotional discussion that they had had over the years was usually followed by an uncomfortable silence. It was like a compensatory pause after an irregular heartbeat, a pause required to overcome the natural disinclination to talk about things emotional. He felt that tonight, would be no different; she would busy herself with the pasta and then with her composure regained, would initiate the conversation around another topic. On this occasion, he decided that he had more to talk to her about and venturing into the refractory period would be acceptable. Before he had a chance to speak, his mother surprised him and broke with tradition. Without turning to look at him, she said,
    “I think I know why you want to go to Rwanda,” she said. “You found out that your father once went there.”
    Christian had realised for some time following his intern year that he had a decision to make. It was now nine years since he had been back to South Africa looking for information on his father. He had mostly closed the book on that in his own mind, although he did still wonder what had happened with his father being in