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I put the phone down. I pick it up. I put it down.

At two I text again: Coming home for dinner?

Nothing for twenty minutes. Then: Not sure yet.

I sit with this for a long time.

Not sure yet is not a Jan answer. Jan has systems. Jan knows where he is and what he is doing and when he will be where. Not sure yet is Jan buying time and we both know it.

At four-thirty I call him.

It rings four times and goes to voicemail.

I put the phone on the table and look at it.

I am, I realise, properly afraid now. Not because Jan went to the office. Because of the way Jan looked. Because Jan, who has always looked at me fully, directly, with everything, looked away. And I do not know what is on the other side of that and I am sitting in his apartment with the last three months of everything we have built around me and I cannot find the thread that explains it.

I think about all the things Jan has never said.

I have said things. I'm not going anywhere and come to Cape Town and just because and remarkable to two hundred thousand people. I say things because I mean them and I want Jan to know I mean them.

Jan doesn't say things. Jan makes coffee and puts tea in the third drawer and has dinner ready when I land and holds on in the dark. Jan shows instead of says.

I have never needed Jan to say things. I have always understood what he was showing me.

But right now, sitting in his apartment at half past four on a Thursday afternoon with my unanswered phone on the table, I am running the last four months through my head and trying to find the moment I got it wrong, the thing I said or didn't say, the way I pushed too hard or not hard enough, and I cannot find it and I am terrified that the reason I cannot find it is that I am missing something fundamental about what Jan actually needs and has been trying to tell me all this time.

I text one more time. Not a question this time. Just:

I'm here. Take whatever time you need. I'm here.

I put the phone face down.

I wait.

At six forty-three I hear the key in the door.

I am on the sofa. I have been on the sofa for two hours doing nothing useful, which is not something I do, and I am aware that this itself is a measure of how today has gone. I look up.

Jan comes in. He looks, he looks like Jan, which is to say composed, which is to say I cannot tell anything from looking at him except that he has been carrying something for a long time and is still carrying it.

He puts his bag down carefully, like he is buying himself a second. Then he looks at me — the full look, direct, but there is something behind it that he is holding at a careful distance.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi," he says. His voice is even, but it has cost him something to come back through that door.

The apartment is very quiet.

"Are you…” I start.

"I'm fine," he says. He moves toward the kitchen, as if having somewhere to go helps.

"Jan."

He stops. Doesn't turn around. "I'm fine, Patrick."

I look at him. He looks back. The standoff of two people who both know what is happening and one of whom has decided not to say it.