So how did vacuuming floors in a hotel in London sort out your head?

It had cost him R500 to get the laptop connected to the Internet. He had to buy a damn modem and get an Internet service provider. Then he spent three hours on the phone with a computer guy getting the fucking connection to work and then Microsoft Outlook Express was a nightmare to configure. That took another hour on the phone to sort out before he could send an email to Carla saying:

Here I am, how are you? I miss you and worry about you. There was an article in the Burger that said South African kids in London drink a lot and cause trouble. Don't let anyone put pressure on you...

Writing this, he discovered that putting in the Afrikaans punctuation symbols was just about impossible on these computer programmes.

Dear Daddy

I have a job at the Gloucester Terrace Hotel near Marble Arch. It is a lovely part of London, near Hyde Park. I'm a cleaner. I work from ten in the morning to ten at night, six days a week, Mondays off. I don't know how long I will be able to do this, it's not very pleasant and the pay's not much, but at least it's something. The other girls are all Polish. The first thing they said when I told them I was South African was 'but you're white'.

Daddy, you know I will never drink...

When he read those words they burned right through him. A sharp reminder of the damage he had caused. Carla would never drink because her father was an alcoholic who had fucked up his whole family. He might have been sober for one hundred and fifty-six days, but he could never erase the past.

He hadn't known how to respond, his words dried up by his insensitive blunder. It took two days before he answered her, told her about his bicycle and his transfer to the Provincial Task Force. She encouraged him:

It's nice to know what you're doing, Daddy. Much more interesting things than I am. I work and sleep and eat. At least I was at Buckingham Palace on Monday...

Their correspondence found a level both were comfortable with: a rhythm of two emails a week, four or five simple paragraphs. He looked forward to them more and more - both the receiving and the sending. He mapped out replies in his head during the day - he must tell Carla this or that. The words gave his small life a certain weight.

But a week ago his Internet connection stopped working. Mysteriously, suddenly, the computer geek on the phone, who made him do things to the laptop that he hadn't known were possible, was also at a loss. 'You'll have to take it to your dealer,' was the final diagnosis. But he didn't have a fucking dealer: ultimately, it was stolen goods. On Friday afternoon after work he bumped into Charmaine Watson-Smith on the way to his door. Charmaine was deep in her seventies and lived at number 106. Everyone's grandma, with her grey hair in a bun. Devious, generous, full of the joys of living, she knew everyone in the block of flats, and their business.

'How's your daughter?' Charmaine asked.

He told her about his computer troubles.

'Oh, I might just know someone who can help.'

'Who?'

'Just give me a day or so.'

Yesterday, Monday evening at half past six he was ironing clothes in his kitchen when Bella knocked on his door.

'Aunty Charmaine said I should take a look at your PC.'

He had seen her before, a young woman in an unattractive chunky grey uniform who went home to her flat on the other side of the building every evening. She had short blonde hair, glasses and always looked tired at the end of the day, carrying a briefcase in her hand.

He had hardly recognised her at his door: she looked pretty. Only the briefcase alerted him, because she had it at her side.

'Oh ... come in.' He put down the iron.

'Bella van Breda. I'm from number sixty-four.' Just as uncomfortable as he was.

He shook her hand quickly. It was small and soft. 'Benny Griessel.' She was wearing jeans and a red blouse and red lipstick. Her eyes were shy behind the glasses, but from the first he was aware of her wide, full mouth.

'Aunty Charmaine is ...' He searched for the right word. '... busy.'

'I know. But she's great.' Bella had spotted the laptop that he kept in the open-plan kitchen, his only worktop. 'Is this it?'

'Oh ... yes.' He switched it on. 'My Internet connection won't ... it just stopped working. Do you know computers?'

They stood close together watching the screen as it got going.

'I'm a PC technician,' she answered and put her briefcase to one side. 'Oh.'

'I know, most people think it's a man's job.' 'No, no, I... um, anyone who understands computers ...' 'That's about all I understand. Can I .. . ?' She gestured at his machine.

'Please. He pulled up one of his bar stools for her. She sat down in front of the tin brain.

He realised she was slimmer than he had previously thought. Perhaps it was her two-piece uniform that had given him the wrong impression. Or perhaps it was her face. It was round, like that of a plumper woman.

She was in her late twenties. He could be her father. 'Is this your connection?' She had a menu open and the mouse pointer on an icon. 'Yes.'

'Can I put a shortcut on your desktop?' It took him a while to work that one out. 'Yes, please.'

She clicked and looked and thought and said: 'It looks like you accidentally changed the dial-up number. There's one figure short here.' 'Oh.'

'Do you have the number somewhere?'

'I think so ...' He took the pack of documents and manuals out of the cupboard where he kept them all together in a plastic bag and began to sort through them.

'Here ...' He indicated it with his finger. 'OK. See, the eight is gone, you must have deleted it, it happens quite easily ...' She typed the number in and clicked and suddenly the modem dialled up, making its complaining noises.

'Well, fuck me,' he said in genuine amazement. She laughed. With that mouth. So he asked her if she would like a cup of coffee. Or rooibos tea, like Carla always drank. 'That's all I have.'

'Coffee would be nice, thank you.'

He put on the kettle and she said, 'You're a detective,' and he said, 'What didn't Aunty Charmaine tell you?' and so they fell into conversation. Maybe it was purely because they each had a lonely Monday evening ahead. He had no intentions, God knows, he had taken the coffee to the sitting room knowing that in theory he could be her father, despite the mouth, even though by then he had become aware of her pale faultless skin and her breasts that, like her face, belonged to a fuller woman.

It was polite, slightly stilted conversation, strangers with a need to talk on a Monday night.

Two cups of coffee with sugar and Cremora later, he made his big mistake. Without thinking he picked up the top CD from his stack of four and pushed it into his laptop's CD player, because that was all he had apart from the portable Sony that only worked with earphones.

She said in surprise: 'You like Lize Beekman?' and he said in a moment of honesty: 'Very much.' Something changed in her eyes, as though it made her see him differently.

He had bought the CD after he had heard a Lize Beekman song on the car radio, 'My Suikerbos'. There was something about the singer's voice - compassion, no, vulnerability, or was it the melancholy of the music? He didn't know, but he liked the arrangement, the delicate instrumentation, and he sought out the CD. He listened to it on the Sony, meaning to play through the bass notes in his mind. But the lyrics captured him. Not only the words, the combination of words and music with that voice made him happy, and made him sad. He couldn't remember when last music had made him feel this way, such a yearning for unknown things. And when Bella van Breda asked him if he liked Lize Beekman, it was the first time he could express this to someone. That's why it came out: 'Very much.' With feeling.