Excerpt from The Promise by Damon Galgut, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The Promise

The moment the metal box speaks her name, Amor knows it's happened. She's been in a tense, headachy mood all day, almost like she had a warning in a dream but can't remember what it is. Some sign or image, just under the surface. Trouble down below. Fire underground.

But when the words are said to her aloud, she doesn't believe them. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. No, no. It can't be true, what her aunt has just told her. Nobody is dead. It's a word, that's all. She looks at the word, lying there on the desk like an insect on its back, with no explanation.

This is in Miss Starkey's office, where the voice over the Tannoy told her to go. Amor has been waiting and waiting for this moment for so long, has imagined it so many times, that it already seems like a fact. But now that the moment has really come, it feels far away and dreamy. It hasn't happened, not actually. And especially not to Ma, who will always, always be alive.

I'm sorry, Miss Starkey says again, covering her big teeth behind thin, pressed-together lips. Some of the other girls say Miss Starkey is a lesbian, but it's hard to imagine her doing anything sexy with anyone. Or maybe she did once and has been permanently disgusted ever since. It's a sorrow we all have to bear, she adds in a serious voice, while Tannie Marina trembles and dabs at her eyes with a tissue, though she has always looked down on Ma and doesn't care at all that she's dead, even if she isn't.

Her aunt goes downstairs with her and waits outside while Amor has to go back to the hostel to pack her suitcase. She's been living here for the past seven months, waiting for what hasn't happened to happen, and every second of that time she's hated these long, cold rooms with their linoleum floors, but now that she has to leave, she doesn't want to go. All she wants to do is lie down on her bed and fall asleep and never, never wake up. Like Ma? No, not like Ma, because Ma is not asleep.

Slowly, she puts her clothes into the suitcase and then carries it down to the front of the main school building, where her aunt is standing, looking into the fishpond. That's a big fat one, she says, pointing into the depths, have you ever seen such a big goldfish? And Amor says that she hasn't, even though she can't see which fish her aunt is pointing at and none of it is real anyway.

When she gets into the Cressida, that isn't real either, and as they float down the winding school drive the view from the window is a dream. The jacarandas are all in bloom and the bright purple blossoms are gaudy and strange. Her own voice sounds echoey, as if somebody else is speaking, when they get to the main gate and turn right instead of left, and she hears herself ask where they are going.

To my house, her aunt says. To get Uncle Ockie. I had to rush out last night when it, you know, when it happened.

(It did not happen.)

Tannie Marina glances sideways with little mascara-rimmed eyes, but still no reaction from the girl. The older woman's disappointment is almost palpable, like a secret fart. She could have sent Lexington to fetch Amor from school, but instead she has come personally, because she likes to be helpful in a crisis, everyone knows that. Behind her round face with its kabuki make-up, she is hungry for drama and gossip and cheap spectacle. Bloodshed and treachery on the TV is one thing, but here real life has served up an actual, thrilling opportunity. The terrible news, delivered in public, in front of the headmistress! But her niece, the useless plump lump, has hardly said a word. Really, there is something wrong with the child, Marina has noticed it before. She blames it on the lightning. Ag, shame, she was never the same after that.

Have a rusk, her aunt tells her crossly. They're on the back seat.

But Amor doesn't want a rusk. She has no appetite. Tannie Marina is always baking things and trying to feed them to people. Her sister Astrid says it's so she doesn't have to be fat alone, and it's true their aunt has published two cookbooks of teatime treats, popular with a particular kind of older white woman, much in evidence these days.

Excerpted from The Promise by Damon Galgut. Copyright © 2021 by Damon Galgut. Excerpted by permission of Europa Editions. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.