By mid-2009, John and I had been living together in our symbiotic arrangement for about three years, and it was working well. But, as always, change was on the horizon.
The first shift came unexpectedly one Wednesday evening. As I was dropping the kids off, Terry stepped outside and said, “Peter, we need to talk. Will you come in for a drink?” I was surprised—up until then, I’d had almost no interaction with Terry and Blair. I went inside, and over drinks, they were brutally honest. Blair had been offered a job in Nigeria, a lifeline to escape their mounting financial debt in South Africa. The role was HR manager for Sony-Ericsson in Lagos, with a salary far beyond what he earned locally. It would allow them to dig themselves out of the financial hole they were in.
There was just one catch: Angie and Olie would have to attend school in Lagos, while Mikey, due to his matric year in 2010, would need to stay behind and live with me.
My first thought was for the kids’ safety. What kind of school would they attend? What dangers would they face? But Terry and Blair assured me they’d be living on Victoria Island, a secure, gated expat compound, and the children would attend the American International School.
The other issue was logistical. There was no way I could drive Mikey the 40 kilometres each way from Lanseria to school every day. I’d have to move back to Johannesburg.
I didn’t hesitate to give my consent. The thought of having Mikey live with me for his final school year was thrilling. After years of longing for the family life I had lost, this felt like a rare gift.
But where would we live in Joburg? I was paying around 6,000 rand a month in Lanseria, and I started searching online for something affordable closer to Mikey's school, it was proving difficulat, you couldn't get much for that. Then an unexpected opportunity arose.
I’d stayed friends with Briony’s ex-boyfriend, Peter Curle—a proper Englishman, about 20 years my senior, who’d moved to South Africa decades ago. He owned several properties in Johannesburg as well as a stunning farm in the Magaliesberg Mountains. The kids and I had visited him there a few times.
Not long after Terry’s news, we were invited to Peter’s farm for the weekend. That Saturday night after the kinds had gone to bed over a couple of bottels of red wine, I told him about my dilemma. He nodded sympathetically but offered no advice. On Sunday morning however, in his plummy British accent, he said, “I’ve been thinking about your situation. I believe I have a solution.”
He said that his Forest Town properrty was available for rent—a beautiful two-storey, three-bedroom house built in the late 1890s, literally a registered national monument, and utterly charming. “Peter,” I said, “there’s no way I can afford the rent on that place.”
“How much can you afford?” he asked.
“Maximum 8,000 rand.” He could have easily got double that.
“Done,” he said. “But I need you to do my taxes in return.”
He knew I was good with accounts, even without a formal degree. I agreed immediately (little did I know what doing his taxes actually entailed). The location was perfect for Mikey’s school, and, if I’m honest, living there would give me a bit of street cred with my friends. After the highs of running a successful business, my ego had taken a knock—living as a divorced man with a flatmate wasn’t exactly the life I’d envisioned.
Then came the question of how to break the news to John. As fate would have it, another event made the conversation easier.
I was away for the weekend, visiting a potential PSNext customer—a sugar cane factory in Mpumalanga. I’d flown down and hired a car, and while I was there, I got a call from John. “There’s been an accident,” he said flatly.
Turns out, he’d left a pot of boiling oil unattended on the stove. It had caught fire, and by the time he put out the flames, most of the kitchen was destroyed. I returned that evening and spent the night in the house, nearly choking on the fumes eminating from the burnt kitchen.
The next day, I told John, “I can’t stay here another night.” Luckily, the house next door had just become available. I called the landlord, who agreed to let us move in immediately.
A week or so later, John—who’d been working at MPS and earning an income as a freelancer, though never contributing to rent—got into a heated argument with Francois, my boss. At Sunday lunch, he announced, “I’m not going back to work on Monday.”
“You can’t just quit your job like that,” I said.
“I can,” he replied.
That made it easier to tell him I was dissolving our arrangement and moving out at the end of the month. Suddenly, he reconsidered his stance and showed up for work on Monday afterall. It seemed the reality of losing both our living arrangement and his income had sunk in.
And just like that, my time in Lanseria came to an end.