Tish and I started dating. She went by Tish Shaw—she’d been married briefly to a man named Pete Shaw, divorced almost as quickly as they’d married. By the time I met her, she had an eleven-year-old daughter, Sarah, just a couple of years older than Mikey.
Tish was Johannesburg royalty. Her father, Roger Keene, came from the family that owned Thrupps—the Fortnum & Mason of Johannesburg, a place where money bought you anything your heart desired. Her parents lived on the same street where Rowena lived: a row of mansions in one of the most expensive parts of the city. Tish was a twin, but where her sister Angie had married a steel magnate and settled into a life of polished success, Tish was the more damaged of the two. She’d struggled with emotional and psychiatric issues, and I think that’s where we bonded. We were both divorcees. Both bruised. And if I’m honest, at least on my side, I hadn’t yet learned how to be alone.
Our reasons for getting together weren’t especially healthy. We argued often—much of that was my fault. I was still battling to pay the maintenance I owed Terry, even though I’d finally let go of the illusion that we’d ever be a family again. And yes, I’ll admit it: the fact that Tish was independently wealthy, that she wouldn’t be a financial burden, was part of the attraction. It’s uncomfortable to say, but it’s true. She owned a fancy apartment in Sandton, one of Johannesburg’s wealthiest areas, and I knew she was secure. I never wanted her money, but the idea of a relationship without financial strain was undeniably appealing.
So we carried on dating, and at some point the conversation drifted into, Why don’t we just get married? It seemed like a good idea at the time. I remember going to her parents’ house and asking Roger for her hand in marriage. He burst into tears—a lovely, lovely man—and gave his blessing immediately. Then Pam, Tish’s mom, asked the practical question: Where are you going to live? Tish wasn’t about to move into my forty-five-square-metre flat in Lindenhurst, and her apartment in Sandton wouldn’t have made any sense either.
Pam showed me an advertisement in the local newspaper for a property in Bez Valley—Bezuidenhout Valley—a place I’d always thought of as a bit dodgy. It wasn’t the northern suburbs where I’d grown up. But when I went to see it, I fell in love. The property was 1,500 square metres, with jacaranda trees, a freestanding garage, pressed ceilings, and Oregon pine floors—a delightful three-bedroom house with a massive main bedroom and two bathrooms. The price was 185,000 rand—peanuts, even back then. I paid the ten-percent deposit on my credit card and was granted a bond for the rest.
The couple who sold it to me couldn’t believe their luck. They’d bought it for 90,000 rand a few years earlier. It was a stark reminder of how property prices in those areas had collapsed in the late nineties after South Africa’s independence—and were now beginning to climb again.
The wedding was set for May 1st, 2004—almost exactly a year after I’d fallen off the building. Roger insisted on paying for everything: a grand ceremony at the Anglican Church in Rosebank. Tish and I moved into the Bez Valley house well before the wedding, settling into a kind of pre-marital bliss. My commute to CH Chemicals was an easy ten minutes, and I was making progress with some of Neil’s patents. Every Wednesday, I’d pick up the kids and they’d stay the night with us; I’d drop them at school the next morning. Every second weekend was ours too. I even bought a Labrador puppy, Annabelle, knowing they’d love her—and they did.
The wedding itself was a lavish society event. Mikey and Olie were page boys; Angie was the flower girl. Afterward, we honeymooned at her parents’ property on the south coast of Natal, where I fished and caught crayfish. On the surface, everything looked like it was finally coming together.
But beneath it all, problems were already simmering. I never felt Tish fully bought into our marriage. She never sold her Sandton apartment, and I had to sign a bulletproof prenuptial agreement, waiving any claim to her family’s fortune. Roger gave us a generous 20,000-rand wedding gift, but when it came to household finances, everything felt difficult.
Tish insisted on hiring a maid. I said we couldn’t afford it. She said, Well, I’ll pay for the maid. Then she’d be on the phone discussing her share portfolio with her father—conversations I had no part in. There were also weekends away to game parks and the like, a lifestyle she was accustomed to but one I simply couldn’t afford.
It began to feel as though, from her perspective, what was ours was ours—and what was hers was hers. That imbalance lodged itself quietly at the centre of the marriage, an unease I couldn’t quite name at the time.
There was something else too, something I noticed but didn’t yet understand the significance of. Tish was under the care of a psychiatrist she referred to simply as Patrick, and she was on a growing cocktail of psychiatric medications. From time to time the dosages changed, usually upwards. I didn’t question it—I assumed the professionals knew what they were doing—but it sat uneasily with me. It felt provisional, unstable, as though we were building a life on ground that might shift without warning.
I wasn’t wrong. But that would only become clear later.