Slow suburban tale turns intricate with a twist

Marine archaeologists Jack Howard and his friend Costa are diving for Nazi gold in a wreck on the continental shelf. They discover something astonishing, something that leads them back, first to 1943, when Allied codebreakers under Churchill’s command are trying to stop a secret exchange between the Japanese and the Nazis. And it takes them even further back, to 586 BC, after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem, when the priests entrust their holiest treasure, the Ark of the Covenant, to a navigator to preserve it. I STARTED reading a bit

It begins with three suburban Joburg moms who regularly meet in the park while their toddler daughters play on the swings and slides.

There’s Rebecca, who takes little Amy, her adopted “cappuccino-coloured” daughter, flamboyant Rose with Maggie and Lilith with Ruby-Mae.

Rebecca and Rose have already made friends when Lilith starts coming to the park, and they’re not entirely sure about her.

She is a single parent who lives in a flat, and when she needs a babysitter, uses Mrs Clarke, who runs the sex shop downstairs.

Actually Mrs Clarke turns out to be one of the great characters in the book, along with Lerato, Rebecca’s friend from school.

As Rebecca and Lilith get closer, Rose begins to feel squeezed out, and turns into a prickly friend.

One day when it’s just Rebecca and Lilith on the park bench, Lilith goes to the public loos and doesn’t come back for about an hour, by which time Rebecca is frantic and Ruby-Mae is in tears.

Lilith is apologetic – she had constipation, she says. But Rebecca knows this is a lie as she and a security guard checked the loos and Lilith was not there.

At this point the pace starts to pick up, so once I was about half way through I didn’t want to put it down.

You know something is coming, because the very first line sets the scene: “Most days back then – before it all happened – I took Amy to the park.”

Author Gail Schimmel is good on detail, Rebecca’s irritation with her husband, the occasional sniping between Rebecca and Rose, Rebecca’s upset when a round of IVF fails. After a bit of a slow start, I found

a good read with an unexpected denouement.

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