There are few secrets in Verlorenvallei

All platteland towns have that one famous (or infamous) character who knows everyone's business. Meet Livia Hoogenboezem, the keeper of every piece of gossip in Verlorenvallei...

- JAN BAREND WOLMARANS

Small towns usually have the best stories. That's because each person in every arid region or lush valley of our vast, sparsely populated platteland is either famous or infamous - everyone knows everyone else's face, along with their history.

Few things are a secret here.

Church Street - or the main street named after whoever founded the town - is often home to a distinguished main character who can recite, as effortlessly as multiplication tables, the business, scandals and financial woes of all the residents. On repeat. This presiding figure is either very fat or very thin, rarely somewhere in between, and is either descended from the old founding fathers, or a longstanding resident who inherited wealth; and now, table covered in porcelain and wine, sits on the stoep and delivers insights about everyone who passes by via razor-sharp commentary peppered with bitter suspicion.

And so it is in our town, Verlorenvallei, where mean Livia Hoogenboezem holds the reins of the community. Livia, also known as Lavya. She of the long grey plait, which she twists high on her head into a flat bun, a symbol of authority upon which she carries everyone's interests like ripe figs on a platter.

Lavya is dangerous.

Nothing and no one, apart from the highest of the high, was ever good enough for the young Lavya. Schoolfriends were too stupid or wild, too slovenly and unpolished. At university, most were too reckless and unfocused, without style, and clearly came from inferior homes. Over the following decades, this one's forehead was too low and that one's teeth too crooked. She could tell when people couldn't spell, and had the ability to detect when a perfume could not be traced back to a specific region in France.