She scraped the pan, careful to get the delicious bits from the bottom, scooped a man-sized portion onto a plate and brought the rice closer. Not enough pilchards in this stew, not enough at all. Slam, bang: the dish thrust into the microwave, her fingers skipped over the numbers and the bowl spun, and now Mary would have done the same, spinning in circles until she collapsed, giggling.
‘Belinda? You, lady, are quite the dervish. I was expecting to come down to a pigsty, the amount of noise.’
‘You are a hardworking, sir. That is one that Uncle told me of you back home. He had me learn it; that I am never to see you in your house because there will always be a big money crisis for you to repair, or you are with some book until late in the study reading even more of this tax laws. He tells me on top of this I am to treat you as well as I treated him. And I will honour, for this is the greatest kindness you have shown me. In having me here. Isn’t that right?’
The feeling bounced high and landed on its back, its legs tickling Belinda’s diaphragm as Doctor Otuo hummed and slid a cell phone and then a booklet across the table in her direction. The booklet’s cover showed a young woman with unusually large glasses. The glasses had no frames. The woman focused on a cylinder; a metal candle. Upside down, Belinda read Abacus Educational Centre. Beside that, in similar but smaller letters, Committed to your boldest future.
‘We want you here for learning, Belinda. No cooking-cleaning-ironing-cooking. You must learn, eh? Eh hehhn.’
It probably would be a ‘good idea’ for Amma to do as Nana had suggested the day before and ‘think about her room’ and the slippery leggings and exhausted knickers on the floor. But as Golden Belinda stuttered the Lord’s Prayer or whatever downstairs, Amma sat at her desk, rested her head on peaked knuckles and promised she wouldn’t open the little trinket box to her side. She pulled her baggy black sleeves down as far as they could go and pushed her thumbs through the holes torn for them. Her insides sloshed again. She groaned.
Yesterday had been AS Results Day: Amma and all the other prefects had been garlanded with As. Clutching certificates they did a show of being surprised, relieved. Going home after the results was not an option. Party! Max from Alleyn’s! With his fat house near Dulwich Village? Off they went. Max’s dad laid boxes of wine and buckets of beers on the long dining table before high-fiving his son on his way out.
As soon as the door shut, before anyone could protest, Amma swiped the Beaujolais. She ran to the basement, slipped off her Converse and stationed herself in the corner of their library to hide. Until the Addie Lees and faggy final kisses at 5 or 6 a.m., Max’s front room would sweatily ripple with skaters in children’s jewellery, students from Camberwell doing Art Foundations, adjusting dungarees and wearing tiny hats, and the chavvier girls in jeans revealing a tasty inch of arse crack; the Stella-ed up young Tories, thick of lip, expansive of forehead and primed for showy debate. On the edges of the dancing and grinding, over fuzzy Drum’n’Bass, conversation would offer nothing of importance or comfort. It never did. So if you ever came across someone whose words stopped the passage of time – that someone needed keeping. There hadn’t been anything, or any conversation like that since Brunswick. The icy February half-term on which everything rested seemed far away. Amma ran her finger back and forth inside her collar to soothe herself.
Last night, in Max’s parents’ bookish hollow, Amma dodged the enquiries of wide-eyed heads-round-the-door. Music rumbled above her and she ploughed through the wine with gusto, liking its poetic blackening of her tongue, reaching up for Lorca, Yates, Bowen, whoever. She read random pages to herself. She scribbled the names of writers new to her on the inside of her wrist. Of course, she knew she was being a dick; it seemed impossible to stop that.
Ignoring the trinket box’s fussily carved lid, Amma rubbed at the smudged names now. She picked up a hair grip from her desk and sucked its ends until the little black buds came off, then spat them at the glass: tiny bullets. Perhaps last night was equally about Belinda, about her coming. For Amma the idea of a visitor itched at her. No privacy. Someone watching, asking questions. Someone else to think about. She shifted on the cushion. She could have tried harder with Belinda in the taxi. Amma had sometimes even wondered what it might be like to have a black friend. But, as they’d travelled from the airport, in her peripheral vision Amma had seen Belinda’s face – the generous eyes, the ample mouth, in fact almost everything slightly too big – flicker and flicker and twist, fighting to stay controlled.
The interruption of Mum’s voice was no shock. ‘Amma? Amma Otuo? Adɛn! Your own father comes and you leave it for a guest to do greetings. Maame; you need to reconsider that one.’
Amma got to her feet. She would have to leave the safety of her desk for three people downstairs who hadn’t the tools to understand her. And perhaps they couldn’t really be blamed for that. We’re born where we’re born, led to believe what we’re led to believe. The second part of that construction was particularly problematic. She pulled on her black and purple plaits to yank herself out of the mood.
‘Coming, Mummy dearest,’ Amma said, sarcasm the most immediate and pathetic of refuges.
Belinda broke the conversation, taking a long breath to ease the kinks as she spoke into the receiver. Using a casual, easy-going tone with Mary proved difficult. She tried again.
‘And, and, how is our Aunty?’
‘Our Aunty is very fine. But I think you have spoken to her before me, isn’t it?’ Mary said.
‘Yes.’
‘Then you could hear she is fine for yourself. I am looking after her well well. Uncle also. You are not for to worry.’
‘I do not … Worry.’
‘Dazgood, for you. Lucky and nice. To not have worrying. In your English castle.’
‘And you? You are fine, also?’
‘Yes, Belinda, me I am doing absolute OK.’
She imagined Mary by the veranda, cradling the phone. Mary sounded different, even though it had only been three days.
‘I cannot hear very clear, Belinda. Belinda? You gots to be speaking it loud or else I will not be getting you.’
‘I did not say anything.’
‘Oh.’
‘I –’
‘I –’
They giggled. ‘You before me, Belinda.’
‘I can’t believe that I’m here. And seeing it without you. So much.’
‘Tell me all now.’
Pleased to hear something like enthusiasm from the other end, Belinda straightened the phone’s coil.
‘Is, I don’t know. So … the exact place in London where they stay is called Herne Hill. Even though I have seen no hill yet. And I have asked several times. And … And … every road has tar. And there are many poor, poor people sitting in the street. And I have seen churches like castles, bigger than even Central Post Office. And post? Mary, the letters come to your door. Each day. No catching tro tro or taxi to collect it from town and queuing.’
‘Sa?’
‘The cats? They sleep in the bed with the white people. Adjei! Like a small child. And, Mary, this one would be disgusting you-oh: on the television they kiss the animal as if it hasn’t roamed the town eating sewage.’
‘It cannot be!’
Mary