– but she thinks it anyway.
Only after the plane takes off and levels out is she able to reason that it might have been an innocent oversight. Then she remembers her conversation with Anne the previous night, which remained one-sided. Anne paid attention whenever she spoke and seemed eager to hear her opinions. Why couldn’t she be more responsive to her? Was it that learned lack of trust? That resistance to being misinterpreted and diminished? Hardly, she decides. She was merely being expedient.
She sleeps most of the flight to London. It is Saturday morning when she arrives and the rain is a light spray. On the Gatwick Express she shuts her eyes while enjoying the motion and identifies the languages that people on mobile phones are speaking. There’s French, Igbo and Portuguese. London is like the Tower of Babel these days. Still, she prefers it to the London she moved to in the eighties, despite the latent resentment she observes when people quicken their pace past a group of rowdy Pakistani teenagers or the Romanian mothers who beg.
She also detects some guilt, that aftertaste of the sumptuous meal that was empire. England is overrun with immigrants: African and Eastern European children they granted asylum are leading gangs, Islamic clerics are bragging about their rights and the English can barely open their mouths to talk.
Nigerians can never be that sorry for their transgressions, so sorry that they can’t say to immigrants, ‘Carry your trouble and go.’ Nigerians made beggars out of child refugees from Niger and impregnated their mothers. Nigerians kicked out Ghanaians when Ghanaians became too efficient, taking over jobs Nigerians couldn’t do, and named a laundry bag after the mass exodus: the Ghana Must Go bag. Nigerians aren’t even sorry about the civil war. They are still blaming that on the British.
She takes a taxi from Victoria Station. Her flat in Willesden Green is walking distance from the tube. The Jubilee line is partly why she bought here. Initially, Willesden Green did not appeal to her, coming from her parents’ flat in Westminster. The pavements were filthy with litter, cigarette butts, spit and dust. But there was a black hair salon and a cosmetics shop that sold products for black hair, containing ingredients like hemp and placenta. There were also a few Halal butchers and a West Indian shop where she could buy yams, plantains and cherry peppers. On Saturdays, she would walk to the library centre to study for her exams and take breaks at Café Gigi. Now, the centre has Belle Vue Cinema and the pavements are cleaner. Occasionally, she sees other Nigerians at the minicab office and the African textile shops, which can be comforting.
The woman she bought the flat from had a cat. She didn’t find out until she moved in that there were cat hairs embedded in the carpet. At night, they tickled her nose. She was so besotted with her new property that she got on her knees and scrubbed the hairs away with a brush. She loves her bathroom the most because it is the warmest room. Nothing is more depressing to her than a cold bathroom, especially in the winter. Her bedroom has a draft; so does her kitchen. She will only walk on the linoleum floor in her fluffy slippers, and the sink tap drools. Her yellow Formica worktop is stained. The fanciest feature in the flat is the staircase that descends into the sitting room. She made the mistake of buying IKEA furniture, which is beginning to fall apart, but her mortgage is almost paid and her flat has more than doubled in value.
Her walls welcome her. She sits on her sofa, facing her window. There are no messages on her phone. Later in the afternoon, she warms up her Peugeot 205 and drives to Somerfield to stock up on food. The car park is full. She thought Somerfield was huge until she saw American superstores like Wal-Mart, but the quality is better at Somerfield, she thinks, picking up a packet of bacon. That unbeatable English quality, even when it comes to the correct proportion of pork meat to streak of fat.
On Monday morning she wakes up with menstrual cramps. They have worsened since she went off the pill a year ago. Her stomach is bloated and the bacon she eats doesn’t help. She takes a couple of Panadols with her orange juice, knowing that she shouldn’t, and goes to work by tube. Her stop is Wembley Park Station. She crosses Bridge Road and begins her long walk past Wembley Stadium and Mama Calabar, a Nigerian restaurant. Sometimes she hops on buses instead of walking and on cold wet days she drives in. The weather is warm for a change. LINK is on the second floor of an office block, which Kate Meade once described as a rabbit warren. This morning Kate is lamenting about dust in the ducts. They worsen her allergies during the summer and she is also trying to cope with nausea.
‘Even the smell of my deodorant makes my stomach turn,’ she says.
‘Gosh,’ Deola says.
‘I blame Pam,’ Kate says, with an air of spite. ‘The last time she was pregnant, I got pregnant. Now, she’s away on maternity leave and I’m pregnant again. Keep away from Pam, I tell you.’
Deola shakes her head in sympathy. Kate is in that crazy hormonal phase.
‘What did you think of Atlanta?’ she asks, sitting behind her desk.
Kate’s fringe has grown so long it covers her brows. Her glasses are steel-rimmed and round. Forlorn is the only way to describe her. Behind her is a grey filing cabinet, on top of which are piles of yellow clasp envelopes and a framed close-up photograph of her daughter cuddling the cat that gave her toxoplasmosis.
‘It wasn’t bad,’ she says.
‘It’s a funny city, isn’t it?’
‘A little.’
‘It’s Southern, yet it’s not. I don’t expect you had much time to see it.’
‘Not much.’
Kate grew up in Liverpool, which is noticeable whenever she says a word like ‘much’.
‘Everything is enormous there,’ Kate says. ‘The buildings, the roads.’
‘Wal-Mart.’
‘Their cars! Did you see the size of the trucks they drive over there?’
‘I did.’
Kate spreads her arms. ‘It’s incredible. You have these huge trucks and there’s always a little woman at the wheel.’
‘Always little women,’ Deola says.
A wave of tiredness threatens her. At work, she plays up her English accent – speaking phonetics, as Nigerians call it – so that people might not assume she lacks intelligence. Speaking phonetics is instinctive now, but only performers enjoy mimicking. Performers and apes.
‘Everything is enormous in America,’ Kate says. ‘Everything except, of course …’
Kate taps her temple. She has a master’s degree in international relations and prides herself on being knowledgeable about what goes on in the Hague. She has never named her university, calls herself a grammar school girl, but she is quick to point out her husband went to Bedales and studied physics at Cambridge. He has a Ph.D. and has received grants for his research. He is an inventor. Kate is the second most frequent traveller in the office. Her trips are fieldwork related. Graham, the overall executive director, is more the photo-op guy. He attends conferences and summits and deals with the trustees. Kate stands in during his prolonged absences.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kate says. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, but they can be a little thick across the pond.’
‘No need to apologize,’ Deola says.
She is amused whenever the English denigrate Americans. She attributes it to inverted admiration. In America, she was astonished to see how
