improving. I know she will play tennis again…’
Matha tried manoeuvring herself in around him. Mr Sakala stopped her, wedging her against the gate with a long wiry arm.
‘You cannot come in!’ he said incredulously. ‘You will not find Grace here at any rate. She sent a message this morning to say she is not well.’
But my baby! Matha held her elbows and rocked them in the universal symbol.
‘Oh-oh! That piccanin hyena is pregnant?! I’ve cotched her!’
Matha hung her head as Ba Sakala gloried in the prospect of a Grace further disgraced. He didn’t understand who Matha was looking for and she could not explain. When she turned away from him, the light in the sky was already blunter. The day was retreating. Everything was running away from Matha, even time.
* * *
Sylvia had been in the thick of sleep when it happened. Someone gently took her arm, raised her to her feet, and led her stumbling out of No. 74. Only when they were already on a bus, bouncing along the road, did she become aware of who had taken her. She immediately tried to slip from her grip, but Aunty Grace held her. When they got off the bus half an hour later, Aunty Grace dragged Sylvia, fiercely kicking the whole way, down a road and through the gates outside a tall concrete building, then up the outdoor steps to the second floor, holding Sylvia in a chokehold while she wrestled the key out of her pocket and into the lock. Once they were inside what looked like a kitchen, Aunty Grace kicked the door closed, threw Sylvia on the floor, knelt on her and started hitting her, so hard that Sylvia stopped resisting out of sheer shock.
After a few minutes, another woman came in the room. Aunty Grace was panting in the corner, Sylvia in a ball on the floor, staring between her fingers at the enormous purple trousers hanging from a line over the sink. The woman sat at the table, upon which, Sylvia now noticed, breakfast was arrayed: a glass of orange squash, a plate of golden vitumbua, and a bowl of nshima porridge that wafted a silky sweetness into the air, banana coins dimpling its surface.
‘Your mother will be very happy that you’re here,’ the woman said in English.
‘Iwe! You don’t want vitumbua?’ Aunty Grace shouted loudly from the corner, also in English. ‘Show some thank yous! It is good food.’
‘Come here, love. Sit. Eat.’
As the day went on, Sylvia heard many such words of comfort and promise from this new aunty, words about the toys awaiting her in the next room, and about the party they would throw for her tomorrow. But in the end, it was not the words that did it but the food, the squash and the vitumbua and the porridge and the unchecked decadence that followed: toffees and lemon drops and chocolates and mints. These were like stones that you could put in your mouth, where they would melt at different rates and with marvellously different flavours. At first, Sylvia had trouble distinguishing them from the brightly coloured presents in the bedroom – the little plastic bricks and the little glass balls with swirls in their centre. Aunty Grace frowned but New Aunty laughed and clapped her hands as Sylvia tore open the wrappings and placed the toys on her tongue, just to test, just to taste.
* * *
After Handsworth Park, Matha’s next stop was Rhodes Park. She was not welcome here either. Aunt Beatrice had paid to send Matha to Kasama, had offered to help with her child’s schooling. Matha had refused it. Instead, foolish girl, she’d run away again, stolen a car this time, and cut off ties with everyone, all for a muntu who had disappeared anyway. And now, this crying-crying business? The servants looked at her sideways. Even the dogs disdained her. Matha sat on the steps of Aunt Beatrice’s bungalow, awaiting a hearing that would never come, watching the sun set. She felt empty and rattled with loss, like a dried seed husk. Yet Matha did not barge her way in. She did not kneel beside those big red dogs and scream for Sylvia.
As the dogs began their nightly row across Aunt Beatrice’s yard, Matha lay down instead. Truth be told, there was a tiny doubt in the midst of her grief. Over the course of the day, Sylvia’s disappearance had become a temptation. Sylvia had always been a reminder of everything that Matha