the ambient glow from the street lamp outside, he could see that tears had melted her make-up, muddying her collar and uncovering dark patches on her cheeks. On the floor were the honey-coloured shards of a broken Mosi bottle – no, five or six bottles. Her knees were rubied with scab.
Jacob toggled the light switch uselessly. There was no power cut in Northmead tonight. This was an unpaid ZESCO bill. He turned on the iPhone – the General had let him keep it – and scanned the room. No sign of his chopper in here. The light accidentally skimmed over his mother’s face and she opened her eyes. She tried to get up and couldn’t. Her eyes slid shut again.
Jacob hesitated, then put the phone away and went over to her. He knelt at her side and put his arms around her. She was lighter than he expected, so when he lifted her up, her bloody knee struck his mouth. He carefully wiped his face, then levered her up again as he rose to his feet, one arm supporting her neck, the other wedged under her knees.
He kicked open a couple of doors before he found a bedroom. As he carried her in, he recalled an image from five years ago: his mother cradling the Indian girl, just like this, and handing her over to Uncle Lee in the middle of the Hi-Fly. That was the day it had burned down. The day he had burned it down. He laid her on the bed, lifted half of the duvet over her, tucked her in. He didn’t know when he had learned how to do this – no one had ever done it for him.
‘Lee,’ his mother croaked, her eyes stirring open.
‘It’s Jacob,’ he said, looking around the bedroom. No chopper in here either.
‘Lee,’ she said again, urgently.
Rage lit his spine from its base to the top of his head. These tears. This drunkenness. This illness that was consuming her body. It was all for Dr Lionel Banda. Again. Her eyes closed and this time her breathing steadied into a sleeping rhythm. Jacob sank to the floor by her bed. He didn’t care, he didn’t want to care. He was just here for his chopper.
* * *
Jacob woke the next morning with the chopper in his face. His heart wrenched at the sight of it. It was covered in reddish smears, one blade bent out of shape, the GoPro dangling like a cartoon eyeball. Jacob’s mother, who was holding it over him, was no longer wearing her tight skirt or her wig. She had bathed and was in an orange robe, her damp hair in knots. The lesions on her face and neck were clearer in the daylight. He reached for the toy in her hand.
‘So it is yours?’ She pulled it out of reach like a bully.
Jacob staggered to his feet, his joints cricking from sleeping on the floor. He was seventeen now and he loomed over her in her bare feet. But he was still her son and he tugged his t-shirt down self-consciously.
She looked him over sceptically. ‘You want a drink?’
He raised an eyebrow, eyes straying to the chopper in her hand.
She gave it to him, rolling her eyes. ‘Take it and go, or come and drink. Me, I don’t care,’ she said, then turned and floated out of the room and down the corridor.
He followed her into the kitchen. In the light of day, it looked emptier than Gogo’s but in a rich-person way: a glass table, matching chairs, a single fern in a porcelain pot. The broken glass from last night had been swept from the floor. In a single motion, Jacob’s mother sat and lifted an open Mosi to her lips. She gestured at the crate under his chair. He pulled out a beer and opened it against the edge of the table. He took a sip. It tasted beerier with his morning breath.
‘So you’ve come to ask where I’ve been,’ she said knowingly.
He shook his head. He fondled the chopper. He looked up and nodded.
‘Well,’ she swept the air dramatically. ‘Been all over, darling. Ethiopia, Dubai. I even went to China!’ She gave a stilted laugh. ‘Sylvia Mwamba is a prize commodity. The Lusaka Patient.’
‘You went with…’ He paused. ‘With Uncle Lee?’
At the mention of his name, tears sprang to her eyes. The unpredictable weather of grief – Jacob knew it well from living with Gogo, how abruptly it could whip a rain shower