mine and the bluest of eyes, but, to my mother’s relief, was ‘still more black than white’. When I admitted defeat and came back from Canada when he was two months old, Mum couldn’t resist him. I needed family to help me. By the time he was six months old, my mother had put herself in charge of two very important roles: making sure he ate pounded yam and egusi soup and never missed church.
The best thing of all as far as she was concerned was that for the rest of her days, she could blame any bad behaviour on his whiteness. When he refused to latch on, fussed and fretted until Mum and I had practically worn out her hall carpet pacing up and down, regurgitated his milk all over her sofa, her only comment was, ‘It’s the Canadian blood in him.’ She never asked me about his dad directly. For all I know, she convinced herself that Victor was the ultimate proof that the Virgin Mary wasn’t just a fluke.
Thank God my brother, Gabriel, provided her with the big wedding she’d hankered after, though with the peachiest, creamiest, most English-looking blonde you could conjure up, rather than the Nigerian daughter-in-law she’d been rooting for. ‘What is it with you two?’
Gabe had emigrated to Australia shortly afterwards, but at least he had the good grace to qualify as an engineer – a fact she would bring out every time she got on the bus. ‘You got a lot of smoke coming out that exhaust. My son could sort that. He’s an engineer.’ I never witnessed this statement leading to any respect from the Cardiff bus drivers, who were more interested in hurrying her through the relentless counting out of her twenty pences, but you had to hand it to her, it didn’t stop her trying. Again. And again.
Dad asked me about Victor’s father once, when I knew the cancer had spread. I nearly buckled. It wasn’t the sort of question my dad threw out indiscriminately, unlike my mum, who had flung out queries like background noise – ‘So what did that Canadian say? What excuse did he give for not marrying you?’ – without seeming to require a response. No. Dad really wanted to know. He had braced himself for the answer. For how bad it might be.
But I couldn’t allow anything to taint Victor. I’d looked him in the eye with a supreme effort of will. ‘I don’t think knowing that is going to help you, Dad.’
His insistence that this was a good time to come clean wobbled me. Not least because although I’d come to terms with the fact that I was going to die, if Dad was asking me, it meant he had admitted it too. And the tiny little glimmer of hope I’d held in my heart faded. If Dad with his supreme belief in God and his power to come up with a miracle cure had given up on me, then I really had to accept my time had come.
It didn’t stop me wanting to control what I left behind though. What people thought of me. How they viewed my memory. But maybe I had to admit defeat and let people judge the way they wanted to. Victor never asked who his dad was any more. No one did. But he probably had a right to know, even if the answer wasn’t what anyone wanted.
Chapter One
Twenty-five years of Ginny as a best friend and I was still late for her funeral. My husband, Patrick, and I tried to creep into the little church near Cardiff Bay without disturbing the service. My sixteen-year-old daughter, Phoebe – never knowingly under-entranced – banged the door shut with such a clatter, one of the candles at the back of the church blew out.
Ginny’s father, Tayo, glanced round. It took me a moment to recognise him. He’d been such a big man, a robust engine of noise and merriment, now huddled, frail and grey in a wheelchair. I didn’t make eye contact, didn’t raise a hand in apology. I wanted to hide, to pretend I wasn’t with Phoebe, that I hadn’t brought up a child who would behave like this, today of all days. But, most of all, I didn’t want to see his pain.
Despite our friend, Cory, gesticulating discreetly that he’d saved us seats at the front, we shuffled into a pew at the back. I couldn’t face clacking down the aisle, past the rainbow of people who’d