to leave?’ just as one of the waiters started clearing the table.
‘No, don’t be silly.’
Mum carried on oblivious. ‘I read in the paper that people were having to apply for citizenship even when they’d been here for years.’
‘Mohammed and his wife were born here,’ I hissed. ‘I’ll explain it to you later.’
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Victor. She nudged me. ‘Will he be allowed to stay?’ she asked at a volume that couldn’t be classed as a tactful aside.
‘Of course! Don’t be silly. Ginny was British, Mum, and so is Victor.’
I glanced over to see if Victor had heard but, thankfully, Phoebe had unfurled enough to get into a ‘which teacher was the biggest dickhead’ discussion with him. Every cloud in my life contained both a silver lining and a downpour.
I turned towards Lulu to see if she was listening, trying to read her face. I hoped she wasn’t lumping me into the same ignorant category as my mother.
Cory came to the rescue before my mum put us even further on edge by tapping the waiter on the arm and asking whether he was about to be deported. ‘Now, Victor, I bet your mum didn’t tell you about my special talent for lists… part of your initiation ceremony to become an honorary member of the Square Bear Bunch – I know, stupid name, but the idea behind it was four of us playing the list game. So let’s see what you teenagers know about the world, see if us oldies have a better general knowledge than the Instagram generation.’
Phoebe looked as though she’d just encountered a month-old coffee cup under her bed, but Victor had probably heard more than I hoped from my mother and was delighted with the distraction. He did that ‘up for anything’ grin that reminded me so much of Ginny.
Cory picked his specialist subject: country capitals.
‘Right, easy one for you, Jo, Hungary,’ he said, before regaling everyone with the fact that years ago, I’d thought Malta was the capital of Gibraltar. ‘Mind you, you’d discovered mojitos that night so we’ll let you off.’
The part of me that loved Cory for making me sound young and fun in front of Phoebe was balanced out by the squeaks of disapproval emanating from Mum. Not only did she think an advocaat at Christmas was the epitome of letting her hair down, but she fancied herself as an academic – ‘If I’d had the chances you had, I would have definitely been university material.’ My spell at secretarial college leading to top PA jobs in London and ultimately my career as a copywriter now had not fulfilled her maternal ambitions.
Cory kindly gave my mum France, ramped it up with Outer Mongolia for Patrick and then tested Phoebe with Somalia.
‘I don’t know.’ I was aware her grumpy tone was covering her embarrassment at being thought stupid.
I wanted to rescue her but Cory was hellbent on getting an answer. ‘Go on. It’s where Mo Farah was born.’
Phoebe looked blank. ‘I don’t even know where Somalia is.’
My mother looked pained. ‘What do they teach you at this school of yours? Somalia. Africa.’ She swivelled in her chair. ‘Victor, you tell her what the capital is.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know either.’
Mum paused with a banana fritter halfway to her mouth. ‘But you’re from Africa! You don’t even know the capital of your own country?’
Patrick growled from the other end of the table. ‘For God’s sake, Gwen. For a start, Africa is a continent, not a country. And Victor is Welsh. He’s from bloody Cardiff! And anyway, Somalia is about four thousand miles from Nigeria – if that’s the point you’re trying to make – about the same distance as London from flaming Canada.’
A horrible wave of alarm rushed through me that we were skirting towards a place we wouldn’t be able to row back from, one where we’d actually say what we thought.
Mum pleated up her napkin. ‘Well, I just thought he’d be more au fait with his own culture,’ she said, putting on a ridiculous French accent to deliver her ‘au fait’.
Embarrassment rushed through me. Victor was looking apologetic, as though he’d let us down by not being the font of all knowledge for everything African. I wanted to rush over and hug him and tell him that I was sorry about the world he’d ended up in and that I hoped – really hoped – we’d be good enough to help him navigate losing his mum, especially in