‘Can he spend one more night in your house?’ I asked Josephine.

‘Yes, Bwana.’ She didn’t look surprised.

My mother started walking back to the house. I caught up with her on the veranda.

‘We can’t leave him with Josephine forever,’ I said. ‘She’s got children of her own to feed.’

‘We won’t.’ She pushed open the screen door and we stood in the doorway. None of the totos would set foot inside, and the house seemed dead without their noise. My mother went to the sofa and sat down facing the hearth. I stood in front of her.

‘Give it a nudge,’ she said, nodding at the dying fire.

I picked up a poker and stirred the embers around. A few logs crackled back into life and the sweet smell of woodsmoke filled the room. My mother held her hands out to the flames.

‘It was always cold in here,’ she said.

‘I suppose so.’

She moved to the floor, and I sat next to her, leaning my back against the nearest armchair.

‘I’ll sell the place,’ she said. ‘If anyone wants it. You can buy somewhere in Nairobi with the money.’

‘And Solomon?’

‘Do you have to keep using his name?’

‘What else should I call him?’

‘I just –’ She looked at her hands. ‘I didn’t think my daughter would keep that from me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But you know now.’

‘I do.’ She shook herself. ‘We’ll take him to the orphanage tomorrow.’

‘You’re giving up your own grandson?’

‘I didn’t know about him until five minutes ago.’

‘You’re in shock,’ I said. ‘You’ll feel differently tomorrow.’

She unpinned her hair and it fell down her back in a thick rope. ‘I’m being realistic, Theo. What kind of a life could he have with us? Or us with him? Do you think our friends in Nairobi will welcome him with open arms?’

‘Then we stay here. The Africans wouldn’t reject him.’

‘They would – they have their own rules. Maud did something neither side can forgive.’

Her voice was calm, and my stomach felt suddenly tight. It wasn’t shock. She was coldly contemplating giving him away, just as when I was a baby, she’d looked at me and made the decision to teach me through fear. ‘She thought he was worth the risk.’

‘Because she didn’t understand the world she lived in.’ My mother shook her head. ‘If you’d had a baby with a native no one would bat an eye. Women aren’t extended the same privileges.’

‘So people would have talked –’

‘She would have been an outcast. She was spoiled, and it was her fault – that’s how people would have seen it.’