Bunmi was waiting for them when they exited into a gloomy concrete space, beneath The Cross’s steeply raked seats.

‘Hey,’ Julius said warily, as Gabe put his arms around his mum’s waist.

‘You were good,’ Gabe told her cheerfully.

Bunmi laughed. ‘Thank you, Gabriel. You must be after something …’

‘No,’ Gabe protested, then tilted his head and grinned ridiculously. ‘Though I wouldn’t say no to a dirt bike …’

Julius envied Gabe’s rapport with their mother, but was quickly distracted by a two-man security team dropping one of the metal collection boxes. Hundreds of tightly folded banknotes sprang out and coins rolled in all directions over the bare concrete.

‘Imbeciles!’ Bunmi snapped at them. ‘I will dock wages if I see this again.’

Gabe charged off and started helping the bumbling security crew chase rolling coins. This left Julius facing his mother alone.

‘The new suit fits well,’ Bunmi said admiringly, as she took a small bunch of keys from her handbag.

Julius looked baffled. ‘Who do I give these to?’

‘For the meeting room upstairs.’

‘Am I not going home?’

Bunmi opened her eyes wide, as if her middle son was a fool. ‘You and Gabriel are attending the family lunch in support of your uncle’s re-election campaign. It’s at 1 p.m. You will wait in the conference room until they are ready for our entrance.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Julius groaned. ‘That’s half my Sunday. I’ve got homework.’

‘You could have brought your homework to do in the meeting room.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Julius whined.

‘Orisa didn’t tell you?’

Julius shook his head, knowing she’d not told him because she didn’t want to listen to him moan about it. ‘Why have I got to sit through this?’

‘This is an event for families,’ Bunmi said. ‘You will interact and be happy. Do not skulk in some corner with your telephone or I will take the telephone away.’

Orisa hadn’t told Gabe either. The ten-year-old was wily, knowing he’d get nowhere by complaining in front of his mum, but swearing as he stomped up two levels behind Julius.

A bodyguard led them along a curved hallway that ran behind the arena’s seats. The conference room had a marble floor and huge wooden table with twelve seats along each side. A glass wall gave a grand view over The Cross’s thousands of seats.

Julius peered down at crews of volunteers, still in church clothes, walking the empty rows, picking up litter, while in the centre the hydraulic stage had lowered and the innermost banks of seats were slowly retracting to make a space for the family banquet.

As Gabe spun himself in a plush leather chair and flipped channels on a TV, Julius sat at the other end of the table and took out his phone. After checking his messages, he remembered that he’d been meaning to google Duke’s Uncle Remi.