Now Kate is gone, hastily dressed, the evidence of their fucking still on her skin. Her resentment, a kind of rancid anger, stays with him. He dresses, washes his face, tries to remove the residue of her body from his own, expunge the memory of her pubic hair, but that is possibly the most beautiful part of her. It is an image that he can only erase through an act of utter brutality. He finds Oupapa Ali's glowing fragment of Kaaba stone, grasps it in his hand and smashes it against the wall. The stone does not break, instead it cracks the plaster and cuts into his palm. He wipes the blood from his grandfather's ill-gotten booty, his faith in the authenticity of the sacrilegious trophy restored, wraps a handkerchief around his bleeding hand, and prepares to go downstairs. He has succeeded in eradicating from his mind the image of Kate's nakedness, and knows that he will never again be able to bury his face between her legs, burrow into her hair with his mouth, an intimacy she loved.

Mama has an extraordinary way of knowing when Mikey has been in contact with a ‘foreign’ presence. When he was a child, she used to come home from work, lift him up, and say in that cooing tone she adopts when she is anxious, ‘So who was here today, who held my baby?’ A friend of his father's, his minder's sister, Mam Agnes, Aunt Gracie – Mama knew when someone other than his father had lifted him from his cot and held him to their chest.

When the door opens, he is there to meet her.

‘Mama? Are you all right? How did you get here?’

She says nothing beyond a somewhat hoarse, ‘Hello, Mikey.’

‘It's so wonderful to have you home.’

They hug. Her response is cold, even when she is freed from the inhibition of the crutches, which she allows to fall away from her. Her stance, body leaning back, pelvis thrust out, demarcates the void between them, a chasm created by a lifetime of intimate knowledge. He draws her to him, pulls her head to his chest, suddenly conscious of how frail she seems. None of the Oliphants are tall, except for Auntie Gracie. Perhaps his angular, gangly body has its origins in some or other throwback gene? Not Du Boise, whom Lydia's diary describes as rather short. His hand touches a damp patch on his mother's back, she is sweating, and today her citrus is sharp.

They stand like that for a moment, until the heat of his body, and the child's smell that his defences have somehow secreted onto his skin, soften her silent fury. He hatred for Kate – whom she knows was here, even though she could not see the face of the woman speeding away as the taxi pulled up – is held in abeyance, to be resurrected at an appropriate time. She feels feeble against his youthful body, and it may seem to him that she is clinging. This is unseemly, she decides, and frees herself. She hobbles the short distance to the settee, sits down and says, ‘Mikey, oh Mikey, I am so afraid for you.’