Golden Shona had been conceived with a lie, and was born in a liar’s house, and into an inevitable understanding that it was always better to comfort or conceal with a lie than to hurt or expose with the truth. When older, and finding herself telling meaningless benign fibs about why she was late for work, or falsely admiring someone’s new haircut, she would be unable to explain whether this need to lie was something innate, or something taught her from infancy by her mother and maternal grandfather. Whether its origin was in nature or nurture, her childhood was a battleground in which the truth never conquered, and in which she knew it was an ironic fallacy that the truth would out. Shona’s lies were small, delicate, gossamer things that were woven inextricably into the fabric of her life, and were made anew each day. She spun a web so intricate and fine that only she really knew what was truth or not, and sometimes she deceived herself, so that even she no longer remembered.

Ignored by her teenage mother, Shona craved her attention and followed her around ceaselessly with tottering steps, in the hope she might be seen. One time Henna unusually conceded, and announced to the servants and to the chauffeur that she was taking Shona to the doctor’s, for some imagined childhood ailment. In fact, Henna went to the clinic for herself, for what was euphemistically known as ‘womb cleansing’, and, leaving Shona to the clinic’s nurses, returned with her womb duly cleansed of any further unborn life. Henna had two more womb cleansings, always taking Shona as her excuse, and eventually was persuaded that there might be simpler forms of birth control than abortion. Shona silently witnessed the lies her mother told, and even though she didn’t understand them, she knew never to give anything away, and even nodded sweetly when the servants asked her if she was feeling better.