‘What did you do instead, Pet? You look like the cat who got the cream.’

Petra waved her phone with its precious cargo: Vincent Rice, Falling Guy. ‘I met someone interesting.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I know I have a track record of dubious attachments…’

Suki smirked – she’d helped Petra mop up after a handful of her embarrassing forays up the wrong tree.

‘But this is different, I can feel it.’

3 Yes, Petra had chosen to chase Vincent instead of check in on Helena before the procedure, so she was anxious to collect her on time at least. It was a really short drive, but there was a broken-down bus on Dormer Place and she hurried into the MyHealth Clarendon Hospital’s waiting room ten minutes after the agreed time.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, Mum,’ Petra said as she hurried into the waiting room.

‘No problem, love. I’ve been enjoying these adverts on the screen here.’ Helena’s full-chested voice and unmodified West Rand accent reverberated through the little space – an old parlour of a Victorian house subsumed into a modern conglomerate, now lined with veneer flooring and white paintwork and a cabinet that might have held free tea or water back in the day but now only supported racks of brochures. The room was fitted with three large flatscreens showing frames of public health advice between adverts. About ten waiting patients sitting evenly spaced from one another on once-plush scandinomic chairs, bought before bankers’ wages were prioritised over public services. ‘And who’s this Mum you’re talking about?’ It was something of a running joke, Helena calling out Petra’s attempts to blend in to her new home still, after years in immigrant limbo. Petra had never referred to Helena as ‘Mum’ before they came to England; in private she still defaulted to ‘Mom’, and Helena saw this as a lack of authenticity. Petra used to counter that trying to blend in showed consideration for your hosts, a respect for their hospitality, a willingness to get to know them, but she’d given up arguing. She knew Helena understood and was just needling her for fun.

Helena’s loudness could be read as the hearty jollity of an arty woman launching into her sixties, the way she intended it. But Petra knew that it might just as easily be seen as arrogance or aggression, a form of attention-seeking, deliberately designed to upset the delicate social order in awkward public spaces like this. Already an old man in the corner by the window, woollen coat and scarf still protectively wound about him despite the overheated air, coughed and murmured, and Helena, awkwardometer operating on high, turned to face him.

‘You’re from here, aren’t you? I mean, you’re English born and bred?’

The man said nothing.

‘Could you tell me, sir – would you like it better if she started calling me “Mum” to pretend to be English, or do you think she should share her wondrous and exotic uniqueness with her new compatriots? Bring them some of the warmth and spice she carries from Africa?’