‘That’s a generous way of looking at it, I suppose,’ she said, taking a sip of her water. ‘Still, don’t you get sick of it?’

‘What?’

‘Trying to be good. For them.’ The watchers, the judges, the racists, the nationalists, the xenophobes.

Vincent sighed, nodded once.

‘I mean,’ Petra went on, ‘I’ve got so much less to complain about than so many people have, and still I sometimes feel targeted. I feel watched, like the big They are just waiting for me to do something wrong and confirm their suspicions.’

Vincent puffed his cheeks out. ‘Try being black. You can be twentieth-generation British, and they’ll always see you as a criminal straight off the boat.’

‘Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. Don’t you get sick of it?’

Vincent shrugged.

When Petra saw he wasn’t going to say more, she pulled herself together. She shouldn’t be haranguing him ten minutes into their date. She changed tack. ‘What did your grandparents do here when they arrived?’

‘My Nan Gloria was a nurse – worked her way up to matron at the rehab hospital. She met my Granddad Max there, who was also here to train as an RN.’

‘This was your grandfather who… from the studio?’ Vincent nodded. ‘How did he get involved in that?’

‘Max was a musician in Malawi. Jazz, pop. The hospital work was a job, but music was always his first love. He could play everything – keyboards, bass, guitar, sax. He used to tour a lot, across to Zambia and down to South Africa. Banda took against artists like him – the whole scene was too liberal for his national programme – and Max stayed on after his training.’

Took against him. That was a laden euphemism if ever she’d heard one. It echoed with the agony of beatings, arbitrary imprisonment, torture. ‘There’s so much I don’t know about the region that I should,’ Petra said, regretting the heavy direction of the conversation. ‘My dad was English, my mom’s deeply South African. So in a way we’re sort of transient semi-sub-Saharan neighbours, right?’

Vincent smiled, but warily. These things were complicated, and Petra knew that. ‘Well, I’m English. Never been anywhere in Africa.’ Petra bit her tongue and just nodded. If she said sorry one more time… ‘But I know what you’re saying,’ he said, generously rescuing her from her hole again. ‘Our families have come from a long way and we’ve both wound up here, now,’ he said, indicating the space between them on the table. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That’s the important part.’ She hastily rewound the conversation. ‘You were saying how your granddad got to own the studio?’

‘Oh, yeah, medical jobs started to be outsourced and became a bit of an unrewarding slog. Max had been gigging and doing sound tech at Brook Street on the side and they offered him a full-time job, and then he became a partner, and then he sorta became the last survivor.’

‘And now that guy from earlier, Francis, he’s buying the place?’