“‘They” were the white men. They’d come late at night. Around the back of her property was an orchard. I’d spent many hours picking the fruit in the summer. There was a large oak tree. It had stood ever since I could remember. I’d climbed it so many times, chasing the coons. Well, hanging by his feet on the oak tree was Tobias. Only I didn’t realise it was him at first. They’d burned him, burned him alive, but first they’d beaten him with sticks, kicked him with their boots. His face would have been unrecognisable anyways. They’d castrated him at some point, and pushed his pecker in between his teeth. That was the weird part, you see, because he was charred all over, his clothes were gone, everything, but that was still recognisable. You could see it hanging down.’

‘Dear God, I feel sick... Really sick!’

Evander smiled.

‘I got sick. I looked at that body and I brought up my grits like a hand was pushing up inside my stomach and forcing the food from me. My mammy was crying, she was crying hard, snot hanging from her nose and spittle hanging from her mouth. I ran back to my granddaddy and finally he came with Tobias’s father and they cut him down.’

‘What about the law, the police?’

‘Honey, that was the law. It’s still the law even now, all these years later. The law says a black man can’t look at a white woman. If a white woman thinks a nigger is looking at her in lust, then he can be hanged. Someone at sometime had guessed about him and Miss Day. They didn’t care that she wanted it, that she liked it, that she paid him! They wouldn’t touch her, her family had been there for years. She had the security of money. So they touched the next best thing - Tobias. Black and white don’t really mix, girl, and it ain’t no different in France. It’s no different anywhere. You’ve got to understand that sometime.’

Kerry stared across the table at him. She saw his hair like coiled watch springs, his chocolate-coloured complexion. She wanted him so badly she could almost taste it.

‘What are you trying to do? Why are you telling me this? You think I don’t know about poverty, is that it? Believe me, Evander, I grew up in a slum, the worst kind of slum. We’re Irish trash, we’re paddys, even though me and my sisters were born here. Why are you trying to scare me, make me listen to such stories? If you don’t want me, Evander, just come out and say it, because if you’re waiting for me to finish with you, don’t hold your bleeding breath, mate.’