Yvonne looks surprised. ‘That’s brilliant. Where is she?’

‘She went with the girls to the medical centre. But said she’ll be home later today. I don’t know when though. Dinnertime. Whenever that is.’

Yvonne’s face falls. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Still, at least you’ve seen her. And so nice of her to let us stay here.’

Though they both know Yvonne has hated every second of staying in this house.

‘Shame I didn’t get to see her too. Why didn’t you wake me?’

‘I thought you looked pretty Zopicloned out.’ He distracts himself by knocking an egg on the side of the table. ‘Do you want to eat?’

Her face screws up as she looks over the spread.

‘Seriously, are you trying to fit into an outfit or something?’

She tuts and walks away, over to the sofas where she sits and combs out her hair. He feels bad for getting at her. It’s not her fault. After all she’s the one who travelled all this way with him, who agreed to take a week from her life to do this. It’s Purity who couldn’t even take a day off work for him.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Coffee?’ He fills one of the blue plastic mugs and holds it out for her as she walks over. She recoils upon her first sip. ‘Urgh, you said this was coffee.’

‘It is. I didn’t say it was good.’

The house girl comes in and Yvonne goes, ‘Mmm’ and gives her a thumbs-up.

Kiama picks up the envelope and removes the photos of Mum, going through each one again. There’s not even a sign in the background, no house name or door number. It’s going to be impossible to find this place.

The house girl comes over and taps his shoulder, ‘Lari?’ she says.

‘Sorry?’

‘The Lari orphanage. That is where I worked in the summer, before I came here. Your photos are very old.’ She takes the lid off the coffee pot and refills it.

It wasn’t exactly a guilt trip. But he did have to lay it on pretty thick in order to convince Yvonne to go. Especially when they heard Joe was too ill to leave the guest house and the only way to get to Lari was to walk into the centre of town and get a bus.

‘It wasn’t this cold in Nairobi,’ Yvonne complains.

He had given her one of his sweatshirts to stop her moaning before they left Purity’s house. ‘Why didn’t you pack properly?’ he asks as he pulls the hood up for her. ‘Did you buy into the idea of Africa always being warm?’

‘You’re such a smart arse sometimes.’