He makes his way into the dark and dingy staircase. The walls are painted a deep red and covered in graffiti. He doesn’t even really want a drink right now, but needs to kill time and won’t have Yvonne dictate things to him. She follows behind and they both pause on the landing next to a door flung open, a single pungent toilet sits in the middle surrounded by sodden balls of tissue.

‘Really, Kiama? You want to hang out in a place like this?’

He sighs and walks ahead, out onto the open-deck bar, where the music is loud and there’s alcohol and company, other than Yvonne. Why does she even have to come with him? Why can’t she go for a walk by herself or something? It’s suffocating to have her constantly around like this.

‘I’ll order you a Coke,’ Yvonne says.

‘Why? Is me drinking another thing you don’t agree with?’

‘I’m just trying to help. I’m trying to—’

‘Mother me?’

‘No,’ she snaps.

But he can’t be bothered to argue with her. She needs to realise what she’s doing and stop it. For him, there’s nothing more off-putting than someone trying to take care of him. He’d made the mistake last year of telling a girl he’d started getting serious with how he lost Mum. It changed things straight away. She went from being up for partying with him all the time to wanting to talk constantly. It felt like she was looking to relate everything he did and said back to the fact he didn’t have a mum.

They get their drinks and join the girls on tall white stools which overlook the market.

‘How will we know when Purity’s back?’ Yvonne asks.

Alice waves her phone. ‘Because she’ll summon us for dinner.’

‘She was really excited about cooking for you two tonight, I think she might even get out the good beans,’ Delia teases.

It’s nice to hear that Purity’s spoken about him today, that it means something to her that he’s here.

They all clink drinks and Kiama reels off his story about the orphanage, the kids and poverty, it sounds almost generic and he feels a little guilty. But what else can he say? He’s hardly going to talk about Mum’s connection to the place and the way he broke down a few minutes after leaving.

The girls nod along and every so often interject with stories about the hospital, the shortage of basic provisions, the lack of training, the surgeons forced to operate by torchlight. Yeah, it definitely feels wrong talking this way, it’s like they’ve been shown something private and are now gossiping about it over drinks.