He can’t hear this right now, not before he’s even done the thing he’s being congratulated on. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll call you when I get back, okay.’

‘I’ve heard that before.’

‘No. I promise.’

‘Okay, son. Love you.’

‘Love you.’

He hangs up and lies back on the bed, waiting for bravery to kick in.

An hour later they head out onto the busy streets. It’s a nice area, full of bars and shops. He had read an article about it online before he left, about how it’s the ‘Brooklyn of Nairobi’, an area that was once undesirable but is now filling up with young professionals, the new Kenyan middle class. But expats have always been in the area, he remembers being at the shopping centre quite regularly with Cynthia, eating lunch in the food hall at the weekends and getting the food shop from the big Nakumatt.

‘You remember the way?’ Yvonne suddenly asks him.

‘I memorised the map before I left.’

Maybe it was a strange thing to do, but he had looked at it so many times on his phone over the last month, trying to piece together where everything was, where things happened.

They walk along a shopping street towards the centre and he stalls.

‘This is it,’ he says. ‘This is where the ambulance was.’

Yvonne was with him inside it. She sat across from him while the paramedic lifted each of his feet, inspecting the damage from the glass. He’s never forgotten the glass; it’s the thing that’s stuck in his mind the clearest all these years. Even back home, seeing a broken car window makes him sick, it’s like he can feel it embedding in the soles of his feet all over again.

The shopping centre is across the road, but neither of them attempts to cross.

‘Don’t you remember the ambulance?’ he asks her. ‘This was the view from the back of it, this street.’

She shakes her head.

How comes she doesn’t remember? ‘It was right here.’

‘I’m not sure, Kiama. Why does it matter so much?’ she asks.

‘It doesn’t.’ He didn’t mean to raise his voice. He takes a step back and looks across the road. The worst part was leaving, the ambulance driving off without her, without Mum. They should have let him stay with her.

He leans forward and puts his hands on his knees. How is this meant to help? Coming here and feeling like this? He wanted to feel some kind of relief but instead he feels like he’s being drained, as if all his energy is running from his body and he’s about to keel over.