But this time, she doesn’t answer straight away, because she’s thinking about it, she’s trying to come up with an answer that won’t piss him off.

‘Let’s sit down,’ she says. ‘Let’s talk properly.’

‘No. I don’t want to sit down with you.’ His patience wanes, this was a bad idea. ‘Just tell me. How long were you with him?’

‘It was off and on.’

‘How long?’ he shouts, because how else can he get her to answer him.

‘For a few months, then you came here, so all together it wasn’t even that long.’

It’s clear now, why Mum chose to pick up their whole life and move away, it’s because her only friend had gone behind her back, because someone she thought she knew turned out to be something completely different. ‘This is why we ended up in Kenya?’

Yvonne shakes her head.

‘You came all this way here with me, giving me these speeches about Mum like you were her friend and the whole time you had this? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘This is where it comes from,’ Kiama says, ‘this guilt you have.’ Because of course that’s what it is. What other normal person would agree to a trip like this? To putting their own life on hold to travel so far with someone they don’t even know?

Only someone who had a guilty conscience, someone who was trying to make up for something shitty they had done before. She’s guilty and not only about betraying Mum, but about leaving him too.

‘I’ve wondered about it,’ he says. ‘Why you kept away from me all this time.’

‘That’s not it. Let’s talk about this properly, when you’re calmer.’

‘No, I’m not waiting anymore. How many more years do you need?’

‘Ki-Yama,’ Purity steps between them on the stairs and takes his arms, ‘Mwana mwema ni taji tukufu kwa wazazi wake.’

It makes him so angry he wants to scream at her. ‘Will you please stop saying that to me?’

But she repeats it and the meaning becomes clearer to him, she’s giving him a message and he can’t ignore it. He can feel himself losing it, the tiredness, the emotions, the come down from the tiny pill which last night made him feel so great.

‘Mwana mwema ni taji tukufu kwa wazazi wake.’

He covers his face, not wanting to put himself out there again by crying. Then, Purity’s hands are on his arms, directing him up the stairs and away.