That’s enough, he doesn’t want to hear about the conversations they had when Yvonne was here in Kenya. ‘I can’t believe you lived together.’ He thought he’d worked it out, that they were just being sneaky, that Yvonne was one of those women he used to hear his nana and her friends bitch about, the kind that only liked a man when he belonged to someone else. But it doesn’t sound like that’s what it was.

‘I still don’t get it. You two lived together but no one knew about you. So, what was it?’

She takes a breath, as if getting ready to compose a lie. ‘It was complicated.’

‘Complicated,’ he tuts, ‘I can tell. You said you would talk. So talk.’

‘It was real. We were so into each other, so in love. To the point we were stupid and didn’t think about who we would hurt.’

The church doors fly open and people in brightly coloured outfits stream from it, many of them hold balloons, their talk and laughter drifts up in pieces.

‘Do you still love him?’

‘I haven’t seen him in a decade, so no.’

‘That’s the truth?’

‘Yes. I swear. He called me after you and I first met and of course I called him yesterday morning in a complete panic. But no, I haven’t seen him.’

A cheer rises up from the congregation and the balloons float into the air. One gets stuck in a tree and a little kid attempts to jump up and reach it, but even from here Kiama can see she’s got no chance of reaching it.

‘When I first went back to London one of the hardest things was that there was nothing left of Mum,’ he says. ‘Nana made sure I was in school pretty much straight away after the funeral. So it was all new friends, a new area. I even had new clothes, because so much of my stuff was left here. I didn’t have anything from my life before.’ He picks at the welt on his arm, which is now dried and darkening. ‘I wish you would have stuck around, Yvonne. You were one of my only links to her.’

‘I’m sorry. I never thought of that.’

‘It’s too late now anyway.’

‘You’re leaving, aren’t you?’ she asks.

He pulls out his phone and glances at the screen. ‘Joe’s driving me to the airport and I’m going to Mombasa. I can’t deal with this,’ he says. ‘I feel like I should be picking sides or forming allegiances and I don’t know how to do that, how I’m meant to feel about any of this.’ He plucks a handful of grass and repeats, ‘I can’t deal with it.’