‘Nah nah. You wouldn’t have.’ He rolls his sleeves back down and adds four packets of sugar to his coffee. Noticing her watching he says, ‘I used to be mad into the energy drinks, but they were giving me heart palpitations, so I gave up. But you got to replace it with something.’

‘Sounds logical.’

He smiles back at her, then his face changes. ‘I’m glad you were up for meeting me.’

She takes a breath; she’s not yet ready to hear the reasons he got in touch with her, why he wanted to meet in person and talk. ‘How is your dad? Does he…’ she pauses, searching for how to frame the question, ‘I don’t even know what he does for work these days.’

‘I don’t want to talk about Dad.’ Kiama leans forward again, he’s staring at her and she can feel his energy, his nervousness. This was a mistake. She should never have come. Should never have responded to his original message, but she couldn’t ignore him.

‘Obviously, I asked you here for a reason. I need to talk to you about something.’

‘Okay.’

He moves his coffee to the side of the table and fidgets with his bracelets, rolling them up and down. ‘I’m going back to Kenya.’

It’s not what she expected to hear from him. Though, what did she expect? ‘Why?’

He wraps an empty sugar packet around his thumb and purses his lips. ‘I don’t know,’ he says quickly.

‘You don’t know?’

‘No, I do know.’ He puts a hand over his face, as if embarrassed. ‘But I don’t know how to say it.’

She waits for him to compose himself, to explain, but he stays hidden. ‘Kiama?’

‘I’m not okay.’ He removes his hand and looks straight at her. ‘I need to go back so I can deal with things properly. I can’t keep carrying this.’

‘Carrying what?’

‘What happened there,’ he says, ‘don’t you ever think about it?’

There’s no response that will do.

‘Don’t you ever think it would help to go back?’

‘I’m not sure what you’re—’ she stops. She looks away, at the men polishing off their croissants, the barista who glances hopefully at Kiama, the glass door she wants to escape through.

‘Yvonne, I have so many patchy memories about what happened. I can’t even tell the difference between what I saw and what I heard from others. What I’ve read online.’

‘Why would you read anything online?’

‘Because I wanted to know,’ he says quietly. ‘I was only eight. It’s hard to trust my own memories. And I think that’s why I’m stuck, like not able to move forward. No one ever talks to me about Kenya. About what happened there. We came back to the UK and everyone just got on with things.’