I get up, trying to compose myself, I take a deep breath, feel like I’m drowning. I grab my purse and realise I haven’t brought any glucose pills. I’m a mess. I ate before I left the house, I can’t explain this sensation – what’s going on? No one notices my fraying figure as I make my way out, feeling as if my body were liquid, uncontainable, drifting in opposite directions, scattering. And where is Juleen? I sigh on contact with the cooler air. I’m on the portico of the church, on a little balcony still packed with people; I push my way through, too breathless to excuse myself. I have to go down the white stairs to reach the pavement, the small table draped in a plastic tablecloth I can see from here. I wave the monitor over the sensor on my left arm: seventy-eight, it says, with a downward arrow, why? fuck! my glucose level has to be under 130 milligrams per decilitre and over seventy or I could faint, I hear again and again in my head. I feel as if two index fingers were pressing on my temples from the inside. I cross the street, not looking; all I can see is where the sugar is.

The woman cuts a tall figure behind the fair table heaped with plastic and aluminium containers. I focus on her and everything else fades into sparks and waves, sparks and waves, sparks and waves. She stands up, ready to greet me.

‘Hello, mami,’ she says in a silky, sonorous voice, like a soul singer’s. I squint and see her wide, gap-toothed smile.

‘Good evening, ma’am. Yo gat sugar cake?’ I answer in the Creole I’ve learned in these two months of beach and music.

The broad woman sings, too, her arms and hips swaying as she points to the food with a long, pearly nail. The other hand uncovers and recovers every pot, every dish to the beat of that verse, pure sweetness.

‘Aah yeees, miss, mi gat sugar cake, bon bread, journey cake, lemon pie, plantin taart, crab patti…’

‘Sugar cake,’ I whisper. I take an earnest bite of biscuit. The edge is harder than the rest. I savour the cinnamon, the coconut, the sugar, the sugar that so eludes me. A breadfruit tree shakes its limbs above us. ‘Sit, mami, sit, enjoy di tiest. Me bake ’em miself. Tell me, you want some mint tea?’ It must come from her ‘yaard’. She speaks so tenderly; I can imagine her crooning to her plants. I’m sitting with my arms crossed, drawn into myself, elbow propped up on a knee, chewing. She asks my name.

Hers is Josephine. As I wait for the rush, I watch her, her smooth skin, her pink-painted lips. I let out a deep breath as the dough dissolves in my mouth. The lights turn blue inside the church again, accompanied by a melancholy piano tune.