I hear Josephine’s silky music, feel her lilt blossoming in me as I read the names of my great-aunts. I smile. ‘Would it have been too much to ask my dad to read all this and add it to the family tree for the OCCRE office?’ I say aloud. ‘This book hadn’t been published yet,’ says the woman at the front desk. ‘You had to bring a family tree to OCCRE?’ she asks, puzzled. Yes, I did, because I’m on the paler side of history.

Arnat Robinson, my new grandmother. I know more about Torquel Bowie now. Arnat married – was made to marry – the firstborn son, the supreme heir, probably a few years before Livingston arrived. They must have crossed paths and talked about it. There were free men who didn’t know they’d been freed, according to one of the books, according to all the thinkin’ rundowns and the church pamphlet.

I photograph pages from the book, The Genealogical History of Providencia Island. The library is about to close.

I stop at the bathroom before I go. I check the monitor: 113, good.

It’s five in the afternoon. I go down the stairs of the building that would be miniscule by any urban standards. I turn around for a moment and note that it looks as large to me today as it did when I was in school. I cross the street to the corner and a robust, long-faced woman offers me an exchange rate. I pass window displays of candy, knickknacks, bathing suits. All the buildings look crude to me, really. All stuck together without any room for the landscape, crowded in as if to distract from how little their haphazard colours match, their white and brown or glass façades. ‘A bunch of ugly buildings’, says the Lonely Planet guide the Europeans bring with them. Seriously? The German guy and I had laughed about it.