attack or end up in the asylum,

like other early-born blacks up North.

Before immigration en masse

we were few in number

and often outnumbered – by thugs.

Got no back-up then, no fancy

Race Relations Department at Council.

More than once I stood on the precipice.

Couldn’t wash – me or the dishes,

dragged my feet to the shops only when

the last tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce ran out,

but I wasn’t going to end up another nutter

drooling in the loony bin,

pills for breakfast, lunch and tea.

So I got a doctor’s certificate, a visa

allowing me to leave a country

called Clinica Depressia

for a paradise island called Valium –

were a lovely holiday, went away for years.

Won’t be telling Stanley any of this.

Whatever you tell them at the start

will be used as evidence against you

at the end, your honour …

‘That’s what you crave when you’re an entertainer,’ she said. ‘You miss the anticipation, the adrenalin. Everybody adores you and then one day you turn around and no one’s behind you.’

‘I’m sure plenty of men have adored you.’ Stanley realized he had some repair work to do. He’d never met a temperamental artiste before, although he’d heard they all were. Everyone he knew worked in an office and wore a suit to work.

‘Yes, my cousin, for a start.’

‘What?’

‘I married my cousin.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t be daft, I didn’t know he was, did I? Look, I was a foundling. Left outside Leeds General Infirmary – raised in St Ann’s Children’s Home. The home was full of the North’s half-caste rejects. Anyway, along comes Kwame many lonely years after Brewster died. Half-caste, Leeds man. Loves young Terry. Young Terry loves him. We look alike too, and they say you go for people who look like yourself. So we get married and he says he wants to know what diseases are in my genes, for when we have kids. I’m scared as hell, but he badgers me and I discover that my father was a certain Kojo Mensah, who came looking for me when I was a toddler. A student at Leeds, apparently. Never told Welfare who my mother was, so that I’ll never know. The punch line is, Stanley, that Kwame’s surname was Mensah. Our fathers were brothers. Both men got their degrees, went home to Ghana, never to be heard of again.

‘We tried to continue, but you can’t, can you? No way forward, no way back.’

‘That’s terrible,’ said Stanley, stopping in his tracks, attempting to gather her into his arms.

‘That’s life, and I don’t need any pity, love,’ she replied, pulling back, before adding with more gentleness, ‘I don’t dwell on the past, me.’

Locked him up where he’s safe,

still a young man in his late twenties,

not handsome but dapper