For the Seatons, who they had once been became less important than who they were now. The other mothers at the school had been quick to notice how confidently Helen wore her collection of bold ethnic jewellery and asked her where she’d got it – but that was the limit of their curiosity. There were no Brownie points for having once tried to chip away at the edifice of apartheid. It was Helen who felt this need for a separation from their former life most keenly. Once or twice, over a hurried cappuccino at Ribbons & Taylor on Stoke Newington Church Street, she’d noticed how a reference to her campaigning days in South Africa had been ignored, like a conversational cul-de-sac. The heartfelt conviction that had propelled her actions in Johannesburg didn’t translate well in the tired aftermath of a hectic school run. Here, in the frazzled mess of soggy anoraks and young children, her past accomplishments seemed neither relevant nor interesting.

And that was where the photograph came into its own. Hanging in the hallway that linked the study to the rest of the house, it made its point unceremoniously. For all the apparent nonchalance with which it had been placed on the wall, the photograph had a quiet eloquence. It said: here was a family that was comfortable with race, even if in the country outside the opposite was the case.

Now, as Lindi’s eyes scoured the photograph, she mused that it was accurate in every detail, but the image as a whole managed to convey an impression that Lindi no longer felt was honest. It was greater than the sum of its parts. She had come to think of that photo like one of those mirrors in department-store fitting rooms that make even the most generously proportioned customers look good in an unwise choice. The mirror doesn’t lie: it just plays around with the truth.