Catherine, Rhodesia, 1950s

‘I’m going to find Mufaro,’ I said, opening our front door. We’d just got back from our annual Christmas trip to Durban, and I was eager to see him. Mum looked up from the case she was unpacking.

‘I don’t want that boy hanging around you anymore.’

‘Why not?’ I was already on the doorstep, itching to be gone.

‘Because I say so,’ she shot back.

‘But we’ve always been friends.’

‘You’re too old for it now.’

‘But why?’

‘Because ‘Y’ is a crooked letter.’ Then, in weary exasperation, ‘Stop with your nonsense, Cathy. You’re too old to be with a black boy. It was all right when you were small, but it isn’t nice now.’

I hesitated, looking out towards the trees. Deep down, I had always known this was coming. I also knew that Mum’s objection was part of all the things my parents wouldn’t talk about. The strongest emotions were bound up in that silence. I didn’t understand them but I felt their force, as powerful as a spell or a drug. There was nothing to be done but lock my confusion and anger tight in my chest.

‘There are things you don’t understand yet,’ Mum said, and she turned away from me and went back to her unpacking.

A few days later, I was tossing a ball around at the bottom of the garden when I heard a soft whistle from the trees just beyond. I turned and saw Mufaro peering out from behind a tree trunk. I smiled despite myself and brought my hand up to wave, then dropped my eyes and made my face go hard.

‘I’m not allowed to talk to you anymore.’

He blinked a few times, looking as though I had struck him.

‘Oh, I see. And are you going to do what they say?’

‘I have to.’

‘You’re going to give in without trying? Aren’t you old enough to think for yourself?’

I was speechless and my cheeks flushed scarlet.

‘My friends and family tell me I shouldn’t talk to you either, but I’ve chosen not to listen to them.’ Now it was my turn to feel like I’d been slapped across the face.

‘I want to be with you too, but. . .’ I couldn’t explain the impossibility of going against Mum’s prohibition. It was as though my passage to adulthood depended on obeying her, though it made me feel sick and lost because I knew it was all wrong.

‘I never thought you were a coward,’ he flung out.

‘I’m not.’

‘Yes you are, you are.’