Emma’s ferocious shivering began again. She was in profound shock. Her vision darkened and she felt herself spinning. And then she collapsed.

NINE

At almost the same instant Emma hit the ground, she regained consciousness, but she was momentarily confused. What was going on? Why had everyone crowded around her?

“You fainted,” a woman said. “Are you okay?”

Emma tried to scramble up, but the woman made her stay down. “Relax, eh? Relax, please.”

“She should go to the hospital,” a man said.

“Can you take her?” the woman asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “My car is just here. I can bring it.”

“No, no,” Emma protested. “No, I’m fine. Please, I just want to go home. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” the woman insisted.

“It’s, it’s because I didn’t eat the whole day,” Emma offered, grasping for any justification at all. This was embarrassing—all these people staring at her.

“She can drink this,” someone else said, producing a can of Milo chocolate milk. He popped the top and offered it to her.

Emma sat up now and took the can. She hated chocolate milk, but she drank it anyway.

“Better?” the woman asked.

Emma nodded. “Please, I’d like to get up now.”

They helped her to her feet. For a moment she felt unsteady, but she recovered quickly. “Where do you live?” the woman asked her.

“Madina. I’ll take a cab there.”

“I will get one for you,” the Milo man said. “Just wait, please.”

He flagged down a cab and opened the rear door. The woman helped Emma in. “Thank you very much, madam,” Emma said. “I appreciate it.”

“Be careful, eh?” the woman said. “When you get home, eat plenty banku.” They both laughed.

At home, Emma showered, lathering up several times with her most fragrant soap until she was sure she couldn’t detect the commissioner’s odor on her. But she felt dirty sitting at the side of her bed, her short, nappy hair still wet. She shuddered. She had no desire to eat banku, as the kind woman had suggested, or anything else for that matter. She didn’t want to eat, sleep, watch TV, or socialize on Instagram. Emma didn’t want to do anything. She sat unmoving in the silent room like a block of wood—lifeless and empty. She was confused. She couldn’t sort out what had occurred. It was as if she were looking at a pile of twisted, knotted ropes that she had no idea how to untangle.

She lay down, leaving the light on, but the incident began to replay in her head, so she sat up to shake it. After thirty minutes in a kind of suspended, undefined state, Emma tried to sleep again. A couple of hours later, she jerked awake gasping and looking around for the rapist. She cried again, and then went to the kitchen to make some tea, dunking sweet bread in it. When she finished, she folded her arms on the table and rested her head. She woke again and took herself to bed.