‘My son,’ Mrs Fortenoy said. ‘Just returned home from the wars,’ she explained before she made her way to the bedroom.

The three men looked at each other, not sure what to do next.

‘It must be nice finally rubbing shoulders with the madams,’ Joseth Maraire said as Spokes made himself more comfortable on a maroon sofa showing lots of wear and tear. ‘You think you’re no longer some “boy” in their eyes. You think they now see you as a man. You think that they care about you – care that you are trying so hard to please them. But they don’t care, and they never will.’

Spokes smiled as he placed his fedora on his knee before saying, ‘If I cared for the opinions of others more than I cared for my own, I would be a very different man.’

Saskia

SASKIA

As soon as Saskia saw the note on her desk, she knew that it was from the Chief Inspector, not so much because of what was written on it: Zora Neale Hurston – How It Feels to Be Colored Me – The World Tomorrow, but because of the dignified and controlled handwriting with which it was written. The elegant handwriting gave the reader confidence in the character of the writer.

It took aeons for the ancient and powdery head librarian at the Main Public Library to retrieve a copy of the magazine, and Saskia used that time to get over, as best she could, her disappointment in learning that Zora Neale Hurston was no one exciting – just a writer.

Saskia sat in the packed reading room, The World Tomorrow before her. She could not connect to the story about a young black woman’s experience of growing up in the American South and being transformed and transported by jazz music. Saskia could not think of a life that was more removed from her own than the life of Zora Neale Hurston – until she got to the very end and read these lines: