2

Cultural Dilemmas

‘Wake up, child!’ The loud voice reverberated through Faye’s head without mercy. The dark room suddenly flooded with light as the heavy raw silk curtains were pulled back.

Faye groaned and tried to raise her head. But her head might as well have been made of iron and the pillow a magnet because after a couple of feeble attempts, she gave up and sank back under the duvet.

‘What on earth were you up to last night, young lady?’ Lottie said in the rich Scottish accent that sounded as though she had left Glasgow for London the previous week, instead of more than twenty years earlier.

Faye’s only response was a weak groan. Unmoved, Lottie pulled the heavy duvet back a few inches and tried not to laugh as Faye clawed frantically at the covers, trying to crawl back into her warm cocoon.

She took one look at Faye cowering miserably under the duvet and she shook her head without sympathy.

‘Look at the state of you,’ she said sternly. ‘Come on, up with you – you’ll feel better after a nice shower!’

Finally realising that Lottie had no intention of leaving until she had been obeyed, Faye crawled out of the comfort of her bed and staggered into the adjoining bathroom. Her head was throbbing and her hand shook as she brushed her teeth before returning to her room where Lottie was bent over picking up the clothes strewn across the floor.

‘Oh God’, she wailed, sitting on the corner of her bed. ‘I’m dying!’

Dressed in one of William’s old T-shirts that barely reached her knees and with her hair sticking out in all directions, she looked like a long-legged street urchin. Lottie’s expression remained unmoved and Faye knew better than to argue, even if she had had the strength to try.

Tall and angular, with greying brown hair cut into a severe bob, Lottie had been part of the Bonsu family since Faye was six years old.

Born Charlotte Cameron, Lottie was the fourth of seven children and had grown up in a small and very crowded terraced house in Glasgow. Unlike her brothers and sisters, who had left school at the first opportunity, Charlotte, who dreamed of becoming a teacher, had stayed on, eventually winning a scholarship to study at the leading teacher training college in the city. While her mother openly grumbled about where all this education would lead, Charlotte’s success was warmly welcomed by her proudly working class father who basked in the heightened status his daughter’s achievement brought him. Barely literate himself and having left school at fourteen, Jim Cameron was from a long line of dock workers, as were most of his friends. When she finally qualified, ‘our Charlotte, the teacher’ gave him something to boast about to anyone at his local pub who would listen. Excited at the whole new world now open to her, and having read about the shortage of good teachers in the English capital, Charlotte decided to move south to London where she soon found a teaching job. However, after three years of fruitlessly trying to force English and history down the bored and uncooperative throats of the inmates of an East London comprehensive school, Charlotte came to the sad conclusion that teaching was not after all the vocation for her and gave in her notice. Her father did not hide his disappointment when she decided instead to train as a nurse and managed to secure a trainee position at a teaching hospital in Tooting.

‘What do you want to be doing changing bedpans and catching diseases from all those poofs and bloody foreigners?’ Jim had grumbled, finally starting to wonder if his wife didn’t have a point about too much education.

Charlotte was halfway through her final year at St Luke’s when she met and fell in love with Olu, a handsome Nigerian doctor who had joined the hospital on a six-month contract. Soon the romance was public knowledge and when Olu proposed four months to the day after their first date, the other student nurses in her hostel clubbed together to throw a party for them.

Olu insisted that they had to visit Lagos for Charlotte to meet his parents and to see his country before they got married.

‘You will love Nigeria, Charlotte,’ he would say constantly, his dark brown eyes gazing deep into hers. ‘And my family will love you very much.’

Deliriously happy, Charlotte swallowed her apprehension about Jim’s likely reaction and finally found the courage to tell her father her good news.

’You want to marry an African? Are you off your head, girl?’ he had asked in incredulous disbelief, too shocked to tell anyone except his wife.

‘She should have stuck with working in the local factory like her sisters, Jim. I told you so!’ was the furious response he got from her. Even though she had finally been proved right, her mother was too upset to tell any of Charlotte’s sisters. After all, there was no sense in putting any ideas in their heads either.

Charlotte, however, was determined not to let anything destroy her happiness. Ignoring her father’s pleas to come to her senses and see things from his point of view, she refused to feel any guilt for what he now saw as his complete lack of credibility down the pub if any of this ever came out. She was even more determined to put aside Jim’s pleas because, as she made the travel arrangements for their trip to Nigeria, she hid a secret but very strong feeling that she was pregnant.

The afternoon before they were due to leave for the airport, Olu failed to show up for his final shift. No one at the hospital had any idea where he was and after yet another phone call from the hospital administrator, Charlotte was starting to panic when he rang the bell at the flat in the hostel that she still shared with two other student nurses. Her initial relief on seeing he was safe faded quickly as she took in his haggard appearance, rumpled clothes and a strong smell of stale beer, so completely at odds with his usual impeccable appearance. Filled with dread, as he pushed past her and made for her room, she remained standing.

Olu, who clearly couldn’t, sat down heavily on the small bed, waiting until she finally walked into the room. Keeping his red-rimmed eyes fixed to a spot on the floor between his feet, he remained silent while she stared at him, too afraid to even ask what was wrong.

‘Charlotte, please forgive me,’ he said eventually. His voice was muffled and his speech slightly slurred but the shame in his voice was unmistakable.

‘We cannot go to Nigeria,’ he said slowly. ‘I already have a wife, Charlotte. She lives with my parents in Lagos.’

Charlotte looked down at him, numb with shock and unable to say a word. After a brief glance up at her, he lowered his head again and continued haltingly.

‘You know, I have wanted to tell you so many times and, God forgive me, I couldn’t do so. But you must believe me… I had planned to leave her and to marry you – I swear to you!’ His voice became more animated as he went on. ‘I phoned my parents today to tell them about you but they told me that my wife is pregnant with our first child. Apparently, she’s been waiting for my return to surprise me with the news. Charlotte, my beloved, please try to understand…’

His voice tailed off into silence at the icy contempt blazing at him from her eyes. She stared stonily down at the hunched figure sitting on the bed as though he were a complete stranger and, without uttering a word, walked out of the room.

When Olu eventually left the house, Charlotte took refuge in her bed and stayed there, unable to speak to anyone. Refusing to see Olu, or answer his frantic phone calls, or even talk to her anxious friends, she lay staring silently at the ceiling, only getting out of bed to use the bathroom or to go to the kitchen to make yet another cup of peppermint tea to relieve the nausea that constantly threatened to overwhelm her. This continued for several days until one of her flatmates, coming home from her shift, found her lying in a heap on the kitchen floor and frantically called an ambulance. By the time they reached St Luke’s, it was too late to save her baby. Following an overheard phone call with his wife, who was anxious to find out why his return had been delayed, Olu’s guilty secret was soon public knowledge. Unable to stand the undisguised contempt of the hospital staff, he abruptly terminated his contract and returned home to his unsuspecting wife.

Confessing to her flatmates that she felt alone and couldn’t bear to go home to face the inevitable “I told you so’s” from her parents, Charlotte decided to escape the hospital and its memories of Olu. She scoured the newspapers and the cards on the windows of the local newsagents, desperate to find a job that would give her the chance for a new start, until finally she spotted a small advertisement in the daily paper for a housekeeper. The job involved looking after a widower who had recently come to England with his two young children and, intrigued by the sound of the vacancy, she phoned the recruitment agency.

At her interview, Dr Bonsu, who was already impressed by Charlotte’s obvious intelligence and nursing background, was won over when he saw Faye’s reaction to the tall young woman with sad eyes. His daughter had suffered the double trauma of losing her mother and changing countries, and was still extremely wary and shy around people. For Charlotte, the tiny five-year-old with huge eyes and stubby plaits covered in multicoloured ribbons could have been an older version of the baby she had pictured in her mind so often during her short-lived pregnancy. To her father’s astonishment, and as though somehow sensing their mutual need for comfort, Faye had immediately taken to the angular dark-haired woman with shiny brown eyes, and spontaneously reached up to hug her.

Dr Bonsu explained to Lottie that, as an international medical consultant in a very specialised field, his job required him to travel constantly.

‘When my children and I first arrived here,’ he explained, ‘we were accompanied by my cousin who was supposed to live with us and look after the children. Unfortunately, Sophia missed her friends and the active social life she had enjoyed in Ghana too much.’

Sophia, the doctor admitted, had complained incessantly about the cold weather – it was mid-July – and had eventually packed her bags and taken the next flight back home.

Shortly after her interview, Charlotte was offered the job and moved immediately into the large house in Hampstead with the Bonsu family, where she was soon known simply as Lottie. Although she never mentioned his name, Charlotte’s experience with Olu had left her extremely bitter and cynical about the intentions of every member of the male sex. Making it clear to anyone who approached her that she had absolutely no time for men in her life, she instead concentrated her efforts on making sure that her adopted family was well cared for.

Now, shaking her head as she took in Faye’s misery, Lottie dumped the clothes she had retrieved from the floor into a nearby chair and turned back to face her.

‘I don’t know what is going on in this house. How do both you and William end up with hangovers this morning when neither one of you hardly ever drinks?’ she asked in exasperation. Although her tone was stern, her soft brown eyes showed her concern.

‘Michael was here about an hour ago to return your car, by the way,’ she added. ‘Your father answered the door before I could get to it. You, needless to say, were out for the count!’ She removed the car keys from the pocket of her well-worn brown skirt and dropped them on the pine dressing table with a loud clatter.

‘Don’t, Lottie!’ Faye clasped her head between her hands, cringing as the noise sent vibrations reverberating through her head. When the noise in her head had died down slightly, she peeked up through her fingers at the older woman.

‘Did Michael say anything about last night?’

Lottie sniffed. As far as she was concerned Michael was a complete waste of her breath.

‘He made some comment about you overdoing it with rum,’ she said abruptly. ‘I expect he was responsible for letting you drink, although you should have known better since you were driving, Faye!’

This time Lottie couldn’t hide her anger. Ten years earlier, her sister had been hit by a car while on her way back from work. The driver, a young salesman on his way home after a long session at the pub, had escaped with a fine while Moira had been sentenced to life in a wheelchair. Lottie’s views on people who drank when driving were, if possible, even more venomous than her views on men.

Faye’s lips trembled perilously; Lottie was hardly ever angry with her. After the trials of the previous night and in her present weakened state, she felt completely unable to cope with any more guilt.

‘I’m sorry,’ she pleaded miserably. ‘Please don’t be angry with me, Lottie.’ The drummers that had taken up residence in her head were almost forgotten in the face of Lottie’s rare display of anger.

The housekeeper’s face softened. ‘Okay, Faye, but you know how I feel about alcohol when it comes to driving.’

She sat down on the bed and eyed the younger girl curiously. ‘So what did happen? Were you not meeting some friends of Michael’s last night?’

Faye nodded and immediately regretted it as a wave of nausea washed over her. ‘He took me round to some friends that he used to live with. It was fine until I screwed it all up.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘They seemed like nice people – well, except for one of them who was really winding me up,’ Faye sighed. ‘I don’t know, Lottie, I felt a bit out of my depth, to be honest. They were all really intellectual and do a hundred different things and are really into black culture and music and stuff. And I suppose me knocking back neat rum on an empty stomach didn’t help.’

Lottie raised an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘Rum! Seriously, Faye, what were you thinking? Why on earth didn’t you just ask for some wine if you wanted a drink?’

Faye shrugged. ‘You should have seen their faces when I asked for Coke to go with it – Michael looked like he was going to have a heart attack!’

She groaned again as she remembered Michael’s exasperated glare and the concerned look on Philomena’s face as he had bundled her into the car to drive her home. ‘Oh no, Michael…! He’s going to be furious with me. I really thought we were moving on to the next level – he’s never taken me out to see his friends before. I can’t believe I’ve messed it up!’

Lottie repressed a shudder at the idea of what the next level with Michael might involve. ‘Well, it sounds like he could have been a bit more supportive – and you could certainly have been a bit more assertive. I know you wanted to make a good impression on them, but you don’t have to force yourself to drink strong liquor to be accepted, Faye.’

Before Faye could answer, there was an abrupt knock at the door. Lottie took one look at the alarmed expression on Faye’s face and walked swiftly over to the door, opening it slightly and blocking the entrance with her tall narrow frame.

‘Oh, Doctor, it’s you!’ she said smoothly, stepping outside the room and closing the door gently behind her. For several minutes all Faye could hear was the murmur of voices in the corridor and when Lottie came back into the room, her face was grim.

‘Well, you’ve got some explaining to do to your father as well, young Faye. He’s waiting for you downstairs. Well, I had better get on – I’ve got plenty to do. We’ll talk properly later, okay?’ With that, she hastily left the room.

It took a few minutes of waiting for the room to steady itself before Faye managed to heave herself off her bed and stagger to the bathroom. After a long, almost boiling hot shower she dressed slowly in a pair of skinny jeans and a plain black sweatshirt that she had rescued from the local charity shop.

She stared miserably at her reflection in the mirror, dreading the inevitable lecture coming up from her father. Thank God it’s Sunday today – there’s no way I could have faced a day at Fiske, Fiske & Partners, she thought. She sighed as she headed slowly out of her room.

Eating breakfast together on Sunday was one of her father’s commandments and as the drumming in her head had now subsided to a leaden pain behind her eyes, she reluctantly started downstairs, walking into the large airy dining room where her father had long finished his breakfast. Hearing her enter the room, he put down the news supplement he had been reading and frowned at her through thick tortoiseshell glasses.

‘Morning, Dad,’ Faye mumbled, taking her place at the polished dining table and wincing as bright shafts of morning sun shone through the French windows almost directly into her eyes. She shifted her chair slightly before cautiously pouring herself a cup of black coffee, clutching the pot tightly to prevent her shaky hands from trembling.

‘Good morning’ was the short response from her father, who had removed his glasses and was rubbing the bridge of his broad nose while watching her steadily.

At five feet nine inches, although not a tall man, Kwame Bonsu radiated an air of authority. Widely acknowledged as one of the leaders in his field of medical research, he had graduated at the top of his class at university in his native Ghana before winning a full scholarship to Harvard Medical School, where he specialised in paediatrics. Credited with groundbreaking research into childhood diseases, he was a sought-after expert who spent a good part of his time travelling around the world lecturing and publishing his ongoing research. Her father’s high profile role had earned him the title of ‘the Nelson Mandela of medicine’ from his daughter. Despite her good-natured teasing, Faye was fiercely proud of her father and his achievements – although, she had to admit, she was totally disgusted at the unfairness of William being the one to inherit their father’s impressive mind.

Inevitably, the doctor’s frequent travelling meant that Lottie had often been left to be both mother and father to his children. It was at times such as this morning that he felt particularly guilty about the effect these absences might have had. Although he had little to worry about with William, who was an ambitious and extremely disciplined man, Dr Bonsu had become increasingly worried about what he saw as Faye’s lack of drive or direction. Convinced that she was capable of doing more with her life, and frustrated that she didn’t seem to realise it, he had tried several times to pin her down to at least identifying a career she would enjoy. Each attempt was no more successful than the last, he thought, casting his mind back to their last conversation on the subject.

‘Faye, you shouldn’t be discouraged – there are plenty of careers you can make a go of,’ he had said kindly. ‘You’re not unintelligent. You’re just… a little less academically motivated than William, that’s all.’

‘Is that a diplomatic way of explaining away why I couldn’t get any further than A levels and a computing course?’ she had quipped, giggling at his earnest expression. ‘Dad, let’s face it, William is the brains in this family, not me.’ She had quickly changed the subject, reading out a joke her friend had texted her, which soon had him roaring with laughter.

This morning, however, as he took in her wan appearance, he was in no mood for jokes. Replacing his glasses, he looked directly into her eyes.

‘Are you not feeling well?’ He stared pointedly at her trembling hand as she raised the coffee cup to her lips.

Faye, only too aware of her father’s feelings about alcohol abuse, cast around furiously for something to say. She was saved by William’s entrance. Happily oblivious to the tension in the air, he greeted both of them cheerily and sat down across the table from Faye.

‘What’s wrong with you? You look awful!’ he peered closely at her while taking a bite of his father’s leftover toast.

‘Thanks.’ Faye muttered, trying without success to kick his ankle under the dining table. The physical effort immediately set off the throbbing in her head again and she glared angrily at him.

Dr Bonsu took his glasses off again and turned to his son.

‘I was just asking her the same question. And, since you are also here, William,’ he added mildly, ‘perhaps you can both explain to me why we have missed breakfast and church today.’

As a devout Catholic, Dr Bonsu was uncompromising about church attendance. Although both his children were fully grown adults, he still expected them to attend mass with him every Sunday morning whenever he was home, whatever their own views on the subject. Dr Bonsu was a firm believer in the Ghanaian tradition whereby children respected and obeyed their parents’ wishes so long as they remained under their roof. This morning when neither William nor Faye had shown up ready for their usual nine o’clock mass, he had been alarmed and then irritated – a feeling that was not helped by the unexpected and unwanted arrival of Michael with Faye’s car keys in hand.

William swallowed the rest of the toast and looked affectionately at his father.

‘Sorry, Dad. I was feeling pretty tired last night and overslept,’ he said smoothly. ‘We’ll go to the six o’clock mass this evening. That is’, he added, grinning at his chastened sister, ‘if she’s able to walk.’

‘Very funny, William!’ Scowling furiously at her brother, Faye quietly apologised in turn. Her father was a great believer in discipline and was constantly complaining about what he saw as the total disrespect shown by British children towards their parents. ‘I will never tolerate such displays of unacceptable European liberalism,’ he was quick to remind them if he thought he saw any symptoms of this particular disease.

Now, he simply nodded slowly and gave a gentle sigh.

‘It’s times like this when I sorely regret taking on the kind of profession that has made me travel so much,’ he said soberly. ‘I sincerely hope that this is not the start of the slippery road to…’

Moral decadence, Faye finished off silently in her head having heard the same sentence more times than she could remember. She studiously avoided William’s eyes, only too aware that he was probably silently mouthing the words as her father spoke. This was not exactly the best time to burst out laughing.

With a final sorrowful shake of his head, the doctor rose from the breakfast table and very firmly plucked his magazine from his son’s grip. After reminding them about their promise to attend evening mass, he excused himself and shut himself off in his study to finish reading his papers in peace.

Once the door had closed behind him, Faye aimed again and this time made contact with her brother’s shin.

‘Ouch! Bloody hell, Faye. That hurt!’ Glaring at his unrepentant sister, William rubbed his leg hard.

‘Serves you right for landing me in it.’ She poured another cup of coffee and was glad to see that her hand had stopped shaking, at least for now. Notoriously unable to hold her drink, Faye usually stuck to wine when she went out and hardly ever touched spirits, making the impact of the powerful dark Jamaican rum from the previous evening particularly devastating.

‘Hey, I didn’t say anything he couldn’t figure out for himself,’ William muttered defensively. ‘He is a doctor, you know, and I’m sure he’s seen more than his fair share of alcoholically challenged people over the years.’

Rising quickly to avoid another attack on his shins, he grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the dining table and, keeping well out of reach, grinned at her cheerfully, his good humour restored.

‘So, little sister, what did you and your cultural guru get up to last night?’

Her face dropped as she remembered the hideous turn the evening had taken.

‘I don’t think Michael will ever speak to me again! I got more than a bit drunk and ended up collapsing at his friend’s house – and I think I was a bit rude to one of them,’ she sighed deeply. Frowning slightly, she went on. ‘I don’t remember too much after that except being practically carried out. Michael just dumped me at home and drove off – in my car!’ she added indignantly.

William chewed thoughtfully on his apple. ‘That doesn’t sound like you – being rude to your beloved’s friends, I mean.’

Ignoring the implication that being drunk, however, did sound like her, Faye shrugged. ‘Oh, it was just this one guy there who really got on my nerves. He basically accused me of being a slave to the colonialist mentality and cut off from my cultural roots. I know Michael can be a bit much sometimes, but you should have heard this one going on. You know, the usual “you don’t know where you come from” rubbish.’

‘Well, sounds like he had it coming then,’ was the swift response. Gesturing with his half-eaten apple, William added with a grin, ‘You know, this is what comes of hanging around with Michael Duncan. That man’s got enough chips on his shoulder to feed an entire army. Ever since he got into this whole “I’m black and I’m proud” thing, he’s become even more of a prat than he was when we were in school.’

Deciding this was not the moment to tell William that her boyfriend considered him to be culturally extinct, Faye bit her lip and drank her coffee without comment.

She put the empty cup down and stared thoughtfully across at him. In his fitted jeans and with his lean muscular torso covered with a grey polo shirt, William looked fit and, as usual, extremely self-confident.

‘Will, don’t you ever think that maybe we don’t have enough of a connection to Ghana? I mean, you even have a white girlfriend. Don’t you ever worry about people thinking that you’ve sold out culturally?’

William gave a snort of pure contempt. He wolfed down the rest of the apple, grabbed his plate and stood up. ‘Faye, the moment you start worrying about what other people think, you really will be lost!’

He headed for the door, almost bumping into Lottie who was coming in. Turning back to his sister, he added more gently, ‘Look, just be yourself. You know where you come from, so what do you care if someone else has a problem? I’m going over to Lucinda’s now but I’ll be back by six, in time for mass. If you don’t want another lecture from Dad, don’t be late!’

Winking cheekily at Lottie, he strode out of the room, leaving her staring after him in bewilderment.

‘Now, what was that all about?’ She asked, completely perplexed. She turned back to Faye who had moved over to the French windows and was looking thoughtfully out into the garden. The apple trees that yielded so much fruit during the summer now looked barren. A few pale rays of sunlight had managed to struggle through the clouds and succeeded in casting a gentle glow over the impeccable green lawn. Although it was a chilly September morning, the picture through the glass doors was altogether one of warmth and serenity.

‘Faye?’ Lottie’s voice was sharp with concern as she watched her staring forlornly out of the window.

Faye turned back to her with a wan smile. ‘It’s okay, Lottie. I’m fine, really.’

Lottie poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the dining table and grimaced as she tasted the now lukewarm drink.

‘Ugh! I don’t know why I torture myself trying to drink this stuff – I hate coffee!’ she said in disgust. ‘Now listen, my lass, I know you about as well as I know myself and I know when something’s not right.’ She sat down and gestured to the chair next to her. ‘I’ve got a few minutes to spare and you look like you have plenty on your mind.’

Faye sighed and, after a moment’s hesitation, took the chair on offer. ‘I was just thinking about last night and having to deal with Michael. His friends really matter to him – what if I’ve pushed him too far?’

Lottie’s nostrils flared with outrage. ‘Are you saying you don’t matter to him? Because if he doesn’t think you’re more important than his friends, why on earth are you wasting your time with him?’

‘I’m not saying I don’t matter. It’s just… oh, I don’t know!’ Anxiety and frustration mingled as she struggled to voice her feelings. Her head ached and she forced herself to calm her rising panic. ‘Lottie, I don’t want to lose him. I know you hate him but he can be really sweet when he wants to be, and I don’t see anyone else chasing after me, do you?’

‘Maybe if you spent less time worrying about that man and more time with some of your other friends, that would change,’ Lottie muttered under her breath. She took in Faye’s miserable expression and her voice softened. ‘You’ve had your ups and downs with Michael before, but I’ve never seen you this upset. There’s something else, isn’t there?’

Faye hesitated for a moment, almost afraid to give voice to her own suspicions. ‘Yes, there is. I am worried about Michael; this isn’t another silly argument, he’s finally let me meet his friends and I know he’s going to be furious at me for getting drunk and showing him up. But I can’t shake off the feeling that something else was going on last night. One of his friends really seemed to have it in for me from the start. We were talking about culture and I started explaining about Ghana – I’m not sure what happened, but it all seemed to go downhill from there.’

‘What were you saying about Ghana?’ Lottie leaned forward with interest.

‘I was trying to show them that I knew something about my culture which, as it turned out, wasn’t the smartest idea. Because then they all piled in and started asking me questions that I couldn’t answer. And this one guy, Wesley, for some reason was practically interrogating me the whole evening. Then, as if I didn’t already feel like a prize idiot, he starts having a go at me and basically accusing me of being clueless about black culture. The funny thing was, he’s white and he had the nerve to start lecturing me about not keeping in touch with my black identity!’ As she thought back to Wesley’s condescending remarks, she felt her temper starting to rise.

‘Well, maybe he’s right,’ Lottie said mildly.

‘What do you mean, maybe he’s right? Lottie!’ Faye stared at her in disbelief, completely outraged by this unexpected betrayal.

Unperturbed, Lottie took another sip of her coffee and grimaced again before putting the cup down firmly and pushing it away.

‘Calm down, Faye’, she said evenly. ‘Look, what I mean is that maybe he has a point. You have lived in England almost all your life. You know more about English history than African, you barely speak any of your Ghanaian language and you’ve not been in Ghana since you were a wee lass. Not that I agree with him being rude, I can assure you – although, what else can you expect from a man, for pity’s sake! – but from his point of view, you probably are cut off from your African identity.’

Faye leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, casting her mind back to what she recalled of her country of birth. Although the details of life in Ghana were now mostly a distant blur with occasional windows of clarity, her memories remained rich in texture: the noise of raised voices speaking in different languages, the pungent smells of spicy food, the intense heat of the afternoon sun, the dust so thick that it would swirl around and coat every surface, exhilarating music throbbing with rhythm, and colours made even more vivid by the blazing sun were all the things that came to mind whenever she tried to remember her time in Ghana. If she pushed it – which she rarely did – she could remember laughing with her brother as they played outside in the sun and even feel again the warmth of their mother’s soft embrace. When she forced herself to do so, she could still remember how her mother had seemed to just disappear and how she had cried for days after overhearing her father’s older brother saying, ‘Poor, poor Annie! Dying so young and leaving those children alone.’

She could also remember the early days after their arrival in England and how she and William had clung together, seeing each other as allies in a world that had suddenly changed into a literally cold and very alien place, at least until Lottie had come into their lives.

Faye remembered how Lottie had forced them to go for picnics on Hampstead Heath and encouraged them to run and play and shout again as they used to back in Ghana. She smiled, remembering how Lottie had dragged home a young Kenyan nanny she had met in the park and begged her to show her how to braid Faye’s unruly curls properly. It was also Lottie who had comforted her when she sobbed because the white girls at her exclusive Hampstead primary school wouldn’t play with her and called her dark skin ‘dirty’.

While William had commanded respect at his private school, at first with his fists and later with his outstanding brainpower, Faye, with far fewer academic talents, had just desperately wanted to be accepted. When she moved on to secondary school, it was to yet another institution for the elite of Hampstead. Despite Lottie’s pleas to let Faye go to a more culturally mixed school, Dr Bonsu had refused to listen.

‘I’m sorry, Lottie,’ he’d said firmly. ‘But I cannot sacrifice a good education for my daughter on the grounds of what, quite frankly, I consider to be quite spurious ethnic considerations.’

At her new school, Faye was one of only a handful of black pupils in her year. Wanting to fit in with everyone around them, the dark-skinned girls had not formed a group. Instead, they had sought out friends among the white students and were soon accepted by the others girls as being ‘just like us’.

It was at school that Faye had met her best friend, Caroline Duffy, a cheery redhead whose Irish father, a working class builder, had made a fortune during the property boom. Brendan Duffy was determined that his children would have the best of everything life and his wealth could offer and, although he was initially taken aback by his daughter’s choice of best friend, he and his wife had quickly grown fond of Faye, who over the years spent almost as much time in Caroline’s house as in her own.

It was when she was fifteen that Faye first began to realise that her assimilation had, in some ways, been a little too successful. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and she and Caroline were listening to music in her friend’s huge bedroom. Mrs Duffy’s sister, Eileen, who had been visiting from Australia where she’d emigrated with her husband, had walked into the room as Faye was teaching Caroline a new dance move that she had picked up from a music video.

Watching the leggy teenager move gracefully around the room, Auntie Eileen remarked admiringly, ‘My word, Faye, you dance well. Mind you, they do say you people all have marvellous rhythm!’

Faye came to an abrupt stop, embarrassed by the woman’s careless remark. Even more confusing, however, was Caroline’s response. ‘Which people?’ she asked her aunt curiously. ‘What, you mean the girls from my school?’

Later that evening, after telling Lottie about the incident, Faye had struggled to explain her feelings.

‘I know I’m black, Lottie,’ she said. ‘But, it’s like Caroline and the other girls see me as white because we’ve all been friends for so long. You know, it’s like it’s a compliment that they don’t see me as any different from them, but why can’t they just like me and see me as black?’

It was a question that neither Lottie nor anyone else had ever been able to answer for her over the years.

Now, at almost twenty-six, despite having found herself a black boyfriend, she stood accused of being racially rootless and, to add insult to injury, she thought indignantly, by a man even paler than Caroline.

‘And where was Michael in all this? Didn’t he stand up for you?’ Lottie’s expression showed that she already knew the answer.

Faye sighed. ‘You must be kidding. He just kept rolling his eyes and glaring at me like I was the problem.’

‘So, if he won’t stand up for you, Faye, when are you going to stand up for yourself?’ Although her tone was mild, her flushed face showed that Lottie was trying hard to keep her emotions in check.

Faye looked at her curiously. ‘What do you mean?’

Lottie sighed. ‘Faye, you are twenty-five and sometimes you act like you are still a teenager. You let Michael get away with murder and I don’t know when you are going to realise that you don’t have to put up with him. I know you’ve had a sheltered life—’ She raised her hand to stop Faye’s protest. ‘No, hear me out. You weren’t brought up on the streets of Glasgow like I was – you’ve gone from a private school in Hampstead to working in the same quiet little company for years. You’ve had your father, William and me looking out for you and coming to your rescue all your life. Look, I understand better than anyone that you’ve not had to deal with the real world in many respects, but Faye, it’s time for you to grow up!’

Faye’s eyes reflected her shock and hurt at Lottie’s words. ‘But it’s not my fault that I don’t have a clue about their culture,’ she burst out. ‘You should have heard him, Lottie! “It is our responsibility to stay close to home – you don’ do that, you jus’ a slave to the white man!”’ She tried – and failed – to mimic the strong lilt of Wesley’s accent.

She sucked her teeth in complete exasperation with a loud and authentically ethnic ‘tchhh’, and stood up, smoothing back her hair.

‘Anyway, I still think he was rude,’ she said huffily. ‘I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do, for goodness sake. Just get up and go to Ghana?’

Once again, Lottie’s reply was unexpected.

‘Well, why not?’