SIXTEEN

January 26, Heathrow, London

Duty free shops in US airports were okay, but Josephine preferred the magic of the European and UK versions. She picked up Belgian chocolates, German pastries, French perfumes, English treacle tarts, a couple of high-end handbags, and gifts her two girls had specifically requested.

Then she settled into the opulent British Airways business class lounge to wait for her flight, helping herself to breakfast, coffee, and sinful desserts.

Like other well-off people, Josephine was always aware of a level of comfort wrapping around her like a warm, waterproof coat impervious to the elements. Through James, the Akrofis were blessed with affluence. He provided for them with a resolute sense of duty. So, it wasn’t without some guilt that Josephine thought about the extraordinary, lust-drenched time she had spent with Gordon four nights ago. But she rationalized it as a one-off in a foreign land, not at all germane to her “real life” in Ghana. She wasn’t having a true affair. Before Gordon, she hadn’t had any good sex in several years. James wasn’t exactly the poster boy for virility—not anymore, at least, and he would never pleasure her orally the way Gordon had done. Ghanaian men had a generally lousy reputation when it came to foreplay, and as for postcoital cuddling, that would happen when snow fell at the equator. Regina had certainly known what she was doing when she married Gordon, Josephine reflected.

In addition, whereas Gordon had expressed a wish to meet Kwame, James had shunned the child, probably because his ingrained traditional beliefs about children like Kwame—“devil children” and the like. As Josephine had told Gordon, this was the most wounding aspect of her marriage to James.

Josephine had two life regrets, both related to childbirth. Kwame was the first. That was more of a misfortune than a mistake. In the first postpartum weeks and months, it wasn’t clear anything was amiss, but by a year old, Kwame had missed several milestones. He didn’t return anyone’s gaze, and sometimes he had bizarre bouts of high-pitched, intense screaming.

Their pediatrician brought up the specter of autism one day, from which James and Josephine recoiled with horror and outright dismissal. As many well-off Ghanaians do when faced with a dire medical question, James and Josephine took off with Kwame to the UK for an evaluation and second opinion on the child’s conditions. After administering a battery of tests, the Harley Street consultant pronounced the verdict: “I’m afraid I have rather bad news, Mr. and Mrs. Akrofi,” he told them with perfect, upper-class inflection. “Your little boy is autistic.”

The kind of care Kwame would need—physical, psychological, emotional—for the best possible outcome for his life was barely available in Ghana. Accra had three autism centers at the most. So, the Akrofis never brought Kwame back with them to Ghana. Josephine’s brother, who had lived in England for decades and was a UK citizen, agreed to become the boy’s legal guardian. Even though it was for the best that Kwame stayed in England, the pain Josephine felt about not being able to take care of her own son never really left her.

The second lament was without question a life mistake. Josephine had been very young back then and she didn’t realize—or was in denial over the possibility—that she was pregnant until the fifth month. She went on to have the baby boy, but it was really Josephine’s sister who ended up rearing him. Josephine rarely saw him or his father. She had never revealed to James that she had had a child out of wedlock. She was ashamed of it. As far as Josephine was concerned, that would remain a secret forever.

Her other two children with James were a success story, however. Two girls, utterly brilliant throughout their schooling, one finishing law and the other starting medical school. A doctor and a lawyer in the family. Nothing could be more perfect than that.