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Better versions of myself in a suit facing Piccadilly Circus tube, waiting to pick up another version of myself from a curved, red carriage. Another dumping an attempted suicide version in a grey bin bag, me walking a black tightrope in the sky, naked. In this life, my mother would never see those versions of me but maybe all they needed was her gaze from the next life, to stop them jumping into the orange sea at the horizon.
    I picked up the brass head, weighed it. I ran a finger over the high, proud forehead, its broad nose, wondering how many lives it had seen with its defiant expression. I placed it back on the table.
    I murmured, “I’ve never seen this.”
    Mervyn leaned forward, smiled reassuringly. “It’s just an art piece, she probably kept it among her personal things.”
    A tiny drop of sweat ran down my back. “If you had something like this, you’d display it though wouldn’t you?”
    â€œNot necessarily, I have lots of things I’ve collected I haven’t displayed.”
    â€œHmmm, it’s just odd I’ve never seen it. And £80,000? Where did she get that kind of money?” I felt flat, dispossessed, thinking of all the ways I’d wanted to get money and nice things, but never like this. Never without her here to help me squander some of my new found glory.
    â€œShe used to own a flat in Brixton, sold it a while back now.”
    â€œOh my God! Something else I didn’t know about. Was this woman even my mother?” My hands became wet cloths I wrung.
    â€œI’m sure she had her reasons.”
    â€œYup, and she’s taken them to the grave. I have no idea what to do with her money.”
    â€œYou know that youth project in that abandoned building I volunteer for? Why don’t we run something there together?”
    I shrugged, slightly surprised at the ease and speed with which he found something for me to do with the money. He continued, “There’s lots of space and you could incorporate photography into it. Think about it,” he advised.
    I stood abruptly, slid the diary back over. “Will you hold onto that? Just for a little while,” I instructed.
    â€œOf course.” He walked round the table, hands stuffed inside his pockets. I took off my cardigan and wrapped the brass head in it, placed it carefully inside my rucksack. Mervyn hugged me again and right then I wanted to tell him about the young woman I’d followed from the flower stall, who’d oddly enough led me to him as if I didn’t already know where he was. But I thought better of it. He already seemed to think my behaviour was strange. I didn’t want him worrying even more. I said goodbye, feeling the familiar tug of my strap on my shoulder. On my way out, I noticed a red ant crawling in a step I’d taken. I watched it drag my step to a corner and feed on its memories.
    In my bag I felt Marpessa and the brass head in a loose embrace. I crossed the gauntlet the road threw at vehicles daily, passed through ghosts that signalled when traffic lights stopped working. Could you leap from all the tipping points in your life at once? In the distance, a breeze carried new beginnings in unsealed white envelopes that hovered just beyond my reach.

Monkey Dey Work Bamboo Dey Chop
    Blessings sometimes travelled in pairs. And when they did, especially during a rainy season, there was a unanimous decision by the Gods to give way to them through the traffic of the living. They floated above the still moist beds of earth where cassava plants slept, bounced off the hard backs of restless tortoises in humid unforgiving nights, joined the march of ants under remnants of partially eaten sweet wild berries and clung to the tiny wings of fireflies that appeared as small bursts of light in the belly of night air.
    When they finally deposited themselves on Adesua’s head on the morning of the ceremony at the palace, the only indication that they had