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tea with a spoon. ‘Oh, let me tell you a thing. So our new postman get the letters mix up, and our neighbour knock with them.’ Cynth cleared her throat and put on a posh English voice. ‘ “ Oh, hell-­air. Yes, these must be yours. We saw they had a black stamp .” It a letter from Lagos , Delly. Me name not on it, and me no know no one from Nigeria. “Black stamp”, I ask yuh.’
    Her laugh died. Normally we would have discussed something like this in order to remove its barb, but after the waitress neither of us had the energy.
    â€˜Tell me about the feller you were talking to at the wedding,’ she said, looking sly.
    â€˜What feller?’
    She rolled her eyes. ‘Lawrie Scott. The white one; handsome, skinny. He friend to Patrick’s Barbara. Me didn’t drink that many Dubonnets – I saw you in the kitchen.’
    â€˜Oh him. He real dotish.’
    â€˜ Hmm ,’ she said, her eyes taking on a secret glow, and I knew I’d given myself away. ‘That strange.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Patrick told Sam he been asking ’bout you.’ I shut my mouth tighter than a clam and Cynth grinned. ‘You writin’?’ she asked.
    â€˜You only start asking me that, now you’ve left.’
    â€˜I not left . On the other end of the tube map, is all.’
    â€˜Like you worried I got nothing to do these days. Don’t worry, I writin’,’ I said, but this was a lie. I had stopped entirely at this point, believing that the idea of myself as a good writer was laughable.
    â€˜Good. I glad you writin’,’ said Cynth firmly. ‘You know, there a poetry night going at the ICA,’ she went on. ‘Sam’s friend is readin’, and he a real dotish boy compare to you. Him poem be sendin’ me to sleep—­’
    â€˜I not readin’ at some meet-­up, Cynthia,’ I said, wrinkling my nose. ‘Make no mistake.’
    She sighed. ‘I not. Just that you do better, Odelle. You do better and you know it, and you do nothin ’.’
    â€˜Eh heh ,’ I said. ‘I busy. I work. You go with your G Plan and stop all this foolishness. What, because I got no husban’ feet to worry me, I better go speakin’ my poetry an’ ting?’
    Cynthia looked distraught. ‘Delly! Why you so vex? Me only try to help.’
    â€˜Me not vex.’ I drained my cup of tea. ‘It all right for you ,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me how to live.’
    Cynth was quiet after that. I should have said sorry then and there, but I didn’t. She left soon after, pinch-­faced with tears, and I felt like a monster come out of the sea to grab her legs.
    We didn’t meet up the next week, or the one after that, and she didn’t ring. Neither did I, and I felt so embarrassed, such a fool – a real dotish gyal , as Cynth no doubt described me that night to Sam. The longer she was silent, the more impossible it seemed to pick up the telephone.
    All I really wanted to say was that I missed us living together. And I was someone who was supposed to be good with words.

 
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    VI
    L awrie found me on the fifteenth of August. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and I was doing the early reception shift. Shops were still shut, the buses that moved along Charing Cross Road were less frequent. I walked on to the Mall, and the long thoroughfare, usually busy, was an empty road of greenish light. It had been raining for a week, and the paving stones were wet from a dawn downpour, trees springing in the breeze like fronds beneath the sea.
    I’d seen much worse rain than this, so I wasn’t too bothered, tucking the copy of the Express I’d bought for Pamela into my handbag to protect it from any spatters, crossing up Carlton Gardens and over the circular centre of Skelton