And an entry a few pages later when things had progressed.
What kind of love is this for a girl, never to be seen walking out with her man, to be sneaking to my room at night like ours is a transaction? Yet I lie in my bed each night waiting for the sound of the door opening. I go through my lectures in a daze. I no longer visit Thomas. I saw my results and was neither pleased nor displeased by them. It is only Bronwen I think of.
Feverish as his tone was, Francis Aggrey’s affair with my mother was not a grand passion. If he wanted to stay in touch, he could simply have written a letter. He had rejected my mother. There was nothing to suggest he would not reject me tomorrow. Any expectations must be tempered.
Kofi Adjei might demand proof. Adrian had warned me of this. The diary, the photograph given to my mother, even my jawline, might suggest that my story was true. But I should prepare for a DNA test. Men in my father’s position were besieged by people like me, people making claims, people asking for something.
“But I don’t want his money,” I said.
“You’re still asking for something. Your very existence demands an explanation.”
I dialed Rose. She didn’t pick up. I went down to the lobby. The bar was closed. The doormen had gone home.
“Is everything all right, madam?” It was the lone receptionist. She had been slumped against the front desk, but now she smiled and stood up straight.
“Yes. I just wanted to sit here for a minute.”
They’d switched off the fountain. Without the water pumping you could see to the bottom of the marble basin. It was streaked with limescale.
“Are you waiting for someone, madam?”
“No.”
I chose an armchair made in the Chesterfield style—stuffed leather, sunken navel buttons. The fountain came on. It spurted the colors of the Union Jack, red, white, and blue. I sat back and closed my eyes.
“Good morning, madam.” It was the receptionist standing over me. “I think you’ll get more rest in your room.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost six a.m. Guests will be coming down soon.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I have an important meeting today. I was restless upstairs. Nervous, a bit.”
“It will go well, madam.” She beamed at me. The staff here were trained to smile.
“Thank you. Do you have children?” I asked.
“Not yet. But, please God, one day I will have some.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, madam,” she said.
“Anna. That’s my name.”
“We are not allowed to address guests by their first names.” Protocol was never far off in the Palace Hotel.
“I’m sorry. Madam is fine,” I said. “I wanted to ask if it’s taboo in Bamanaian culture for a man to abandon his child?”
“Are men praised for leaving their children in Europe and America?” I was pleased by the jab of sarcasm. It was the first real note she had sounded.
“No, of course not, but is there some special stigma? Let’s say he doesn’t want to marry the mother of the child and so he abandons them?”
She considered for a moment. Her unguarded face was serious, almost stern.
“We have a saying: no child is a bastard. Even if the father and mother are fighting, it is not the business of the child. A man must take care of his children. How are things over there?”
“The same. We call it child support.”
An elevator pinged. The first guests were descending. The smile returned to the receptionist’s face.
“I should go up,” I said. “Thank you. I can’t remember your name.”
“Christina.”
In my room I slept for two hours, then woke up and showered. I wore the dress specially chosen: peach cotton with cap sleeves and a fitted waist, smart but not formal. It made me look young, young enough to still need a father.
What did I want from him? What do children want from absent fathers? It was too late for any encounters with Francis Aggrey to be formative. I was too much of an adult for him to erase the confusion of my childhood. And yet, if I truly believed this, why was I here?
At 9:00 the telephone rang. It was Adrian.
“Anna, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Kofi’s secretary just called. We’re going to have to reschedule to next Monday. He decided, at the last minute, to honor an invitation to the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa.”
“I suppose I could have followed him to Ethiopia.”
Adrian and I were outside the slave fort in Cove Coast. We had driven an hour over roads crowded by dense forest. The forests were not empty, Adrian assured me. In their depths lived the Bonoma people, whose lives had not changed significantly in the past five hundred years. They were protected by UNESCO, along with Stonehenge and the Great Barrier Reef. In other words, they were doomed.