“He’ll explain everything.”
The rain had stopped, and the room was quiet except for our breathing. My half sister was breathing like air had been trapped in her lungs for hours, like a whale surfacing. I turned my back to her and took a book down from a shelf, a hardback copy of Great Expectations. Its pages sprang open, swollen with moisture, like ticks with blood. Mold grew over the frontispiece, mottling the “i” and “n” in Dickens. I put it back in its place.
Kofi arrived at a stroll. I imagined him pausing at the door, willing himself to appear relaxed. Over his career, he had mastered entrances and exits.
“Afua, I see you and Anna have met,” he said.
“Who is she?”
“No greeting for your father?”
“I will not greet you. This is a disgrace. How can you bring her here at this crucial moment?”
“You are forgetting yourself, Afua,” he said, lowering his voice. The effect on my half sister was immediate. She hung her head.
“I’m sorry, Papa, but you are here with this . . . this woman who is young enough to be your daughter.”
“She is my daughter,” he said.
Afua’s eyes twitched between Kofi and me.
“What are you saying?”
“Afua, this is your sister Anna. Your older sister.”
“Papa, what are you saying?” She looked ready to charge but I was not sure who she would rather trample first.
“I know. It came as a shock for me, too,” he said. There was mockery in his voice. He was enjoying her discomfort. “Sit down if you need to.”
“But she is a half-caste,” Afua said.
“What a keen eye you have. Her mother was white. We met when I was a student in London.”
“How long have you known? How long?”
Kofi drew himself up. “Since when do you demand explanations from me?” His voice boomed and Afua flinched.
“I’m sorry, Papa.” She curtsied. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
I should have left the room and given them their privacy.
“I don’t see the problem,” Kofi said. “A new sister. There should be rejoicing, not recrimination. Go and lie down until your mind has grasped the good news. Then join us for dinner. Come, Anna. There is something I want to show you.”
Afua gathered her kaftan robes and swept out of the room. She would never like me. She was proud like our father, and I had witnessed her shaming. Her anger would turn on me first, instead of finding its more obvious object: Kofi.
“She is most like me in temperament,” he said.
“How did she find out?”
“A blog. We shut it down, but a photograph is circulating on the Internet. A picture of us in the golf cart. Innocent enough, but people these days have such filthy minds.”
Panic welled at the thought of my face multiplied across a million screens, mistaken for a mistress. That was the only explanation for an anonymous woman being beside a powerful man.
“Don’t worry. It will blow over. A real scandal will emerge and you’ll be forgotten.”
“But who did you say I was?” I asked.
“It’s not necessary to put out a statement over online gossip but, of course, if I were asked a direct question by a reputable journalist, I would say you are my daughter. Which is what you are. Come,” he said. “Let me show you the lake.”
“I need to get back to London.”
“The matter is over, Anna. Forget it. Please come with me.”
After days of neglect time had suddenly appeared in his schedule. He would have been an inconsistent father, appearing between rallies and speeches, a father only when it was convenient. I had been better off with the quiet, steady presence of my mother.
Outside, the sun was back and the rain was making its reverse journey to the sky. Sweat streamed from my face, pooled in my clavicles, gathered in the folds of my knees. My father owned a palace, a zoo, a plane, and now a lake. We walked through a part of Gbadolite that was wilder than the rest. Damp grass tickled my bare ankles. Wet plants slapped my arms.
It was a large lake, so large that figures on the opposite bank would appear small. Trees hung over the water, their reflections broken by the ripples of small fish swimming beneath the surface. The air was fresh. The world was cleansed after the rain.
“Lake Makgadi. It used to be sacred for the villagers. We enclosed it in the compound because of some practices.”
“Practices?”
“Relating to the supernatural. Some were harmless. Women believe if you drink from here, you will be cured of infertility. The same as the waters at Lourdes.”