She said of course, and she told him she was inside Abney Park, which was going to be the site of her star turn as Mustardseed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The park was one of London’s great Victorian cemeteries, long ago allowed to grow wild and go to seed. It was a close-to-perfect setting for the play, with all the greenery and trees and whatnot.
She’d meet him at one of the cemetery’s side entrances, she said, this one on the High Street. It was not far from her parents’ house and far, far cooler. All night, her bedroom had felt like a firepit made for roasting pigs.
Tani went there at once. It wasn’t close by, but he found her patiently waiting for him at the High Street entrance, just as she said she would be. He came from the rail station a short distance north, and when she saw him, she came towards him with the bright smile that always gave him a quick burst of joy.
“Hiya,” he called to her.
“Hiya yourself. Listen to this, Tani: I got the understudy for Titania! Director rang just after you.”
“Tha’s excellent,” he told her. “Now you only got to think of a way to poison th’ other actress, eh?”
“Just what I was thinking. Are you going to kiss me, or am I going to have to manipulate you into it?”
“Don’t need manipulating, do I,” he said, and he kissed her in the way he knew she liked, softly at first, then a flick of his tongue and her lips parted.
After a moment, she said against his mouth, “Missing you, Tani.”
After another moment, he said, “Same for me.” It was, he thought, a blessing in life to know that someone was truly yours. Omorwhatever-in-Nigeria had been a potential problem to his future. But with the revelation of Abeo’s plan for the cutter, Nigeria had ceased to exist. Now there was just Sophie.
She took his hand. “Let’s go inside. We can find a place to sit, I can show you the old chapel ’s well. Most of the play’s happening round it.”
He wanted to talk, not to see. But he found he couldn’t disappoint her. He followed her inside Abney Park Cemetery, along a narrow path among graves long given over to nature through the means of shrubbery, brambles, vines, and wildflowers. Enormous trees sheltered the place, and the air had an almost tangible scent of fresh oxygen, so unusual in London. As they went along the path, Sophie continued to talk about the play, Titania, and the director while Tani made appropriate noises. When they finally reached the chapel—which was more a ruin than a chapel and he couldn’t see how this was going to work and what did it matter because he wasn’t there to talk about acting anyway—she turned to him, saying, “It’s sort of a strange idea, isn’t it. But if it works, the production will run through September.”
He did his best to appear enthusiastic. He said “Cool,” but he obviously wasn’t able to be genuine. Sophie knew this because she walked over to a nearby stone bench, sat, and said, “Tell me.”
He sat next to her—his shoulder pressing hers, he feeling comforted by the contact—and explained what he’d set up with Tiombe and how that was now impossible. He didn’t mention the failure of the deal he’d struck with his father: marriage in Nigeria to a guaranteed-to-be-a-virgin. That was finished, thrown into the rubbish—courtesy of Abeo’s finding a Nigerian cutter here in London—so Sophie didn’t need to know about Omorinsola. He understood that not telling her everything was something of a risk, but the other risk was telling her and having her desert him for not telling her from the start. Just now he needed her more than ever, because Simi had to be spirited away from Mayville Estate as soon as he could manage it.
Sophie’s eyes grew rounder as she learned about Tiombe’s absence. She said at once, “Then bring Simi to me. We’ll come up with an excuse. It’s the only answer. And it’s time we met anyway, Simi and me.” He started to make a reply to this, but she put her hand on his arm. “Tell her it’s my sister’s birthday and she’s invited.”
“Is it her birthday?”
“？’Course not.”
“So when I get Simi to your house and there’s no birthday and no party, you don’t think she’s goin to want to go straight back home? Listen, she doesn’t understand what’s going to happen to her. She doesn’t even know what being cut means.”
“How can she not know? She has to have been told. The schools are making sure of it now.”
Tani shook his head. “My mum’s home educated her, is what it is, Soph. She did the same with me, but tha’ was just infants’ school. I always thought it was cos Pa didn’t want our minds ‘polluted’ or something. I reckoned he didn’t want us to be English.”