I WAKE UP WITH AFRA’S HAND resting on my chest. I can feel her fingers on mine, but there is also something else. I remember Mohammed and the key I found in the landlady’s garden. But when I move my hands I see that I am holding a chrysanthemum.
‘You got me another gift?’ she says. There is a question in her voice.
‘Yes,’ I say.
She runs her fingers over the petals and the stem.
‘What colour is it?’ she says.
‘Orange.’
‘I like orange … I thought you would stay downstairs all night. You fell asleep and Hazim helped me up – he didn’t want to wake you.’
There is something desperate in her voice, questions that she is not asking, and I can’t bear the smell of the rose perfume on her body.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ I say, and I remove her hand from my chest, allowing the flower to drop onto the bed.
Later, after I have prayed and dressed Afra, Lucy Fisher arrives. She is in a hurry today, holding two rucksacks as if she is going away somewhere. This time there is another woman with her who I think is a translator; she is dark-skinned and round and holds an old-fashioned handbag.
We sit in the kitchen for just ten minutes. She gives me the new letter with the B&B address printed clearly on it and tells me the date and time of the asylum interview.
‘You have five days,’ she says, ‘to prepare.’
‘As if I am taking an exam,’ I say, and smile. But her face is very serious. She explains that Afra and Diomande will each have their own translators, and there will be one on hand for me too.
‘Diomande’s interview is on the same day?’ I say.
‘Yes, you can travel there together. It’s in South London.’ She continues to talk, opening a map, pointing out the location, opening another train map, explaining things to me, but I’m not really listening. I want to tell her about Diomande’s wings. I want to tell her about Mohammed and the keys, but I’m afraid of her reaction. And then, from the window, something catches my eye. White planes searing through the sky. Too many to count. I hear a whistle followed by a rumbling, as though the world has ripped open. I rush to the window: bombs are falling, planes are circling. The light is too strong, I shield my eyes. The sound is too loud, I cover my ears.
I feel a hand on my shoulder.
‘Mr Ibrahim?’ I hear.
I turn and Lucy Fisher is standing behind me.
‘Are you OK?’
‘The planes,’ I say.
‘The planes?’
I point at the white planes in the sky.
There is a pause and I hear Lucy Fisher exhale. ‘Look,’ she says, very gently. ‘Look, Mr Ibrahim. Look carefully. They are birds.’
I look again and I see seagulls. Lucy Fisher is right. There are no planes circling, only a passenger plane far away, appearing through a wisp of clouds, and above us only seagulls.
‘You see?’ she says.
I nod and she leads me back to my chair.
Lucy Fisher is a very practical woman and gets back to what she was saying almost immediately, after only a slight hesitation and a sip of water. She wants to make sure that everything is in place. And as she runs the tip of a pencil along one of the train lines, I feel grounded, calmer. She says names of places that I’ve never heard of before, and she consults the other map and I imagine the roads and the houses and the side streets and the parks and the people. I imagine what it will feel like to go deeper into the country, away from the sea.
*
In the evening we sit in the living room. The Moroccan man is helping Diomande prepare for the asylum interview. They are sitting opposite each other at the dining table, and Diomande has a piece of paper and a pen in front of him so that he can make notes.
‘I want you to explain why you leave your country,’ the Moroccan man says. And Diomande begins to talk, the same story he told us before, but this time with added detail. He mentions the names of his mother and sisters, he describes his job in Gabon and their financial situation and then he is talking about history and politics, about French colonisation, independence in 1960, civil unrest and civil war, increasing poverty. He talks about how C?te d’Ivoire was once a place of economic prosperity and stability, and how things changed after the death of the nation’s first president. He goes on and I stop listening, until the Moroccan man interrupts him.
‘I think, Diomande, that they will want to hear your story.’
‘This my story!’ Diomande insists. ‘How else will they understand if I don’t tell it?’