Ines Boateng's flat was on the fourth floor of a building with a lift that worked on alternate Sundays, and so they climbed.

"This is cardio," Pinky said at the second landing.

"It's a staircase."

"It's the stairs of *judgment*." She shifted the bag on her shoulder, which held a bottle of ginger beer, a cake in a tin, and a bunch of tulips whose stems she had been trimming with her teeth in the taxi. She had dressed for the occasion in a yellow cardigan and her least frightening lipstick, and had been rehearsing a speech about how she was Nia's colleague, not her *boss*, since Toronto Transit had announced the 504 was delayed.

"She's going to adore you."

"She's going to *assess* me."

"Yes. And then she's going to adore you."

On the fourth floor the corridor smelled of fried onions and bleach. Nia knocked twice, a long rap and a short one, the code she'd used since she was twelve. The door was open before the second knock finished.

"You are late," said Ines.

"It's six."

"I said five-thirty with my face." Ines's eyes went over Nia, once, a mother's quick pat-down for injuries, and then moved on with deliberate politeness to the tall, anxious woman behind her with the tulips. "And this is the friend."

"Priyanka," said Pinky, and held out the flowers in both hands, like an offering at a temple. "Pinky. Everyone says Pinky. Please say Pinky. Mrs. Boateng, it's an honour, I've heard so much about the stew, I've been fasting since Thursday."

Ines took the tulips. She examined them for a long moment. "You cut these with your teeth."

"I did. I apologise."

"No. It shows you are a person who acts when something is needed." She turned and walked into the flat with the flowers held out in front of her like a banner. "Come. Wash hands. Sit. There is jollof, and there is kontomire, and there is fish, and there is chicken if the fish is a problem, and there is a small tomato thing that is just for me."

They ate for two hours.

It was, Nia thought afterwards, the loveliest and most frightening meal of her life. The table was an old folding one with a plastic cloth. The chairs didn't match. Three lamps, none of them bright. In the corner a television was on with the sound off, showing a quiz show where a woman was visibly failing to name a river. Ines served in great, grave ladles, and watched Pinky's plate the way a pilot watches a gauge.

"You have a husband?" she asked.

"No, Mrs. Boateng."

"A boyfriend?"

"I have a business partner and a lot of followers."

"Followers." Ines considered the word. "Like a church?"

"Sort of. It's mostly lunch."

"Who does the cooking?"

"I don't cook. I review."

"You say what is wrong with other people's food."

"And what's right!"

"That is a very easy job," said Ines, and gave her another spoon of rice. "My daughter says you run the company. That you are a clever woman who is also a fool with money. She says this with love."

Pinky stopped, with her fork halfway. "She says that?"

"She says you spent the rent on a ring light."

"It was a *good* ring light."

"She says you put the plant in the office on the payroll."

"Gerald is a *contractor*."

Ines laughed. It was a sudden rich bark that startled Nia, and left her heart oddly sore. She hadn't heard it for weeks. The shop was too quiet, and the telephone calls were too careful, and she had forgotten what her mother sounded like when she was happy.

By nine Pinky was asleep on the sofa under a crocheted blanket, with a plate of leftover fish on her chest and her mouth slightly open. Ines had drawn the blanket up with a brisk tuck and said "She is too thin," in a tone of tragic forgiveness.

They did the dishes in the narrow kitchen, Ines washing and Nia drying, shoulder to shoulder. The window was open. Somewhere below, a radio was playing highlife, low and warm.

"She is good for you," said Ines.

"She is a lot."

"You need a lot." A plate came out of the suds and went into Nia's hands. "You are a person who takes up too little room. I used to say it to Adwoa. I said, that child will fold herself in half to avoid hurting a chair."

Nia dried the plate. She dried it for a long time.

"Mum."

"Mm."

"Did you ever know a woman called Vivienne?"

The tap ran. Ines's hands moved in the water, in a slow circle, around a bowl. They did not stop. They did not even slow. And yet something, a tension in the long brown forearms, a change in the line of her back, made Nia feel the way you feel at the edge of a platform when a fast train goes through.

"Vivienne," said Ines.

"A lawyer. Okoro-Lasch."

"Why do you ask?"

"Her name's on a form at the tower. I wondered."

"Ah." The bowl came out of the water. She set it on the rack with a neat little click. "Yes. I knew her. A long time ago." She took a towel and dried her hands, thoroughly, finger by finger. "When Adwoa was sick. You remember. The year before she died."

"I was fourteen."

"Fourteen. The treatments. They were not covered, and the shop was not making enough, and I was ashamed." Ines folded the towel in thirds. "One of the families I had worked for, when I was young, they had a lawyer. A good woman. A hard woman. She heard about it and she sent some money. As a kindness. For a small thing I had done for them, once, a long time ago. Every month, for a while. I did not like to take it. But Adwoa was very ill."

"For a while."

"Yes."

"How long?"

A pause. "Some time."

It was almost perfect. That was what Nia would remember, later, in the dark, in her own bed, with the ceiling doing its slow tilt. It was almost perfect. It had the right detail and the right shame; it had Adwoa in it, and the treatments, and the hospital smell. It was exactly the kind of lie she would have told herself, if she had been Ines, and loved Nia, and been very tired. Every piece of it was true except for the shape.

*Every month, for a while.* There had been pink slips in a drawer going back eighteen years. Adwoa had been sick for one.

"I never knew that," she said.

"Why would you? You were a child."

"I was fourteen."

"You were a child," said Ines, firmly. "Let a child be a child." She put a hand to Nia's cheek. It was warm and slightly damp, and smelled of dish soap and thread. "It was a kindness. Do not go looking for it to be a bigger thing."

Nia turned her face into the palm. For one moment she nearly said it: *I saw the drawer.* She had the sentence in her mouth. It was only five words long.

Instead she said, "All right."

"Good girl."

---

At the end of the night, while Ines wrapped the leftovers in foil for Mr. Dhillon downstairs, Nia went to wake Pinky and found her already sitting up, blinking, with a crochet pattern printed on one cheek.

"Where am I?"

"Ghana."

"Oh. Good." Pinky rubbed her face and looked round the room with the serene attention of a person with no idea of anything. Her eyes landed on the shelf beside the television. "Oh, that's a nice photograph."

"Which?"

"That one. Wait." She was already on her feet. A small row of frames stood on the bookcase, among china dogs and a plastic Virgin Mary. Most faced the room. One at the end had been turned to face the wall. "Why is that one backwards? It's like an insult."

"Pinky —"

"Is it a bad ex? Did she turn it as a *punishment*?" She grinned and picked it up, and flipped it round with a flourish.

Nia had a split second in which to see it.

A woman. Perhaps thirty. In a green summer dress, on a lawn, laughing at whoever held the camera with her whole face, her head thrown back so that you saw the long curve of her throat. A glossy fall of dark brown hair. Long hands, raised, as though about to catch something. On her wrist a thin gold watch that Nia knew, because she had worn it, last, in a dream, in a bed in Scarborough, a decade ago.

*Annelise.* The word surfaced from under the water like a drowned thing.

"Give it to me," said Ines, from the doorway.

She had not raised her voice. But the foil package dropped from her hand and landed on the carpet, and something in her face had gone grey and stricken, and in the soft yellow light she looked suddenly old.

"I'm sorry," Pinky stammered. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean —"

"Give it."

Pinky gave it. Ines took the frame in both hands, turned it face to the wall, and set it down on the shelf with a firmness that left no further discussion. Then she bent, retrieved the foil, and straightened with her back to both of them.

"It is late," she said. "You will want to go home."

There was nothing to say. They said it very gently, and left.

In the taxi Pinky cried, quietly and thoroughly, with her face against the window. Nia held her hand, and watched the lights of Eglinton go by, and did not cry herself, because she was thinking about a green summer dress.

She had not seen her mother's face in eighteen years. In the half-second before Ines took the frame, she had recognised it at once, without thought, the way you recognise your own voice on a recording. And with the recognition had come something else, small and cold and absolutely clear.

Ines had not turned that photograph to the wall to hide it from Nia.

She had turned it to the wall, every day, so that she herself would not have to look.