Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster

shit makes me cry. She says: ‘I don’t think you are the person my son thinks you are, but he cares about you and I thought it only courteous to let you know how he is.’ She signs herself: Toyin Adebayo.
    I cannot think through our summer in steps – this happened, then that happened. It’s all one big jumble of emotion with near-photographic flashes of scenes. The two of us zipping along the motorway with wind in my ears, plunging into a field of oilseed rape, or sitting alongside a café by a canal and watching a canalboat go past with cheery folk waving to us from the deck. It had been a dizzy summer in which I screeched myself dry with the very energy of living. And I pulled him along with me, never letting him disbelieve he was my forever. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew I wasn’t ready for what he wanted.
    It’s taken me a while to recognise different degrees of toughness in people. After Kamal, I assumed that everyone must get – how did Aunty K put it? – a turn at the ‘University of Hard Knocks’, where you get a degree whether or not you realise you are enrolled. It’s up to those with nous to make sure the degree’s not a third-class, lacking in honours. I survived Kamal. Therefore, I assumed Akim would survive me.
    Mrs Adebayo said, ‘He’d written to me to say he’d met the girl he wanted to marry and that he was staying on as long as necessary so he would come home with you.’ I knew he meant what he was saying with his eyes. I lied to myself and steered the conversation away whenever he tried to start the seriousness. I did not want anything said. That summer was my comma and life was going to continue after.

5
Denial
    It’s always easy to get work in a decrepit government, so I make my way back to The Gambia. Home. Away from tired, drizzly weather and into intense, sun-drenching heat. If I had a tail when I left four years earlier, it isn’t wagging now.
    I stay with my mother for the few months it takes me to find a job and a house. She does not like me thinking about moving out, planning to leave her on her own again.
    She complains, ‘You’ve come back with all these new ideas. In my day, daughters left their mother’s house to get married.’
    â€˜Well, we left it to study,’ I remind her.
    Reuben comes to visit. I discourage a further visit by sitting on the edge of my seat, by excusing myself for needing to hurry out to see my Aunt K as promised. But by the time I move out, he’s become a regular visitor, and I sometimes pop in to find him ensconced in the sitting room, chatting with my mother.
    I find myself incapable of expanding my social circle. I tee off rendezvous with old school friends. Amina lives in Italy and comes home on holiday. She arrives with energy and, briefly, amuses me with her relentless analysis of the relationships around us, peppered with caustic comments on the nature of social pressure. Moira, I find, has descended into a mist of literal interpretations of the Bible and evaluates her friendships with a proselytising eye, pressing pamphlets on me, along with invitations to her church. The person I see most often is Remi, with whom it’s easy to drift back into the ease of our early friendship. She asks me to be godmother when her daughter, Joy, is born.
    My mother is pleased with our renewed friendship. She holds Remi up as an example to us, her daughters. One Saturday afternoon, Aunt K comes to visit at the time she knows the food will already be cooked, dished up into matching dishes and lounging, hot for the eating, on our dining table.
    â€˜I came to see you, Ayodele,’ she says as she walks in, ‘but. . .’
    â€˜. . . you wanted to see my mother’s shackpa  soup more,’ I finish her sentence.
    â€˜You know me too well,’ she laughs, as she settles herself into a chair. She uncovers the first dish and serves herself two