Sweltering heat, Saturday afternoon. We invite ourselves over to Y's house and while she goes out, we feed and water ourselves from her generous kitchen, and then we swim all afternoon. Late in the afternoon, the sun dips and B. dips her feet into the pool water, while I admire her Josephine Baker plaits.



Two days later, the same group of friends are helping me to celebrate my birthday, champagne and live music and wild Nigerian dancing. A hulk of a man enters the room where we are all partying, wide and tall, with a young, quivering face and teary eyes.

"Eh! What happened to you?" someone asks?

"I lost my wife and son," he replies, and explains that they were driving home from church when a Lebanese man in a four-wheel drive smashed into the side of their car. His wife died instantly, another boy who was also in the car soon after and his son an hour later. His face is so tender that I can hardly bear to look at him.

The rest of the people in the room start to interrogate him, presumably it will help him to vent his pain. "What were her injuries?" "Was she driving fast?" "Where is the Lebanese man?" To their horror, he answers that the police came for the man, but that later he asked for them to let him go.

"It will not bring her back," he says, though the room protests, saying it is not up to him to decide justice.