Melissa and Michael also planned to take their children ‘home’ one day, to both Nigeria and Jamaica, but these were expensive, complicated trips (multiple vaccinations, high flight costs out of school term times, a visit to the Nigeria High Commission in Northumberland Avenue, where you would have to wait in a hot, overcrowded basement for possibly

Sylvie kept thinking she would break away, turn a corner, and walk back to Julia. She hadn’t meant to leave with Kent. She’d spoken to him in front of the apartment building, the sun beating down on them. She’d planned to hand over the news like a bowl of bad apples and then back away.