A voice rose from behind her. “You alright, dear?” The grey-haired woman stood a few yards away, a look of concern on her blanched face. The poodle was running around a tuft of parched grass, barking.
It struck Lipe that it was the first time someone in Norwich had asked her that question in its actual, literal sense of enquiring if she was physically well. “Yes, I’m alright,” she said. The woman seemed unconvinced. She glanced from the glaring NO SWIMMING sign to Lipe, clearly deciding whether to believe her or not. Lipe found her behaviour amusing. Until she noticed two other people on the shore. A boy and a girl, both blonde, both bespectacled, both students by their worn knapsacks. They regarded her with the same expression as the grey-haired woman.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” the boy asked. “Because I totally know what it’s like to feel unwanted.”
The girl said, “Just shut it,” and glared at him.
A low throbbing started in Lipe’s temples. A suicide intervention. This was the point of the gathering. Her amusement morphed into a scorching embarrassment. “I’m fine,” she said. It came out like a choke. She was looking at the man who had joined the group. A remarkably tall and limber man with skin the lush brown of a walnut kernel. She knew he was Nigerian. Everything about him, from his assured presence to his effortless cool, gave off the innate arrogance of a Nigerian. “There was something in the water,” Lipe said when she willed her mouth to work with her head.
The girl nodded slowly, as if absorbing an absurd story. Lipe hoped they would never meet again.
“You gave me quite a scare, dear,” the gray-haired woman said. “Do you live around here?”
Lipe pointed in the direction of Suffolk Terrace. “Yes, over there.”
The Nigerian man watched her all the while, his face inscrutable. Then the poodle began to lick her suede boots, and he tried and failed to stifle a smile.
“Will you two take her home?” The gray-haired woman asked the boy and the girl who were speaking in low tones.
“I’ll go with her,” the Nigerian man said before they could reply.
Lipe wanted to refuse his offer, but there was, in his tone, a casual compassion she was surprised to find that she needed. As they walked away, Lipe heard the poodle whimper.
They didn’t speak until he gave her his tartan scarf. Lipe wrapped it around her neck, catching the dull scent of musk.
“My name is Dafe,” he said.
“I’m Lipe.”
“Lipe.” He pronounced Lipe with a slight ‘i’ at the end. “Are you Bini?”
Lipe had been mistaken, over the years, to be Igbo, Yoruba even, but nobody had ever mistaken her as Bini. “I’m from Obudu.”
“Ah. The cattle ranch. Your complexion fooled me. It’s not light but not dark either.”
She could tell, from the subtle tinge of a British accent, that he had lived in England for several years. Even so his polite restraint would have given him away.
“You’re a student, right?”
“Yes. I’m doing a Masters in Development Economics. I moved here from Lagos last year. UEA wasn’t my first choice but I chose it in the end because it won the Queen’s Anniversary Prize and…” She was babbling to a stranger. “Are you a student?” He looked older than most students. Perhaps he was doing a PhD or a fellowship.
“No. I’m on my way to my cousin’s place on South Park Avenue. I usually take this route since it’s shorter.”
“I see. Anyway,” she continued. “I just want you to know that there was a misunderstanding back there. I’m not going to kill myself anytime soon.”
“I know.”
He spoke as if he believed her. They were in front of Suffolk Terrace. In the late morning brightness, the gray concrete walls lacked the stately charm that had thrilled Lipe on her first day in Norwich. A bunny dashed across the path.
“This is where we say goodbye,” she said, and laughed a too-shrill laugh because he was looking right at her, and she couldn’t hold his stare. He asked if he could check on her later. A balmy lightness flared inside her, tapering when he removed a mobile phone from his pocket. Of course he meant call, not visit. She never gave a man her number shortly after meeting him; but standing in front of her scuffed building, a new atmosphere of permission sprung up.
“I’m sure your cousin is wondering where you are,” she said afterwards.
“That one?” Dafe laughed. “He probably hasn’t noticed my absence.” He still watched her. She wished he would stop and she wished he wouldn’t. What she knew for sure was that she didn’t want him to leave. He turned around. It was then that she remembered his scarf.
He smiled and said, “Keep it,” when she made to remove it, and walked down the winding road, away from her.
* * *
Her mobile phone rang just before she showered. “Hello,” she said. “Hello, this is Dafe.”
It had been five days since they met. She was expecting his call. Yet at the sound of his voice her breath stalled. “Dafe, hi.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“I’m good. I would have called earlier but I figured you needed some space after that incident.”
She felt, of all things, inordinately moved that he had explained himself when he didn’t have to. “Okay.”
“So how is school?” he asked.
“Just there,” Lipe replied, and then couldn’t think of anything else to say.
A microwave bleeped in the background. “You know what? I’m on my way out now. Let’s talk later, okay?”
She lingered after he hung up, oddly bereft, her bathrobe belt loosening from its knot.
In the library the next day, he called again.
“Is this a good time to talk?” he asked.
“Yes.” She got up from her desk and moved to the stairwell.
“So what have you been up to?”
She was going to say “nothing,” had even opened her mouth to form the words. Instead she told him about her visit to Norwich Cathedral, about the mosaics of stained glass, the columns curving into arcs.