Stepping out of a bush taxi—after several months’ absence—I spotted Fern standing by the side of the road, apparently waiting for me, right on time, as if there were a bus stop and a timetable. I was happy to see him. But he proved to be not in the mood for greetings or pleasantries, falling in step with me and immediately launching into a low-voiced debriefing, so that before I’d even reached Hawa’s door I, too, was burdened with the rumor presently gripping the village: that Aimee was in the process of organizing a visa, that Lamin would soon move permanently to New York. “Well, is it the case?” I told him the truth: I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. I’d had an exhausting time in London, holding Aimee’s hand through a difficult winter, personally and professionally, and I was feeling as a consequence particularly averse to her brand of personal drama. The album she’d spent a grim British January and February recording—which should have been released about now—had instead been abandoned, the consequence of a brief, ugly affair with her young producer, who then took his songs with him. Only a few years earlier a break-up like this would have been only a minor setback to Aimee, hardly worth half a day in bed watching old episodes of long-forgotten Aussie soaps—The Flying Doctors, The Sullivans—something she did in moments of extreme vulnerability. But I had noticed a change in her, her personal armor was no longer what it once was. Leaving, and being left—these operations now affected her far more deeply, they were no longer water off a duck’s back to her, she was actually wounded, and took no meetings with anyone except Judy for almost a month, barely leaving the house and asking me several times to sleep in her room, just by her bed, on the floor, as she did not want to be alone. During this period of purdah I had assumed, for better or worse, that nobody was closer to her than me. Listening to Fern, my first feeling was that I had been betrayed, but the more I considered it I saw that this was not quite right: it was not deceit but a form of mental separation. I was comfort and company for her in a stalled moment, while, in another compartment of her heart, she was busily planning for the future, with Lamin—and Judy was her co-conspirator in that. Instead of being annoyed at Aimee I found myself frustrated by Fern: he was trying to get me involved, but I didn’t want any part of it, it was inconvenient for me, I had my trip already all planned out, and the more Fern spoke the further I saw the itinerary plotted in my head slipping away from me. A visit to Kunta Kinteh Island, a few afternoons at the beach, two nights in one of the fancy hotels in town. Aimee gave me almost no annual leave, I had to be resourceful, stealing holidays where I could.
“OK, but why not take Lamin with you? He’ll talk to you. With me he is like a clam.”
“To the hotel? Fern—no. Terrible idea.”
“On your trip then. You cannot go out there by yourself anyway, you’ll never find it.”