Chapter 3: The Girl in the Photograph

I did not sleep. I lay on top of the guesthouse blanket with my shoes on, in case I had to run, and listened to the fan click all night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my father’s face in the living room, saying, "I believe the evidence."

At six, the sky outside went grey. At seven, I washed my face in a sink that sputtered brown for a few seconds before it ran clear. At eight, I checked my banking app, though I already knew what it would say.

It was still there: the transfer from my father’s account, timestamped 9:14 p.m. the previous evening. I stared at that time. At 9:14, I was peeling plantain in the kitchen, and Vanessa was on the lsofa, laughing at something on her phone.

My phone was in my hand when I thought about it. Whoever sent that money did it while I was in the house. But how, when I hadn’t touched my phone for twenty minutes?

I didn’t have an answer. I took my bag, paid for the room, and walked to King Street.

The café was a narrow place squeezed between a pharmacy and a phone-accessories shop, with six tables and a ceiling fan that worked better than mine had. I arrived at 9:40, early enough to choose a table with my back to the wall.

At exactly ten, a woman walked in.

She was in her sixties, small and straight-backed, in a green wrapper and a white blouse, with grey hair tucked under a neat scarf. She did not look around the room. She looked straight at me, as if she had known where I would sit.

“Amelia.”

I stood up. “Grace?”

She came to the table slowly. Up close, she had the tired eyes of someone who had not rested properly in years. For a moment she just looked at my face, and her mouth trembled.

“You look so much like her,” she whispered.

“Like who?”

“Sit, my dear. Please.”

We sat. A waiter came, and she ordered tea without asking what I wanted. When he left, she folded her hands on the table.

“You came alone.”

“You told me to.”

“Good.” She glanced at the door once. “I have been trying to reach you for three years, Amelia. Your father made it very difficult.”

“How do you know my father?”

“I know your father better than he would like.” She said it without anger, like someone mentioning an old injury. “I nursed your grandmother until the day she died. Ruth Coker was my friend for thirty years.”

My throat tightened. “My grandmother died when I was five.”

“No.”

The word landed softly, and it was the worst thing anyone had said to me all week.

“Ruth died eight years ago,” Grace said. “You were fourteen. She was alive for nine years after the day your parents told you she was gone.”

“That’s not possible. They would have—”

“They would have what? Told you? They moved from the house, They changed your school. Ruth came to your gate in Ibadan with a bag of oranges for your fifth birthday and found strangers living there. She spent the rest of her life looking for you.”

I couldn’t speak. I could hear my own pulse.

“Why?” I said at last. “Why would my parents lie about something like that?”

Grace opened her handbag. She did not hurry. She took out a worn brown envelope and laid it on the table between us, then rested her hand on it.

“Before I show you, I need you to understand something. I am not here to hurt you. Ruth would never forgive me if I did this carelessly.”

“Just show me.”

She slid out a photograph. It was another one from the same afternoon as the picture on my phone. My father stood outside the hospital doors in a pale blue shirt, young and thin and frightened-looking. Beside him was Mama Ruth. And in his arms, wrapped in a white blanket, was a baby.

This time, the camera caught something the first photo hadn’t. A nurse stood at the edge of the frame holding a second bundle, wrapped in a plain yellow cloth. My father wasn’t looking at his baby. He was looking at the nurse.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“A nurse named Patience. She was paid to hold the other child.” Grace’s voice dropped. “Your father looked at that yellow bundle because he knew what was inside it.”

“What was inside it?”

“A baby who had already died.”

The fan turned above us. Somewhere behind the counter, a blender screamed, then stopped.

“Your mother gave birth to a daughter on that night, Amelia. She was stillborn. Ruth was in the corridor when the doctor came out, and she saw your father’s face. She said it was the face of a man who had decided something he couldn’t take back.”

I shook my head slowly. “No. No, you’re saying—”

“I am saying,” Grace said, very gently, “that the baby your father is holding in this photograph was not his child.”

I pushed my chair back so hard it scraped. A man at the next table looked up. I sat down again because my legs wouldn’t hold me.

“You’re lying.”

“I wish I were.”

“I have my father’s nose. Everyone says—”

“Everyone says what people want to hear.” She slid the photograph closer. “Look at the back again. Ruth wrote it herself, three days after she found the first proof.”

I turned it over. Under the blue line I had already seen, in smaller letters, was a date and one more sentence.

I will find her mother.

My phone buzzed against the table. Both of us flinched.

It was Vanessa.

Amelia, please come home. Dad is lying to you. Whatever that woman told you, DON’T believe it. They’re going to hurt you.

I looked up. Grace had gone pale. She was looking at my screen, and I realised she had read it upside down.

“Amelia,” she said quietly. “I never told anyone I was meeting you.”

I felt the blood drain

from my face. “Then how does Vanessa know about you?”