Long Distance

The car smelled of the vanilla air freshener Ada kept clipped to the dashboard a small, deliberate comfort in a life that didn't always offer them. She sat in the Sunridge car park for seven minutes after her shift, engine running, letting the heat build before she drove home. It was a habit she had developed without noticing, this pause between one version of herself and the other.

She picked up her phone. Three missed calls from Mummy.

Ada exhaled slowly, the way she did before difficult conversations, and called back.

It rang twice before her mother's voice filled the car warm and full and slightly too loud, the way it always was on W******p calls, as though she believed volume could close the distance between Birmingham and Enugu.

Ada! I have been calling you since.

I was on shift, Mummy. You know I can't have my phone

Since morning I called. Since morning.

It is nine o'clock at night here.

A pause the kind that carried its own language. Then: You are eating?

Yes.

What did you eat?

Ada looked at the protein bar she had finished at two in the afternoon and decided not to mention it. "Rice," she said. "I made rice."

Jollof?

Yes, Mummy. Jollof.

She could hear her mother settle into her chair the familiar creak of it, a sound that could transport Ada across four thousand miles in an instant. She closed her eyes briefly and saw the sitting room: the lace curtains, the framed photograph of her parents' wedding, the small television her father watched with the volume too high.

Your Aunty Ngozi is coming next weekend," her mother said, shifting into the comfortable rhythm of home news. "She is bringing the children. You remember Chidi? He is in university now. Computer science.

That's good."

He has a girlfriend already. Serious one they met in first year.A meaningful pause. Imagine.

Ada turned the heating up one notch. "Good for Chidi.

Ada. Her mother's voice changed register  lower, softer, which was always more dangerous than the loud version. "There is something I want to ask you.

Mummy

I am just asking. Is there anyone? Any person you are seeing? Because Aunty Ngozi was saying her friend's son is in London, a doctor, and she thinks

No, Ada said firmly. Please tell Aunty Ngozi thank you but no.

You are thirty-four.

I am aware of how old I am.

I am not saying anything bad. I am only saying that life does not wait, Ada. You are there working, working, always working but working for what? For who?

The question landed somewhere tender. Ada kept her voice even. I work because I have bills, Mummy. And because I love what I do.

Her mother made a sound not unkind, but unconvinced. You used to love Emeka too,she said quietly.

The name dropped into the conversation like a stone into still water. Ada watched the ripples.

That was a long time ago.

Three years is not so long.

It is long enough.She kept her tone gentle because her mother meant well she always meant well. The love was never the problem. It was just love that didn't know how to sit quietly sometimes. Mummy, I am tired. It was a long shift."

A soft sigh from Enugu. I know, my daughter. I know you work hard. I just A pause. "I want you to be happy. That is all I am ever saying.

Ada felt the truth of it settle over her like something warm. I know," she said. I know that.

Call me on Sunday. Your father wants to talk to you about the land matter but I told him Sunday.

Sunday, Ada agreed.

Eat properly. Real food, not those your snacks.

Goodnight, Mummy.

Goodnight. Sleep well.

The call ended and the car was quiet again. Ada sat with the quiet for a moment  the particular silence that followed conversations about home, which always left her feeling both full and hollow at the same time.

Working for what? For who?

She put the car in gear and pulled out of the car park.

---

The flat was on the third floor of a converted Victorian terrace in Leamington  a one-bedroom with high ceilings and draughty windows that Ada had learned to love despite themselves. She had made it hers over three years: a yellow throw on the grey sofa, a row of succulents on the windowsill that she kept alive through sheer stubbornness, a cork board in the kitchen covered in recipes she meant to try and postcards from places she meant to visit.

She made tea she didn't really want and stood at the kitchen window with it, looking out at the street below. A couple walked past, shoulders touching, the woman laughing at something the man had said. Ada watched them until they turned the corner.

She thought about Gerald's question from that morning, which she had been carefully not thinking about all day.

Are there any hands grabbing yours?

She thought about her own hands hands that had held Mrs. Okafor's this morning while she cried about a dream she'd had about her late husband. Hands that had steadied Mr. Adeyemi as he took his first uncertain walk down the corridor this afternoon, his pride and his need for support quietly wrestling each other. Hands that were, by any measure, very busy.

Hands that came home and held nothing.

She put the tea down, unopened her laptop, and did what she always did when thoughts became too loud she made a list. It was a short one tonight:

Call GP re: Mr. Patel's referral. Remind Priya about the rota swap. Buy milk.

She stared at the list. Added one more item, almost without meaning to:

Reply to Daniel Osei's email.

She had received it four days ago — a brief, professional follow-up about Mr. Patel's social care assessment. She had read it twice and then left it sitting in her inbox like something she wasn't sure how to handle. The email itself was perfectly ordinary. It was the way she had felt reading it that was less ordinary.

She opened her laptop, found the email, and read it a third time.

Dear Ms. Okonkwo, I wanted to follow up on Mr. Patel's case following my visit last Thursday. I've submitted my assessment to the team and expect a decision within ten working days. I also wanted to say your advocacy for him during our meeting was impressive. He's lucky to have someone in his corner. Best, Daniel Osei.

Ada read the last two sentences again.

Then she closed the laptop, finished her tea standing at the sink, and went to bed.

She did not reply to the email.

But she did not delete it either.

---

In Enugu, 1997  three months before everything changed

She was twelve years old and it was the rainy season and her father had bought her a book from the market a battered copy of Things Fall Apart with someone else's name written on the inside cover in faded ink.

She read it in two days, lying on her stomach on the parlour floor while the rain hammered the roof. When she finished she went to find her father in his study.

"Daddy. Why did Okonkwo never just say what he felt?"

Her father had looked at her over his reading glasses with the expression he reserved for questions that deserved proper answers. Because he was afraid, he said simply. Strong people often are.

Ada had not fully understood it then.

She was beginning to understand it now.