The Lubetkin Legacy

Violet: Pictures

At the weekend, Violet sorts out the photos she has brought from home: her parents wind-blown and smiling on High Low above Hathersage; her dad with Grandma Alison in front of Edinburgh Castle; her Nyanya Njoki surrounded by all her seven grandchildren; their garden in Karen with Mfumu, her dog that she’d left behind; Kinder Scout purple with heather; her and her friend Jessie wearing stupid hats on a school trip.

As she Blu-tacks them on to the wall, she thinks about the two sides of her family, black and white, far and near, poor and comfortable. Her two cousins on her father’s side are tall, blonde, willowy girls a few years older than her who read Music and Art History at Oxford. They work in the arts, shop at Zara, laugh toothily over lunch, and are generous with invitations and free tickets. On her mother’s side, her seven cousins are thin, dark and wiry, with respectable but ill-paid office jobs and ready smiles, who shop at Jumia and never have quite enough money. She gets on with all of them; in fact she loves the feeling of sprinting like a runner along a high ridge looking down on each side into two completely different valleys. It’s exhilarating up there, but it’s scary too. There’s always the danger that she will lose her footing and slip down into the wrong valley, the poor side, the dark side.

She steps down from the chair, and stands back to admire her handiwork. At once, the place feels more like home.

From the flat next door, she can hear that weird tinny voice repeating the same incoherent phrase over and over again. She shudders; she definitely won’t be staying here long. She goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on, then takes her mug of Kenya roast coffee out on to the balcony to survey the scene down below. At the far end of the communal garden, a taxi has drawn up, and an old lady dressed in black is getting out.

As she watches, a pigeon lands beside her on the parapet and turns its head to fix her with its round beady eye. It is a tatty-looking bird, with scruffy feathers and only one leg. What has happened to the other one? She scatters some bread crusts for it on the balcony and it hops down to devour them, throwing its head back as they work their way down its blue-green throat. Then it puffs out its feathers and starts to coo in a sweet warbling voice, its whole pathetic body vibrating with the sound. Cooo-coo. Cooo-coo.