These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

Her accent is indeterminate — a bit British, a bit the singsong precision of an English by way of Africa, maybe a bit something harder, from some other corner of the world. “Thank you,” she says. “My mother spoke English so that’s what I spoke before I moved to Addis Ababa ten years ago.”

“Are you Ethiopian?” Zan says. He’s not sure how disquieted he is by this.

“Half,” she says. “My mother was born there but came to London as a small girl and grew up here.”

“And your father?”

“He may have been British but. . it is not as clear.”

“Sorry to pry.”

“It’s all right.”

“You grew up in England then. I didn’t think ‘Molly’ sounded African.”

“Actually I was born and raised in Germany. In Berlin.”