My mum had a huge chest freezer in the kitchen for over fifty-five years full of things she had cooked and frozen. A few years ago it finally broke and, when she defrosted it, I asked if she’d found a leg of dodo at the bottom! They don’t make appliances like they used to, that’s fo’ sure. She eats Jamaican food most days. Even when she comes to my house she brings her own food, not because I can’t cook but because she knows I like her cooking better.

As the second eldest, I was old enough to be aware of how difficult the situation was for my mum, and so I was the quietest. Sometimes, the person who is the best behaved receives the least attention and is the most overlooked. I tried to be good, not causing my mum any more grief, but in doing that I tended to make myself disappear. At home in England I was often subdued, but when we went to Jamaica I felt carefree and happy and able to express myself in a completely different way.

Ghana, America, England, Italy, Ethiopia, Uganda—I could not lay claim to any of those places in an incontestable way. It has always been difficult for me to say the word home with any conviction. When I was a child, I often felt like an outsider among my own family. Between me and them were borders—geographic, spiritual, cultural, linguistic. And no sooner had we arrived in a place than we had to prepare to leave it.

There is no simple answer,” he said. “Your mother grew up in a family that lost everything, and the trauma is in her blood. I think that’s what made her leave.

Lebo, you’re really more British than African.’ It was an observation rather than a criticism, but it landed in my ears and my heart as a questioning of my identity and my efforts. I detected, or perhaps projected, something else too: the belief that exiles had things easier because they had chosen to leave. It may be that there are people who have navigated this more deftly than I did, without all the pain and anxiety. I wish that had been my experience too.