Capital

then she had got angry too, and had joined John and his network, and had begun to work against Mugabe, to stop just studying politics and start living them.
    Quentina’s father had fought in the bush during the revolution: he hadn’t been a paper revolutionary but the real thing, living off mealies and carrying a gun for five years. Now he was a fairly senior member of Zanu-PF with a good job at the education ministry, education having been a priority and a pride for the young country of Zimbabwe. Quentina did not grow up in the back seat of a Mercedes, and there was no sense of entitlement anywhere about her family’s life, but she was in her way secure, comfortable, a member of the established order. Now that changed. She became a kind of secret outlaw, and was risking her family’s status in the process, and it was that which caused her deepest worries about what she was doing: she could admire her courage on her own behalf, but on the part of her family she felt at times it was almost an indulgence. She occasionally asked herself what Robert would have wanted, but came up with no answer. All she could really remember about her brother was his birth and his death. She felt she had no real recollection of what Robert had actually been like. It was as if Robert’s death had taken not just Robert but all memories of him too.
    A month after she began distributing leaflets and going to secret meetings, her father died of lung cancer. He wasn’t diagnosed, he just died of it. They found out about the disease through the autopsy.
    Quentina’s political career lasted for nine months. It began with Aids, then spread into a campaign against arrests and beatings and all the other human rights abuses. Quentina thought it would be a race between getting caught and Zanu-PF turning against Mugabe, with the odds fairly equal, but she was wrong. At her final beating, she was told that the only thing preventing her from being raped to death was the status her father had once had; the protection offered by that was now void. So here she was, three years later, in a church in London listening to the descant singers trying to compete with Mashinko Wilson’s melody line in ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’.
    The service came to an end and the congregation slowly drifted out of the church. People milled about, shaking hands, chatting. Quentina knew a few of her fellow worshippers but kept her greetings brief. She was on a mission. Mashinko as usual had a small fan club around him, chatting and praising. As usual he was glowing, warm, his rich skin alight. She could wait for the group to thin out, but that would involve so much loitering that it would be difficult not to look weak, dithering: unworthy. Humans make their own history, but not under circumstances of their choosing. Quentina went straight up to Mashinko, who was being held by the arm by a short woman of about sixty and was smiling indulgently. Quentina stood in front of him and did something she knew very well how to do: she got his full attention.
    ‘I just wanted to say, I thought that was beautiful,’ said Quentina. Mashinko’s face, which had already been shining, grew even more radiant. That was all she needed. He would remember her next time. ‘Goodbye. Happy Christmas,’ she said, and turned and left. Quentina went out into the cold dark of Christmas Eve in London.
    Memory could not compete against hope. It was no contest. Even a small amount of hope would do.

25
     
     
    ‘cn i c u?’
    the text had read. Shahid had no idea whose mobile this message was from, so he texted back:
    ‘ok bt hu r u?’
    Shahid had to admit, he thought it might be a girl, a forgotten girl he had tried to pick up somewhere, or an old flame, who must be a bit keen on him because why otherwise would she have kept his number? There was a girl at Clapham South once, she’d dropped a whole bunch of papers on the platform as she got off the train, the rude commuters had just shoved past, of course, Shahid had picked them up, they’d got chatting, she was a law student, they’d gone for a coffee right there across the road, they’d swapped numbers, then about a week later he’d lost his mobile and he’d always wondered if she might have been the one . . . that was six months or so ago now. It might be her, it just might. He’d put a thing in ‘Lost Connections’ in Metro but had come up blank. But even if it wasn’t the law student, basically, if it was a girl, it was good