Chapter 7: What Clayton Forgot

At the seven o'clock staff meeting, Wanjiru put Clayton on the agenda between the malaria stock and the mangoes.

"Mr. MacGregor," she said. "You have something to say."

Clayton stood up in the front row, grey in the face, with a mango stain on a borrowed shirt.

"I want to apologize," he said, "to everybody. For last night."

"Louder," Wanjiru said.

"I'm sorry I woke you. I'm sorry about the shoe. I'm sorry about the mangoes."

"The goat took the mangoes," someone called.

"I'm sorry about the goat."

The pharmacy assistant started to laugh, and then everyone did, and Clayton, to his credit, laughed too.

He looked at me across the room, red to the ears.

"I'm really sorry, Romy."

"Thank you," I said.

It was the first time I'd said it to him and meant a little of it.

After the meeting, I took a basin of dirty instruments down the lake path to rinse them in the shallows.

The path ran through tall papyrus, and it was quiet there in the morning.

I heard their voices before I saw them.

"I just can't remember it," Clayton was saying.

I stopped with the basin against my hip.

He and Marissa were sitting on the old jetty twenty feet away, with their backs to me.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Left at 2 AM for Her Tampons, So I Left for Kenya from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.