Chapter 22: The Letter from Edinburgh

Rosemary's POV

Wanjiru sent a photograph of the letter over the clinic's one weak data line, and it took all afternoon to arrive.

Alec read it at my mother's kitchen table, on a borrowed tablet, while I was in the garden with the tomato plants.

I saw him through the window.

He read the first line and stopped.

He got up and filled a kettle he did not need.

Then he sat down again and went on.

I put my trowel down and went to the back step, and stayed there with my hand on the door.

My mother came past me with the shears.

"Leave him a minute," she said. "I'm going to go and be violent to the roses."

It was October, and the roses did not need it, and I understood the courtesy.

When I went in, Alec's face was wet.

He did not wipe it.

"Alec."

"She's all right," he said. "She's married. She lives in Edinburgh. She has a daughter who is two."

"Who is she?"

He turned the tablet toward me, and then turned it back. "She was the nurse before you. The one I told you I lost."

"The one who left."

"The one I let leave."

He put one finger on the screen.

"She says a nurse from Kisumu told her about the gate. About what I said in front of the yard."

"You said a doctor hid it."

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