knowing that many of them were unfounded. But if he tried to refute them Sir Manfred simply announced that modesty was so self-deprecating that it was almost a sin. He learnt more of his uncle in those few hours than in over ten years that he had lived with him, and he felt confused by how Persephone’s and Sir Manfred’s accounts of him altered so greatly from what Fotherby had found his uncle to be like.

He was shown to a room and he sat down on the bed wondering, for perhaps the first occasion in his life, the situation of the black men and women throughout the British colonies. He knew of course that, from a medical viewpoint, the colour of a man’s skin made no difference to the structure of his body. But he could not imagine the turmoil that these men faced, simply for appearin...

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