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1 Dominique came across Nzinga at Victoria station in the rush hour as she was being knocked down by the steamrollering effect of London's ruthless commuters determined to catch their trains at all costs her bag fell open and everything fell out: passport, A–Z, Rough Guide to London, hemp purse, tampons, Zenith E camera, Palmer's hand cream, evil eye charm, ivory-handled hunting knife Nzinga was profusely grateful when a passing Dominique approached to help, the pair of them scrambling about on the station floor gathering up her belongings when that was done, and Nzinga was once more upright and composed, Dominique found herself in front of an extraordinary vision the woman was statuesque, her skin glowed, her robes flowed, her features were sculptural, lips fulsome, thin ropes of dreadlocks fell freely down to her hips, silver amulets and bright beads sewn into them Dominique had never seen anyone like her before, offered to buy her coffee, confident she'd say yes because lesbians, and she suspected this one was, usually did they sat opposite each other in the station café as Nzinga sipped on a glass of hot water with a slice of lemon in it, the only hot drink she allowed to pass her lips, she said, I don't abuse my body

meanwhile Dominique, drinking a cup of granulated coffee into which she'd dissolved two sugars and was dunking a succession of digestive biscuits (a packet of Maltesers at the side for dessert), felt guilty about the rubbish she was unthinkingly putting into her body – abusing it, yes, abusing it she'd never met an African-American before and Nzinga's accent evoked the sensory delights of warm cornbread, sticky ribs, gumbo, jambalaya, collard greens, cracklin', fried cabbage, peanut brittle – and other foods she's read about in novels by African-American women Nzinga was visiting England for the first time since leaving as a small child, on her way back from a pilgrimage to Ghana where she'd spent two weeks, it was her first time in the Motherland, visiting Elmina Castle where captured Africans had been incarcerated before being shipped to the Americas as slaves the guide led them into a dungeon, shut the door in the hot, suffocating darkness he graphically described how up to a thousand people were crammed into a space meant for two hundred, with no facilities or sanitation and little food or water, for up to three months in that moment all the painful history of four hundred years of slavery entered my body in a way it hadn't before and I broke down and sobbed, Dominique, I sobbed and realized more than ever that the white man has a lot to answer for Dominique stopped herself replying that the African man had also sold Africans into slavery so it was a lot more complex than that Nzinga was a builder of timber houses on 'wimmin's lands' in the 'Dis- United States of America' where she'd lived since she was five and her mother, tiring of Nzinga's father who flitted between various women in England and the Caribbean, fell for a handsome ex-Forces man via correspondence she was only twenty-two when she stupidly moved Nzinga and her brother, Andy, from their flat in Luton into what turned out to be a mobile home in a trailer park in Texas where she and her brother slept on the floor by the kitchenette, while her mother and the man shared the pull-down double bed and had loud sex a few feet away from them

he drank hooch from the minute he woke up to just before he fell into a drunken and drugged stupor at night, picking up odd jobs here and there her mother found work in a chicken factory, was idiotically convinced she could cure him of his addictions and make a life for her children with him her futile attempts to curtail his addictions resulted in being beaten up so often she gave up trying to change him and fell into the drug life herself what began badly became worse as Nzinga found herself being badly raised by two junkies whose priority was not her and her brother eventually the inevitable happened when she reached puberty, there'd been earlier signs, inappropriate touching and comments she'd been too young to decipher and later, too vulnerable to ward off she had her virginity stolen while her mother and brother were out shopping and she'd stayed in to do her homework the next morning she managed to tell a teacher at school after she'd burst into tears, a man, as it happens, who'd always told her she was clever child – practically the only good man she's ever known a social worker was assigned, she and her brother were fostered out to a family who cared for them but did not love them not deeply, not unconditionally Andy went into the army at sixteen and turned his back on the sister who'd turned into a bull-dyke, as he called her when he discovered her in bed with her girlfriend luckily, I really was bright and worked hard to get into the recently desegregated University of Texas at Austin, instead of the local community college upon graduation, I set off to live in a women's commune to get away from people like my brother and the beast when my mother died from an overdose my brother and I didn't talk at the funeral or since Dominique sat there listening to the extraordinary vision before her, a woman who'd risen above the tragedy of her terrible childhood to become so magnificent, who exuded such warmth and experience

people saw Dominique as tough and self-sufficient, yet compared to Nzinga, she wasn't, Nzinga was powerful, unconquerable, her presence and energy dominated the café, her voice suffused a grey Monday afternoon with an exotic sensuous drawl she was a zami, a sexy sistah, an inspiration, a phenomenon Dominique wanted to curl into this woman and be looked after by her it was a new feeling because she'd been fully independent since leaving home, and here she was, feeling, what? excited? definitely perhaps falling in love with a complete stranger I think you might be right, Dominique replied later that day as they sat in Cranks wholefood restaurant in Leicester Square after Nzinga had suggested her relationship history of blonde girlfriends might be a sign of self-loathing; you have to ask yourself if you've been brainwashed by the white beauty ideal, sister, you have to work a lot harder on your black feminist politics, you know Dominique wondered if she had a point, why did she go for stereotypical blondes? Amma had teased her about it without judging her, she herself was a product of various mixtures and often had partners of all colours in contrast, Nzinga had grown up in the segregated South, although shouldn't that make her pro-integration rather than against it? Dominique wondered if she really was still being brainwashed by white society, and whether she really was failing at the identity she most cherished – the black feminist one she decided that Nzinga was a fairy angel sent to help her become a better version of herself she became Nzinga's personal guide around the city, keen to show off how well she knew its history and hotspots, hopping on and off buses, taking shortcuts through the labyrinthine tunnels of the underground, slipping down ancient alleyways in the city's oldest parts, showing her the remnants of the Roman wall from nearly two thousand years ago, taking her on to the pebbly Thames beaches when the tide was out, where mud-larkers trawled for buried archaeological relics, through the numerous parks, greens, public gardens and wilder commons, on canal walks that lasted hours from Little Venice to the marshes of Walthamstow, on river cruises to Greenwich and Kew

at night, they slipped into tucked-away women's clubs where they made out in darkened corners they slept together the day they met and every night thereafter it's so sublime, it's spiritual, Dominique raved at Amma when she turned up for work a fortnight later to a desk-full of incomplete tasks I've fallen in love properly for the first time in my life with the most wonderful woman I've ever met, who desires me from a position of inner strength, Amma, and it might sound odd but that's so new to me and darned sexy, like she can rip my clothes off whenever she wants to (which she does) and I feel helpless and dominated (which I like), whereas my previous lovers desired me from a position of weakness, of adoration, which just isn't interesting to me any more the tension between us is electrostatic, Ams, it's like I'm being charged up with electric volts, we can't bear to be apart, not even for five minutes, Nzinga is so wise and knowledgeable about how to be a liberated black woman in an oppressive white world that she's opening my eyes to, well, everything, it's like she's Alice and Audre and Angela and Aretha rolled into one, seriously, Ams Amma replied that this Nzinga must be something else to turn the coolest dyke of us all into a lovestruck teenager, so when do I get to meet Alice- Audre-Angela-Aretha? what's her real name, by the way? Cindy, if you must know, don't ever tell her I told you Dominique agreed to bring her to lunch at the King's Cross squat, on Nzinga's strict proviso that only women of colour were invited, and the food had to be completely vegan, organic and fresh or she couldn't be in the same room as it.