‘Go and bring in the clothes,’ Aunty said, as if she wished she were near enough to fling Augustina against the wall.

Regretting all the exotic tales she was going to miss, Augustina went outside and gathered the dry clothes from the cherry fruit hedges. Afterwards she felt awkward about rejoining the group and remained inside the bedroom until Aunty called her to carry out the sack of yams and plantains they had prepared as a gift for Engineer. Engineer saw her heading outside, excused himself, and followed. He opened the car boot and helped her place the items inside.

‘You have very beautiful hair,’ he said.

She knew that was probably all that he could say. As a child, Augustina’s family had jokingly called her Nna ga-alu, ‘father will marry’, because she had been so ugly that the experts had said her father would be the one who ended up marrying her. But Nature had compensated her adequately. She had a full head of hair that went all the way to the nape of her neck when plaited into narrow stems with black thread.

‘Thank you,’ she replied with head bent and a smile on one side of her face.

‘Why did they call you Ozoemena?’ he asked. ‘What happened when you were born?’

She was not surprised at the question. Ozoemena means ‘let another one not happen’. The only shocker was that he had actually cared to ask.

‘My mother died when she was giving birth to me,’ Augustina replied.

‘Do you have a Christian name?’

She nodded.

‘Augustina.’

She was born on the twenty-seventh of May, on St Augustine ’s Day. It was the nurse at the missionary hospital who had written the name on her birth certificate.

Engineer bent and peeped into her face. Then, he smiled.

‘I think a child should be named for his destiny so that whenever he hears his name, he has an idea of the sort of future that is expected of him. Not according to the circumstances of his birth. The past is constraining but the future has no limits.’ He smiled again. ‘I shall call you Augustina.’