By Krystle Zara Appiah

September 1997

Nineteen Years Before

The first thing Efe notices is that the sky is closer here. As the plane begins its descent into the outer lands of the sprawling city, she can feel it pressed upon her shoulders. It follows her down as they come in for a bumpy landing and hovers just out of arm’s reach, but every so often it dips down and brushes the top of Efe’s head. It makes the city feel cramped. It awakens and unsettles the feeling rumbling in the bottom of her stomach.

The feeling had begun when Maame made the announcement: the girls would be going to London to stay with Aunty Dora and would finish up their schooling there. Whatever the feeling was, it had held on lightly over the whirlwind summer break, filled with goodbye parties and capped off with tearful farewells and long hugs with her parents, before she’d taken her sister’s hand (because her mum said she had to), and together they’d boarded a plane heading for Heathrow.

Serwaa rouses from sleep reluctantly. ‘We’re here?’ she asks, squinting out the window.

‘Yes.’

People jump out of their seats before the overhead sign pings. The cabin fills with restless energy that only eases when the doors open. The girls have to fight to stay together through the surge of people pushing out into the London air. They wait in long snaking lines for their papers to be checked, collect their bags, and when they step out into the slick, bright airport, Aunty Dora is waiting just like Maame and Paa said she would be.

 ‘Adjei! Is that you? Look at how grown you are, my girls.’ She beams, pulls them both into a back-breaking hug.

It has been years, but the girls would have recognised her anywhere. She stands a half-head taller than Efe. Each time she smiles, full lips part to reveal clustered-together teeth, a faint dimple appears on one cheek. She looks like a slimmer version of Maame, shades lighter thanks to the mild British summers.

‘Okay, does anyone need the toilet? The drive is far.’ Still smiling, she scoops up one of the heavier bags, clamps a hand around Serwaa’s shoulders and leads the way across the huge glass atrium. Efe walks behind them, dragging her suitcase over polished floors so shiny she can see her blurry outline reflected back.

On the way into the city the girls say very little. The quiet car ride is filled with the sounds of BBC breakfast radio. Back home, Paa listens to it every morning without fail. He lives a life underscored by dreary weather reports, A3 traffic jams and the latest news from four and a half thousand miles away, and Efe imagines him listening now, mindlessly fiddling with the chain on his glasses and staring off into space at something only he can see. She presses back into the seat and pretends she is beside him in his office, watching the light dance across the piles of books overflowing from their bookcases, dust settling on their sun-faded spines. When the daydream begins to dim at the edges, she tightens her grip on her seatbelt, turns her face to the window and watches the rows of identical houses slip past.

The house is called a flat. It is one of many houses stacked on top of each other and stuffed into a bland concrete shell. Throughout the day footsteps slap on the council-approved tiles and the lift grumbles as it drags itself up and down twelve floors, just behind the living room wall. That is when it works; the girls will soon learn that it is out of order more often than not. And for the days and weeks it doesn’t work, they will climb five flights in a bare concrete stairwell that is perpetually cold and damp.

Maame had warned them that in London there is very little space and that people live on top of each other, but they were not expecting this. They have never been in a house so small. To them, home is a building with an excess of rooms. Back home, Maame has a sitting room specifically for entertaining important guests, her prized possession a hand-carved cabinet filled with gold-rimmed serving dishes that are barely used but cleaned often should they ever be needed. This will take some adjusting to.

‘I’m sorry it’s not much,’ Aunty says as she gives them the tour. She waves a hand towards mismatched furniture stuffed in cramped rooms, wallpaper that is brown and floral, its uppermost corners darkened with damp. The girls smile politely. The bathroom, kitchen and living room all branch off a narrow windowless hallway, where light fights with darkness.

‘And this one is yours.’ Aunty smiles and swings the last door open. Miraculously, she’s managed to squash bunk beds, a desk, chair and wardrobe into the tiny space.

Serwaa’s face turns towards the bottom bunk, eyes widening at the school uniforms laid out. ‘Are those for us?’ She rushes into the room and snatches up a dark blue jumper, runs her hands over a crisp blue shirt. ‘Ɛyɛ fɛ.’

‘The other ones are for you, Efe.’ Aunty smiles encouragingly.

Efe, crossing the room in four measured steps, can feel the jittery anticipation brewing in her. Black polyester skirts. Plain white shirts. It’s like something she’d wear to a funeral – a far cry from the golden shirts and dark brown pinafores she’s left back home, in her actual wardrobe, in a bedroom so big she’d never be able to reach out and touch opposite walls at once.

‘What do you think?’ Aunty murmurs.

Efe turns and gives Aunty a small smile and says thank you, just like she has been taught.

Excerpt from “Rootless” copyright © 2023 by Krystle Zara Appiah. Published by Borough Press (UK)

About the book: There are two sides to every love story. Teenagers Efe and Sam first meet in London in the 1990s. Years later the best friends are married. Their love story couldn't seem more perfect. But Sam wants to start a family.

Efe wants to be free from children to focus on her dreams. When an unplanned pregnancy forces them to confront their differences, Efe and Sam must discover if what they really want is still each other...

A poignant, heart-breaking debut about a British-Ghanaian marriage in crisis, Rootless is a story of friendship, family, societal obligation and motherhood. But above all, it's a story of love.

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Krystle Zara Appiah is a Ghanaian writer and screenwriter, born and raised in London. She has a degree in literature and creative writing from the University of Kent. In 2020, she was one of forty writers selected for the London Library's Emerging Writers Programme. She also works as a children's books editor. Rootless is her debut novel.

You can read our interview with Krystle Zara Appiah here