The tomatoes were cut. Large round faces of ruby medallions, their bright yellow seeds swimming in a golden glaze of good olive oil. Each white bowl, sprinkled with a fine layer of chopped garlic was set out on the breakfast tables, a tea-towel covering them from the ever present flies hanging in paralysis, waiting patiently upon the weight of the hot sun, threatening even at this early hour. Threatening to come and burn a hole into the hearts of all Africans. Africans who sat in the early morning shade, sat upon the baked front steps of their red mud houses, crouching at the back of spaces before the heat encased their walls and caused a prison. His own day was threatening, beginning to burn at the edges of his heart, creating a prison only he had ever known.

The foreigners hadn’t yet stirred, still laid upon single damp sheets with beads of sweat upon sleep-fugged brows; sitting up and rubbing at their eyes before migrating to the saviour of a cold shower. 

He cut through the first loaf that Esta, his cook, had pulled out from the oven only that morning. Cutting in meticulous measured thickness, fresh wedges for each basket. Wedges that would so perfectly lap up the juices of his tomatoes, like a small soft sponge. His head, they said, was so soft, too soft for him to have survived the impact. As the knife sawed through the baked crusts, he recalled how his son Thomas had been impatient with him that morning as he cut shapes from the pumpkin in time for his first Halloween party. Banging a spoon against a bowl of cereal, asking if he could “hurry up please Daddy” so that they could go and pick out the cake, so that they could buy jelly and ice-cream and fizzy pops. So that he could pick out a costume and finger at the bowls of rubber spiders and plastic skeletons. 16 years ago today. October the 31st. In a different place, in a different time. In a different climate.

Five years after the accident, he had sold up and moved from the grey streets of his city to this small coastal town in Tanzania. His savings spent on a tired old guest house, ideal for the budget traveller looking for escape. It was to be his escape, his second life, a life that ensured warmth – a permanent sun overhead with a distance he felt may save him. Yet there is no distance in time.

The smell of coffee found him as he began silently weeping, caught up in the choke of memory, the same that stings him on this day every year. The sound of bacon pulled him back as it suddenly hit with a hot hiss to a pan.

“Hey, good morning to you friend”, the first morning riser greeted him with a firm clap to the back. “I smelled the bacon and I couldn’t resist the pull of this day no more”.

The man was Italian and travelling with his wife, who was still upstairs applying sun-tan lotion to her burnt body.

“Bacon? Well, you will not be disappointed then, friend” he replied, putting a basket of bread and a pot of coffee before his guest. “I even have some homemade cheese to go out this morning, made by my own hands”.

Hands that had held Thomas’s cracked head as blood flowed forth down his arms and into his lap, the boy's eyes flickering as the sound of sirens approached.

He turned back to the kitchen where Esta was now cracking eggs and filling all the available space with her ample East African frame. Thomas would have loved it here. He would have loved the colours of Esta’s kitenge fabric skirts, the way they pulled against the shining bulk of her calf muscles; bright stars, swirls and wing-stretched exotic birds. He could imagine Thomas's small white hands clasped firmly against their blackness, peeping out as he tried to go about his work – ‘Boo!’ he would shout – running away in tiny squeals of pleasure as he chased after him.

There had been colours that day too- the reds and yellows of autumn trees and the rich brown gleen of conkers, that they kicked at with their wellingtons.

“Chocolate then, or jammy?” he would ask Thomas, stretching down to take a hold of his little mittened fingers, “Chocolate and jammy Daddy!” he would return, wriggling free to run after a small white dog that  burst past him chasing a stick.

“Jam?” the Italian asked, waving his hands over the bread basket. “Do you have any jam?”

He walked back to the kitchen and pulled down a jar of blackberry conserve, the dark contents reminiscent of the stains on the seat of his jeans as he rode with his son in the back of the ambulance. He placed the jar down gently next to the man and excused himself, walking down the stone path towards the solitary enclose of his office. He gave into the darkness.

It was the same routine at each breakfast that fell on the 31st October.