Chapter Eight“It’s ok, she’s joking. I’m not. I’m really not,” Arama pleaded for the hundredth time to the gaggle of visiting children who collected at the end of the bed. “He’s small and fat and I’m too tall.” Arama patted his trim stomach, while Kerry tried not to wet herself in the visitor’s chair wedged between the curtain and the night stand. The children eyed one another, unconvinced. So Arama played his trump card. “I’m brown. Father Christmas is white. I don’t look good in red.”
He realised his terrible mistake as a little African boy wearing a red tee shirt suffered every eye of the gathering crowd turning in his direction. Then he ran off back to his family in a hail of tears. Kerry sounded like she was in pain, twisting up in the chair as though being wrung out. “You’re such a
