A Bit of Difference Read Online Free Page B

not. I don’t expect you had much time to see it.”
    â€œNot much.”
    Kate grew up in Liverpool, which is noticeable whenever she says a word like “much.”
    â€œEverything is enormous there,” Kate says. “The buildings, the roads.”
    â€œWal-Mart.”
    â€œTheir cars! Did you see the size of the trucks they drive over there?”
    â€œI did.”
    Kate spreads her arms. “It’s
incredible. You have these huge trucks and there’s always a little woman at the wheel.”
    â€œAlways little women,” Deola says.
    A wave of tiredness threatens her. At work, she plays up her English accent—speaking phonetics, as Nigerians call it—so that people might not assume she lacks intelligence. Speaking phonetics is instinctive now, but only performers enjoy mimicking. Performers and apes.
    â€œEverything is enormous in America,” Kate says. “Everything except, of course…”
    Kate taps her temple. She has a master’s degree in international relations and prides herself on being knowledgeable about what goes on in the Hague. She has never named her university, calls herself a grammar school girl, but she is quick to point out her husband went to Bedales and studied physics at Cambridge. He has a Ph. D. and has received grants for his research. He is an inventor. Kate is the second most frequent traveler in the office. Her trips are fieldwork related. Graham, the overall executive director, is more the photo-op guy. He attends conferences and summits and deals with the trustees. Kate stands in during his prolonged absences.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Kate says. “I shouldn’t have said that, but they can be a little thick across the pond.”
    â€œNo need to apologize,” Deola says.
    She is amused whenever the English denigrate Americans. She attributes it to inverted admiration. In America, she was astonished to see how many of them were on television, teeth fixed and playing up their Englishness or speaking with American accents, acting so colonized.
    â€œI can’t bear to listen to their views on this stupid war and I hate the way they keep saying ‘I rack’ and ‘I ran.’ At least try and get the name right if you’re going to bomb another country to smithereens.”
    At the beginning of the Falklands War Deola thought the word was “Forklands.” She was in her A-level year in England and was of the impression that only members of the Green Party and Save the Whales got upset about
wars. Weirdos, basically.
    This war is different. Everyone she knows in London is outraged. Everyone wants to win the debate, which has become a separate war. Strangers are co-opting her as an ally, including a drunken man who was seated next to her on the tube. He tapped a headline and said, stinking of beer, “ We have no business being over there.” Enemy lines must also have been drawn because she has not met a person who is for the war. Not one. They might not even exist. They might be on CNN to rile up viewers and raise ratings for all she knows. But she is sometimes convinced, watching the dissenters, that this is their chance to make like rebels, now that the backlash is not as severe as it was when their opposition could perhaps have had some effect.
    Kate slaps the table. “Anyway, your trip to Nigeria.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œThink you’ll be ready in a couple of weeks?”
    â€œSure.”
    The Nigerian programs are not pressing enough to warrant Kate’s change to a brisk tone, but Deola plays along. The timing was her idea. She asked to go in the week of her father’s memorial, without revealing why.
    Her father died five years ago. She was the last in her family to find out. He was playing golf when he became dizzy. His friends rushed him to hospital. They didn’t know he had high blood pressure. Her mother called to say he’d suffered a stroke. She got