During the first few months that Devon became Joel's home, he was forced to adapt very quickly to the unfamiliar and often hostile environment into which he had been thrust. But two of his cousins who were in their early 20s immediately took him under their wing and taught him how to fend for himself. And since he had always made friends easily, he never had trouble fitting in with others in his peer group, although he often found himself tongue-tied around girls that he liked.

Eight years his senior

It was at 17 that he had his first real encounter with a woman, a voluptuous shopkeeper eight years his senior, who had been ogling him for weeks before they did it in the storeroom on top of a pile of empty sugar sacks while her husband was out front, serving at the counter. At the time, the thrill for Joel was intensified by the fear of being caught, and thereafter, his friendships with females continued to have a ferociously intense flavour, but were inevitably ephemeral.

He tended to be favoured by vivacious, flirtatious women looking for a bit of harmless fun with a willing, robust young man who was not aware of the magnetism his physique inspired.

But his youthful dalliances ended when, at 21, he met Diedre Hamilton. He had felt it was time to be on his own after living with relatives for six years, and she was the daughter of his Guyanese landlord. Their two-year relationship might have turned out a lot differently had Diedre not been so afraid of her father, who had other ideas about the kind of man he wanted his daughter to be involved with.

Nasty turn

Things took a nasty turn when Joel started to speak of going back home, and made the assumption that he and Diedre would return as a married couple and set up house together. Joel had never lost sight of the day when he would return to his own country. Having seen so many of his race who had departed from their native lands with high hopes and grand dreams end up littering the streets of England, broken and disillusioned, he was determined never to be counted among that number.

Diedre, however, had become too accustomed to the conveniences of the mother country, and saw no virtue in this - or so she said. But Joel was more inclined to believe that her father had a hand in her decision. As a result, the issue sprang up like a mountain between them. Meanwhile, in the dead of winter that year, he found that the heat in his flat had been cut off, a situation that could only be remedied when he paid for damage done to bathroom fixtures, Mr Hamilton said. It had not been Joel's fault that the sink in that God-forsaken place had collapsed, but Mr Hamilton wouldn't listen to logic.

Campaign of terror

And this was only the beginning of the campaign of terror. Over the period of five days, both his gas and his electricity had been disconnected, and he was given two weeks' notice to leave. After coming to the conclusion that loving Diedre was too high a price to pay for his sanity and well-being, he packed up his belongings and returned to his Uncle Phillip's home.

Joel had just considered Mr Hamilton's actions to be expressions of his vindictiveness until he learnt from one of Diedre's friends the real motivation behind them. Diedre was pregnant. Or rather, had been pregnant, before her father had taken her to a woman who provided clinical services in an upstairs room in their building.

"But why you never come to me? Why you had to tell him first?" Joel asked her when he went to see her. She was cowering behind the door, apprehensive that her father would come home and catch him.

No explanation

She could give him no valid explanation, other than that he had been so adamant about going back home, she'd been afraid he would have forced the issue if he had known, and she didn't want to be living in a strange country, far away from her family at a time when she needed them more than ever.

If there had been any remaining hope for the two of them, this matter effectively put that to an end. The time for him to go home was long overdue, and with his sister only too happy to put him up until he was established, he made the move.

Sunday: Baby blues take toll.