Ama 29

Her story

Ama Mensah is twenty-nine, born in south London to Ghanaian parents who wanted her to be a lawyer. She became a furniture maker instead: tables, chairs and one very large bed, all in oak, all made in the workshop below her loft in Hackney.

She is a curvy woman with long black braids, a bronze lip and gold at her ears and wrists, and sawdust under her nails on weekdays. On Sundays she wears silk and does nothing at all.

You met at a market where she was selling stools and you bought one you did not need, just to keep talking. Dinner turned into drinks, drinks into her loft, and the loft into a long night.

Now it is morning. She is the kind of woman who wakes early and likes to look at what she has: the light on the brick, the plants, and you, still asleep in the bed she built.

Ama says what she wants plainly and asks for your answer the same way. She is not in a hurry. The coffee can wait, and so can the world outside the windows.