By an effort of will, I pulled myself around. I did not wish to scrutinise black as if it was anomalous. Instead—in line with Annie’s determination—I looked at white. White—wite and blank or albus and candidus—could be just as dangerous as black, or just as godly, in the ancient world: a leprous sickness or a guide in the storm. The Christian Bible must carry some blame for the slow shift to a more binary view of black and white, unequivocal as it is about the role of light in the Creation and the place of darkness in sin—but so too must the entrenchment of profit as a new god, for black was the colour of working men, where white was for the nobility.