What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

6 A few weeks ahead of his eighth birthday, Toby showed Joel the lava lamp. It sat in the window of a shop near the top of Portobello Road, far north of the area for which the thoroughfare is famous: that sprawl of markets which burst like the weeds of commerce they are, in the vicinity of Notting Hill Gate.

The shop in which the lava lamp gave its oozing performance did its business between a halal butcher and an eatery called Cockney’s Traditional Pie Mash and Eels. Toby had caught a glimpse of it when, in a crocodile of the smaller pupils from Middle Row School, he’d tripped along Portobello Road for an enlightening field trip to the local post office, where the children were to practise buying stamps in a respectful manner that their teacher intended would be remembered for the rest of the purchases they would make in their lives. It was an exercise involving common maths and social interaction. Toby did not excel in either. But he did take note of the lava lamp. In fact, the mesmerising rise and fall of the material within it that constituted the “lava” drew him out of the crocodile and to the window where he immediately took a journey to Sose. He was roused from this by his crocodile partner’s shouting out and attracting the attention of the teacher at the head of the line. The volunteer parent accompanying the group at the back of the line saw to the problem. She wrested Toby from the window and put him back into place.

But the memory of the lava lamp lingered in Toby’s mind. He began talking about it that very night over their fried scampi, chips, and peas. Dousing everything with brown sauce, he called the lamp wicked, and he continued to bring it up until Joel consented to be introduced to its visual pleasures.

The liquid in it was purple. The “lava” was orange. Toby pressed his face to the window, sighed, and promptly fogged up the glass. He said,

“Innit wicked, Joel?” and he flattened his palm on the window as if he’d push right through it and become as one with the object of his fascination. “C’n I have it, you think?”

Joel searched for the price, which he found displayed on a small card at the black plastic base of the lamp, “£15.99” scrawled in red. This was eight pounds more than he currently possessed. He said, “No way, Tobe. Where’s the money goin’ to come from?”

Toby looked from the lava lamp to his brother. He’d been talked out of the inflated life ring on this day, wearing it deflated beneath his clothing, but his fingers plucked at it anyway, spasmodically fingering the air at his waist. His face was crestfallen. He said, “Wha’ ’bout my birthday?”

“I c’n talk to Aunt Ken. Maybe Ness ’s well.”

Toby’s shoulders dropped. He wasn’t so oblivious of the state of things in number 84 Edenham Way as to think Joel was promising anything but disappointment. Joel hated to see Toby with lowered spirits. He told his brother not to worry. If the lava lamp was what he wanted for his special day, then somehow the lava lamp would be his.

Joel knew that he couldn’t get the funds from his sister. Ness wasn’t to be talked to for love and certainly not for money these days. In the time since they’d left Henchman Street, she’d become increasingly unapproachable. Who she’d once been was like a daguerreotype now: Tilted this way or that he could almost see the girl from East Acton, angel Gabriel in the Christmas pageant, with white wings like clouds and a golden halo over her head, ballet shoes and a pink tutu, leaning from the window in Weedon House and spitting to the ground far below. She made no pretence of attending school any longer. No one knew how she spent her days.

That something profound had occurred to Ness somewhere along the line Joel understood. He simply didn’t know what it was, so in his innocence and ignorance he concluded it was something to do with the night she’d left them on their own while Kendra went out clubbing. He knew Ness hadn’t returned that night, and he knew there had been a violent argument between his aunt and his sister. But what went before that argument he did not know.

He did know that his aunt had finally washed her hands of Ness and Ness seemed to like things this way. She came and went at all hours and in all conditions, and while Kendra watched her with narrowed eyes and an expression of disgust, she seemed to be playing a waiting game with Ness, although what she was waiting for was not clear. In the meantime, Ness pushed the envelope of objectionable behaviour as if daring Kendra to take a stand. The tension was palpable when the two of them were in the house together. Something, sometime, was going to give way, and a landslide was going to follow.

What Kendra was actually waiting for was the inevitable: those ineluctable consequences of the way her niece was choosing to live. She knew this was going to involve a youth-offending team, magistrates, possibly the police, and likely an alternative living situation for the girl, and the truth of the matter was that she had reached the point of welcoming all this. She recognised the fact that Ness’s life had been a difficult one from the moment of her father’s untimely death. But thousands of children had difficult lives, she reckoned, without throwing what remained of those lives into the toilet. So when Ness stumbled home every once in a while and did so drunk or loaded, she told her to bathe, to sleep on the sofa, and to otherwise keep out of her sight. And when she reeked of sex, Kendra told her she was on her own to sort things out should she become pregnant or diseased.

“Like I care,” was Ness’s response to everything. It prompted Kendra to care in equal measure.

“You want to be an adult, be an adult,” she told Ness. But most of the time, she said nothing.

So Joel was reluctant to ask Kendra for help in acquiring a lava lamp for Toby. Indeed, he was reluctant to remind his aunt of Toby’s birthday at all. He thought fleetingly of how it all had been in a past that was receding from his memory: birthday dinners consumed from a special birthday plate, a lopsided “Happy Birthday” sign strung up at the kitchen window, a secondhand and unworking tin carousel in the centre of the table, and his dad producing a birthday cake as if from nowhere, always the appropriate number of candles lit, singing a birthday song he’d created himself. No mere “Happy Birthday to You” for his children, he would say.

When Joel thought about this, he felt driven to do something about the life that had been thrust upon his siblings and himself. But at his age, he could see nothing in front of him to mitigate the uncertainty with which they were living, so what was left to him was trying to make the life they had now as much like the life they had before as possible.

Toby’s birthday gave Joel an opportunity to do that. This was why he finally made the decision to ask his aunt for help. He chose a day when Toby had an extra session at the learning centre after school. Rather than hang about waiting, he scurried over to the charity shop, where he found Kendra ironing blouses in the back room but visible to the door should anyone enter.

He said, “’Lo, Aunt Ken,” and decided not to be put off when she merely nodded sharply in reply.

She said, “Where’ve you left Toby, then?”

He explained about the extra lesson. He’d told her before, but she’d forgotten. He assumed she’d forgotten Toby’s birthday as well, since she’d made no mention of the coming day. He said in a rush lest he lose his courage, “Toby’s due to be eight, Aunt Ken. I wan’ get him a lava lamp over Portobello Road he likes. Bu’ I need more money, so c’n I work for you?”

Kendra took this all in. The tone of Joel’s voice—so hopeful despite the expression on his face, which he tried to keep blank—made her think about the lengths he went to in order to keep himself and Toby out of her way. She wasn’t a fool. She knew how little welcome she’d been projecting towards the children.

She said, “Tell me how much you need, then.” And when he told her, she stood there thinking for a moment, a line deepening between her eyebrows. Finally, she went to the till. From the counter beneath it she brought out a stack of papers in a rainbow of colours, and she gestured for him to join her and to look them over at her side.

“Private Massage” made a straight line at the top of each of them. Beneath these words a silhouetted scene had been rendered, a figure lying facedown on a table and another figure hovering over him, hands apparently kneading his back. Beneath this, a list of massages and their prices ran to the bottom of the page, where Kendra’s home phone number and mobile number were printed.

“I want these handed out,” she told Joel. “You’d have to talk shop owners into putting them in their windows. I want them to go to gyms as well. Pubs, too. Inside phone boxes. Everywhere you can think of. You do that for me, I’ll pay you enough to buy Toby that lamp.”

Joel’s heart lightened. He could do that. He mistakenly thought it would be easier than anything. He mistakenly thought it would lead to nothing but the money he needed to make his little brother happy on his birthday.

TOBY TAGGED ALONG on the days when Joel delivered Kendra’s advertisements. He couldn’t be left at home, he couldn’t be left at the learning centre to wait for Joel, and he certainly couldn’t be taken to the charity shop where he’d get under Kendra’s feet. There was no question that Ness might look after him, so he wandered along in Joel’s wake and obediently waited outside the shops in whose windows the advertisements were put up.

Toby followed Joel inside the area’s gyms, though, because there was no trouble he could get into in the vestibules where the reception counters and the notice boards were. He did the same in the police station and the libraries, as well as the entry porches of the churches. He understood that this activity was all about the lava lamp, and since that lava lamp dominated his thoughts, he was happy enough to cooperate.

Kendra had given Joel several hundred massage leaflets, and the truth of the matter is that Joel could have easily dumped the lot of them into the canal and his aunt would have been none the wiser. But Joel wasn’t moulded to be dishonest, so day after day he trudged from Ladbroke Grove to Kilburn Lane, down the length of Portobello Road and Golborne Road, and to all points in between in an effort to shrink the size of the pile of handouts he’d been assigned. Once he’d exhausted all the shops, eateries, and pubs, he had to get more creative.

This involved—among other things—trying to decide who might want a massage from his aunt. Aside from individuals sore from overworking their muscles in the gyms, he came up with drivers forced to sit in buses all day or all night. This took him at last to the Westbourne Park garage, an enormous brick structure tucked under the A40 where city buses were housed and serviced and from which they departed on their rounds. While Toby squatted outside on the steps, Joel talked to a dispatcher who took the path of least resistance and told him distractedly that, yes, he could leave a pile of handouts right there on the countertop. Joel did so, turned to leave, and saw Hibah coming in the door.

She was carrying a lunch box, and she was garbed traditionally in headscarf and a long coat that dangled down to her ankles. She had her head lowered in a way entirely unusual for her, and when she raised it and caught sight of Joel, she grinned in spite of the performance of self-effacement she’d been giving.

She said, “Wha’ you doin here?”

Joel showed her the handouts and then asked the same question of her. She gestured to the lunch box.

“Bringin this for m’ dad. He drive the number twenty-three route.”

Joel smiled. “Hey, we been on that.”

“Yeah?”

“To Paddington station.”

“Cool.”

She handed the lunch box to the dispatcher. He nodded, took it, and went back to his work. This was a regular errand Hibah ran, and she explained as much to Joel as they went outside to where Toby was waiting.

“’S a way my dad keeps his finger on me,” she confided. “He t’inks he get me to make and bring’m his lunch, I got to dress right an’ I can’t mess round wiv anyone I’m not s’posed to mess round wiv.” She winked. “I got a niece, see, more like my age than lit’ler cos my bruvver—tha’s her dad—’s sixteen years older ’n me. Anyways, she’s seein an English boy, an’ the world comin to an end cos of that, innit. My dad swear I ain’t ever seein no English boys an’ he’s goin to make sure tha’ never happen even ’f he has to send me to Pakistan.” She shook her head. “Tell you, Joel, I cannot wait t’ be old ’nough t’ be out on my own, cos tha’s what I am plannin to do. Who’s this?”

She was referring to Toby who, on this day, had not been talked out of his life ring. He’d been sitting on the step where Joel had left him, and he’d popped up and come to join them as soon as they left the Westbourne Park garage. Joel told her who Toby was, without adding anything to the information.

She said, “I di’n’t know you had a bruvver.”

He said, “He in Middle Row School.”

“He helpin you wiv the handouts?”

“Nah. I jus’ takin him wiv me cos he can’t stay on his own.”

“How many you got left?” she asked.

For a moment, Joel didn’t know what Hibah meant. But then she flipped her thumb at the advertisements and she told him he could easily get rid of the rest of them by shoving them under the doors of all the flats in Trellick Tower. It would, she said, be easier than anything. She would help him do it.

“Come on,” she told him. “’S where I live. I get you in.”

A walk to the tower comprised no great distance. They trotted across Great Western Road and ducked into Meanwhile Gardens, with Toby dawdling along behind them. Hibah chatted away in her usual fashion as they took one of the serpentine paths. It was a fine spring Saturday— crisp but sunny—so the gardens were peopled with families and youths. Smaller children ran about the playground behind the chain-link fence of the drop-in centre, and older boys zipped about a graffi ti-decorated skate bowl that abutted it. They used skateboards, in-line skates, and bicycles for their activity, and they attracted Toby’s attention at once. His mouth opened into an O, his steps faltered, and he paused to watch, unmindful as always of the odd sight he presented: a little boy wearing too-large jeans, a life ring round his waist, and trainers that were closed with duct tape.

The skate bowl comprised three levels ascending one of the hillocks, the easiest level being on the top and the most difficult and steepest on the bottom. These levels were accessed by means of concrete steps, and a wide lip around the entire bowl offered a waiting area for those who wished to use it. Toby climbed to this. He called out to Joel.

“Lookit!” he cried. “I c’n do it, too, innit.”

Toby’s presence among the riders and the spectators was greeted with “Wha’ the hell” and “G’t out ’f the way, stupid git!”

Joel, flushing, hurried up the steps to grab his brother by the hand. He got him out without making eye contact with anyone, but he wasn’t able to carry off the rescue nonchalantly when it came to Hibah. She waited at the foot of the steps. When he dragged Toby, protesting, back to the path, she said, “He simple or summick? Why’s he got that tape round his shoes?” She made no mention of the life ring.

“He’s jus’ differ’nt,” Joel told her.

“Well, I c’n see that, innit,” was her reply. She gave Toby a curious look and then looked at Joel. “He gets bullied, I reckon.”

“Sometimes.”

“Makes you feel bad, I ’spect.”

Joel looked away from her, blinked hard, and shrugged. She nodded thoughtfully. “Come on, then,” she said. “You too, Toby. You been up the tower? I show you the view. You c’n see all the way to the river, mon. You c’n see the Eye. It’s wicked, innit.”

Inside Trellick Tower, a security guard kept a position within a windowed office. He nodded at Hibah as she made for the lift. She punched for the thirtieth floor and the views it offered, which were— despite the grimy condition of the windows—as “wicked” as she had promised. It was a spectacular aerie, reducing cars and lorries to matchbox vehicles, vast tracts of houses and estates to mere toys.

“Lookit! Lookit!” Toby kept calling as he dashed from one window to the next.

Hibah watched him and smiled. She laughed as well, but there was no meanness in it. She was unlike others, Joel concluded. He thought perhaps she could be a friend.

She and Joel divided the remaining stack of Kendra’s massage advertisements. Odd floors, even floors, they had soon dispensed with them all. They met at the lifts on the ground when they had finished their job. They walked outside and Joel wondered how he could thank or pay Hibah for her help.

While Toby moved off to gaze into the window of a newsagent—one of the group of shops that constituted the ground floor of the tower itself—Joel shuffled his feet. He felt hot and sticky in spite of the breeze coming up Golborne Road. He was trying to develop a way to tell Hibah he had no money to purchase a Coke, a bar of chocolate, a Cornetto, or anything else she might fancy as a sign of his gratitude when he heard her name called and turned to see a boy approaching them on a bicycle.

He came upon them quickly, pedalling from the direction of the Grand Union Canal to the north. He wore the signature gear of baggy jeans, tattered trainers, a hoodie, and a baseball cap. He was clearly a mixed-race boy like Joel, yellow skinned but otherwise featured like a black. The right side of his face was dragged down, as if pulled by an unseen force and glued into position permanently, giving him a sinister expression despite his adolescent spots.

He braked, hopped off, and threw his bike to the ground. He came at them swiftly, and Joel felt his intestines squeeze pain into his groin. The rule of the street meant that he had to stand his ground when accosted or be marked forever as having the bottle for nothing but peeing his pants.

Hibah said, “Neal! Wha’ you doin here? I thought you said you was goin to—”

“Who dis? I been lookin for you. You say you headin f’r the bus garage an’ you ain’t dere. Wha’s dat mean, den?”

He sounded threatening, but Hibah wasn’t the sort of girl who responded well to threats. She said, “You checkin up on me? I don’ like tha’ much.”

“Why? You ’fraid to be checked up on?”

With some surprise, it came to Joel that this was the boyfriend Hibah had mentioned. He was the one she talked to through the school gates during their lunch period, the one who didn’t attend school as he was meant to do but rather spent his days doing . . . Joel didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. He merely wanted to make it clear to the boy that he had no interest in his property, which was what he obviously felt Hibah was.

He said to Hibah, “Thanks for helpin wiv the handouts,” and he started to move towards Toby, who was bouncing rhythmically against the glass of the newsagent’s by means of his life ring. She said, “Hey. Hang on.” And then to Neal, “This is Joel, innit. He goes to school wiv me over Holland Park.” The tone of her voice made it clear enough: She wasn’t happy about making the introduction because she wasn’t happy about Neal’s attempt to claim ownership of her. She said to Joel, “This here is Neal.”

Neal looked Joel over, disgust making his lips go thin and his nostrils flare. He said, not to Joel but to Hibah, “Why you wiv him in the tower, den? Saw you come out, di’n’t I.”

“Oh, cos we makin babies, Neal,” Hibah said. “Wha’ else we be doin in the tower in the middle of th’ bloody day?”

Joel thought she was mad to speak in this way. Neal took a step towards her and for a moment Joel thought he’d be put into the position of having to brawl with Neal in order to keep Hibah safe from his wrath. That was far down on the list of things he wished to do with his afternoon, and he was relieved when Hibah defused the situation by saying with a laugh, “He just twelve years old, Neal. I showed him and his bruvver the view is all. Tha’s his bruvver over there.”

Neal searched out Toby. “Dat? ” he said and then to Joel, “Wha’s he, a freak or summick?”

Joel said nothing. Hibah said, “Shut up. Tha’s dead stupid, Neal. He’s a lit’le kid, innit.”

Neal’s yellow face went red as he turned back to her. Something within him was going to need to be released, and Joel braced himself to be on the receiving end of it.

Toby’s call supervened. “Joel, I got to poo. C’n we go home?”

Neal muttered, “Shit.”

Hibah said, “You got tha’ right, at least.” And then she laughed at her own joke, which made Joel smile although he tried to suppress it. Neal, who couldn’t track the humour, said to Joel, “Wha’ you laughin at, yellow arse?”

Joel said, “Nuffink.” And then to Toby, “Come on, Tobe. We ain’t far. Le’s go.”

Neal said, “Di’n’t say you could go anywheres, did I?” as Toby came to join them.

Joel said, “Won’t answer f’r the smell ’f you mean us to stay.”

Hibah laughed again. She shook Neal by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “We got time ’fore my mum wonders where I am. Le’s stop usin it up like this.”

Neal came around at that reminder. He allowed himself to be led in the direction of the scent garden and its shrouded path. But he looked over his shoulder as he walked away. He was marking Joel. It would be for a future encounter of some sort. Joel knew it.

KENDRA’S INTENSITY OF purpose paid off sooner than she expected. The day after Joel set out with her massage advertisements, she received her first phone call. A man requested a sports massage as soon as possible. He lived in a flat above a pub called the Falcon, where Kilburn Lane became Carlton Vale. She made home visits, didn’t she, because that’s what he needed.

He sounded polite. He was soft-spoken. The fact that he lived above a pub seemed to make it safe. Kendra logged an appointment for him and loaded her table into the Punto. She threw Cumberland pie into the oven for Joel and Toby and produced some Maltesers and fi g rolls for their pudding. She gave Joel an extra pound for having placed the advertisements so wisely, and she went on her way to find the Falcon, which turned out to be sitting on what was nearly a roundabout, with a modern church opposite and traffic shooting by from the three roads that met in front of it.

It was no easy feat to find somewhere to park, and as a result Kendra had to lug the massage table some hundred yards from a lane that veered away from the main roads and provided space for two schools. She also had to cross over Kilburn Lane, so by the time she struggled inside the pub to enquire how to get to the flats above, she was out of breath and sweating.

She ignored the stares of the regular patrons gathered at the bar and hoisting pints at the tables. She followed the directions, which had her return to the pavement, go around the building, and find a door with four buzzers lined up on one side. She rang, banged her way up the stairs, and paused at the top to regain her breath. One of the doors opened abruptly, silhouetting a well-built man in the light from within. He was obviously the one who’d phoned for the massage, for he hurried forward in the gloom of the corridor, saying,

“Lemme help you wiv dat.” He took the massage table from her and carried it easily into the flat. This turned out to be little more than a large bedsit, possessing several beds, a basin, an electric fire, and a single ring for cooking whatever could be cooked on a single ring. Kendra was taking all this in as the man set up the table. For this reason, she didn’t take much note of him nor he of her until he had the table unfolded with its legs extended, and she had unpacked most of the accoutrements of massage.

He set the table upright and turned to face her. She shook out the table’s cover and glanced his way. They both said, “Damn,” at the same moment. It was the man who, on Kendra’s disastrous girls’ night out, had brought Ness home drunk and eager to do whatever he wished her to do to him.

Kendra was at a momentary loss. She was holding the table’s covering, her arms extended, and she dropped them at once. He said, “Well, dis is a bloody awkward moment, innit.”

Kendra reached a quick decision about the matter. Business was business, and this was business. She said formally, “You said a sports massage?”

He said, “Yeah. Dat’s what I said. Dix.”

“What?”

“My name. It’s Dix.” He waited until Kendra had the table covered, the soft terry cushioning for his head in place. Then he said, “She ever tell you what really happened dat night? It was like I said, y’know.”

Kendra smoothed her hand over the cover. She opened her bag and brought out her oils. She said, “We didn’t talk about it, Mr. Dix. Now what scent oil would you like? I recommend lavender. It’s most relaxing.”

A smile played around his lips. “Not Mr. Dix,” he said. “Dix D’Court. You’re called Kendra what?”

“Osborne,” she said. “Mrs.”

His glance went from her face to her hands. “You got no ring, Mrs. Osborne. You divorced? Widowed?”

She could have told him it was none of his business. Instead she said,

“Yes,” and left it at that. “You said you wanted a sports massage?”

“What I do first?” he asked.

“Strip down.” She handed him a sheet and turned her back. “Keep your shorts on,” she told him. “This’s a real massage, by the way. I hope that’s what you wanted when you phoned me, Mr. D’Court. This is a legitimate business I’m running.”

“Wha’ else would I want, Mrs. Osborne?” he asked, and she could hear the laughter in his voice. In a moment, he said, “I’m ready, den.”

She turned to see him supine on the table, the sheet pulled up discreetly and tucked around his waist. She thought a single word: shit. He had an exquisite body. Weight lifting had defined his muscles. Over them stretched skin as smooth as a baby’s. He had no hair that Kendra could see, save for eyebrows and lashes. Not a mark was on him. The sight of him reminded her at the worst possible time of the ages it had been since she’d had a man. This, she told herself, was not what she was supposed to be feeling in her line of work. A body was a body. Her hands upon it were the tools of her trade.

He was watching her. He repeated his question. “She tell you?”

Kendra had forgotten the reference. She drew her eyebrows together, saying, What?”

“Your daughter. She tell you wha’ happened b’tween us dat night?”

“I don’t got . . . I don’t have a daughter.”

“Den who . . . ?” For a moment it seemed he thought he was mistaken about who Kendra was. He said, “Over Edenham Estate.”

“She’s my niece,” Kendra said. “She lives with me. You’ll need to turn over. I’ll begin with your back and shoulders.”

He waited for a moment, watching her. He said, “You don’ look old ’nough to have a daughter or a niece like dat.”

“I’m old,” Kendra said, “just well preserved.”

He chuckled and then cooperatively turned over. He did what most people do at first when being given a massage: He cradled his head with his arms. She changed his position, bringing his arms down to his sides and turning his head so he was lying facedown. She poured the oil into her palms and warmed it, realizing at that moment that she’d left her soothing music in the car. The result of this was that the massage would have to be given to the accompanying noise from the pub below, which came up through the floor steadily, impossible to ignore. She looked around for a radio, a stereo, a CD player, anything to make a difference to the ambience. There was virtually nothing in the bedsit, save for the beds, which were difficult to ignore. She wondered why the man had three of them.

She began the massage. He had extraordinary skin: dark as black coffee, with the feel of a newborn infant’s palm, while just beneath it the muscles were perfectly defined. He had a body that indicated hard manual labour, but what encased it suggested he hadn’t held a tool in his life. She wanted to ask him what he did for a living, that he should be fashioned so magnificently. But this, she felt, would betray an interest that she wasn’t supposed to feel towards a client, so she said nothing.

She remembered her massage instructor explaining something that, at the time, had seemed rather mad. “You must get into the zen of the massage. The warmth of your intentions for the client’s comfort should transmit itself to your hands until the you of you disappears, so there is nothing left but tissue, muscles, pressure, and movement.”

She’d thought, What bollocks, but now she attempted to go there. She closed her eyes and aimed herself towards the zen of it all. “Feels bloody good,” Dix D’Court murmured.

In silence, she did his neck, his shoulders, his back, his arms, his hands, his thighs, his legs, his feet. She knew every inch of him, and not a centimetre of his body was different in condition from any other. Even his feet were smooth, not a callus anywhere. When she fi nished this part of the massage, she concluded he’d spent his life floating in a vat of baby oil.

She asked him to turn over. She made him more comfortable with a towel she rolled up and placed behind his neck. She picked up the bottle of oil to continue but he stopped her by reaching out and grasping her wrist, at the same time saying, “Where’d you learn dis, anyway?”

She said automatically, “Go to school, mon. Wha’ else you t’ink?”

And then, the correction because she’d spoken almost out of a dream state, matching his dialect simply because—she told herself—she’d achieved the zen that her instructor had spoken of, “I’ve taken a course at the college.”

“Give you high marks.” He grinned, showing teeth that were straight and white and as perfect as the rest of him. He closed his eyes and settled in for the second half of the massage. Because she’d inadvertently slipped from Lady Muck, Kendra felt found out. Her discomfort propelled her through the rest of the massage. She wanted to finish and be gone from this place. When she’d completed her work on his body, she stepped away and wiped her hands on a towel. The procedure was to give the client a few minutes at the end of the massage to lie on the table and savour the experience. But in this instance, Kendra just wanted to be out of the bedsit. She turned from the table and began to pack up.

She heard him move behind her and when she swung around, she found him sitting up on the table, his legs dangling over the side, watching her, his body still lightly glistening from the oil she’d used upon him. He said, “She tell you the truth, Mrs. Osborne? You never said and I can’t le’ you out ’f here till I know. The sort you t’ink I am? Not the truth, innit. She ’as down below”— by this he meant the pub—“an’ I go in cos I get a glass of tomato juice from the bar. She dead drunk, and she letting two blokes dance wiv her in a corner and feel her up. She got her blouse open. She hiking her skirt like she means—”

“All right,” Kendra said. All she could think was fifteen years old, fif-teen years old.

He said, “No. You got to hear cos you t’ink—”

“If I say I believe you . . .”

He shook his head. “Too late for dat, Mrs. Osborne. Too late. I get her out ’f the pub but she t’inks dat means wha’ it don’t. She offer it all, wha’ever I want her to do to me. I say fine, she can blow me—”

Kendra flashed her eyes at him. He held up a hand.

“—but we got to get to her place to do it, I tell her. The only way, see, I c’n get her to say where she lives. I drive her there. Dat’s when you show up.”

Kendra shook her head. “You was . . . No. You were—” She didn’t know how to express it. She gestured to her breasts. She said, “I saw you. Raising up.”

He turned his head, but she could see he was doing it to think back to that night. He finally said, “Her bag was on the floor. I fetchin it. Woman, I do not do kids, an’ one t’ing I c’n see is she’s a kid.” He added, “Not like you, not like you at all. Mrs. Osborne. Kendra. C’n you walk over here?” He gestured to the table, to himself. She said, “Why?”

“Cos you a beauty, an’ I want to kiss you.” He smiled. “See? I don’t lie ’bout nuffink. Not ’bout your niece. Not ’bout me. Not ’bout you.”

“I told you. This’s my business. ’sF you think I—”

“I know. I phone you up cos I see the handout in the gym, dat’s all. I don’t know who shows up an’ I don’t care. I got a competition to get ready for, an’ I need my muscles seen to. Dat’s it.”

“What sort of competition?”

“Bodybuilding.” He paused, waiting for her to comment. When she didn’t, he said, “Working towards Mr. Universe. I been lifting since I was thirteen years old.”

“How long’s that, then?”

“Ten years,” he told her.

“You’re twenty-three.”

“Problem wiv dat?”

“I’m forty, man.”

“Problem wiv dat?”

“Can’t you do maths?”

“Maths don’t make me wan’ to kiss you less.”

Kendra stood her ground, without really knowing why she was doing so. She wanted his kiss, no mistake about that. She wanted more as well. The seventeen years between them meant there would be no strings, which was how she liked things. But there was something about him that made her hesitate: He seemed twenty-three in years only. In mind-set and behaviour, he seemed much older, and that spelled danger of a kind she’d avoided for a very long time.

He slid off the table then. The sheet he’d been wearing slipped to the floor. He came to her and put his hand on her arm. It slid to her wrist and he said, “Truth is truth, Mrs. Osborne. I phoned up f ’r a massage. Money’s over on th’ table. Wiv a tip ’s well. I di’n’t ’spect anyt’ing else. Bu’ I still want it. Question is, do you? Anyways, jus’ a kiss.”

Kendra wanted to say no because she knew saying yes meant going to a place she ought to avoid. But she didn’t reply. Nor did she walk away. He said, “I don’ jus’ take. You’re meant to answer, Mrs. Osborne.”

Someone else inside her did the talking. “Yes,” she said. He kissed her. He urged her mouth open, one hand on the back of her neck. She put her hand on his waist and then slid it over his buttocks, which were tight, like the rest of him. And like the rest of him, they filled her with wanting.

She broke away. “I don’t do this,” she said.

He knew what she meant. “I c’n tell dat,” he murmured. He drew back and looked at her. “I don’t ’s’pect nuffink. You c’n leave if you want.” With his fingers, he traced the curve of her cheek. With his other hand, he grazed across her breasts.

The caress finished off what resistance she had. She stepped back to him and lifted her mouth to his as her hands reached for his waist again, this time to remove the only article of clothing that he had on. He said, “My.” And then, “Dat’s my bed. Come ’ere.” He led her to the bed nearest the window and lowered her to it. “You a goddess,” he said.

He unbuttoned her blouse. He freed her breasts. He gazed on them, then upon her face before he lowered her to the mattress and lowered his mouth to her nipples.

She gasped because it had been so long, and she needed to have a man’s worship of her body, feigned or not. She wanted him, and in this moment, the fact of the wanting was the only thing that—

“Fuck it, Dix. Wha’ the hell you doing? We had a bloody ’greement!”

They separated in a rush, scrambling for sheets, for clothing, for anything at all to cover themselves. It came to Kendra that there was a distinct reason for the room’s three beds. Dix D’Court shared his accommodation, and one of his flatmates had just walked into the room.