What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

7 On the night Ness saw the Blade come out of the Harrow Road police station, she made a decision. To her it was a simple one, meant to be, but it put her on a path that would forever alter the lives of people she would never meet.

The Blade was not a pleasant man to look upon. He radiated danger in a manner so pellucid that he might have been wearing fl ashing lights around his neck instead of what he was wearing, which was a gold Italian charm meant to ward off the evil eye. He also radiated power. The power drew people to him; the danger kept them where he preferred them to be, which was subservient, tentative, and eager. He’d learned to cultivate behaviour most apt to intimidate, both because of his size and because of his physical attributes: At only five feet five inches tall, he could have been marked as someone easy to take down; completely hairless and with a face so sharply pulled back from his nose that the front of his skull looked more like a beak than anything else, he’d also learned early that there were only two ways to survive the environment into which he’d been born. He’d chosen the route of mastery rather than the route of escape. It was easier and he liked things easy.

Close to him, Ness had felt both the power and the danger, but she was in no state to be affected by either. Her encounter with her aunt, followed by her visit to Six on the Mozart Estate, had put her in a place where the last thing she cared about was self-preservation. So when she took in the details of the Blade—from the cowboy boots that gave him additional height to the cobra tattoo that made a statement by curling down from his head and onto his cheek—she saw just what she was looking for, which was someone capable of altering her state of mind.

What the Blade saw was what she offered superficially, and he was ready for that. He’d spent four hours in the police station—which was two hours more than he had ever agreed to—and while there had never been any question about whether he’d be back on the street as soon as he’d done the song and dance required of him, he hadn’t produced for the police in a manner they liked, so he’d been at their mercy. He hated that, and hate set him on edge. He wanted to remove the sharpness of that edge. There were several ways to do this, and Ness was standing there blatantly promising one of them.

When his ride arrived, he didn’t therefore climb into the passenger seat and tell the driver—one Calvin Hancock, whose copious dreadlocks were carefully capped in deference to the manner that a hairless man might be suspected of preferring to see them—to take him to Portnall Road, where a seventeen-year-old girl called Arissa was waiting to service him. Instead, he jerked his head at the backseat for Ness to get into the car and he climbed in after her, leaving Calvin Hancock in the position of chauffeur.

He said to Calvin, “Up Willesden Lane.”

Cal—as he was called—looked into the rearview mirror. This was a change of plan, and he didn’t like plan changes. Having taken on the responsibility of protecting the Blade, having successfully done so for five years, and having received the questionable rewards of this success—which were the Blade’s companionship and a place to sleep at night—Cal knew the risk of impulsive decisions and he knew what his own life would be like if something happened to the other man. He said, “Mon, I t’ought you wanted Rissa. Portnall’s clean. She been keepin it dat way. We go up to Willesden, no way in hell we c’n tell who be dere you walk in.”

The Blade said, “Fuck. You questioning me?”

Cal put the car into gear as answer.

Ness listened and admired. When the Blade said to Cal, “Give us a ziggy,” she felt a frisson of wonder and excitement when the other man obediently pulled the car to the kerb, flicked open the glove box, and rolled the spliff. He lit it, took a hit, and handed it back to the Blade. His glance met Ness’s in the rearview mirror as he moved the car back into the nighttime traffic.

Next to her, the Blade leaned back. He ignored her, which made him seem even more appealing. He smoked his cannabis and offered Ness none of it. She ached and put her hand on his thigh. She slid it to his crotch. He knocked her away. He did it without a glance at her. She wanted to be his slave.

She said in a murmur that came to her from the countless fi lms she’d seen and the bizarre image of successful human contact they provided,

“Baby, I do you. I do you in ways make your head feel like it goin to ’splode. Dat what you want? Dat how you like it?”

The Blade tossed an indifferent glance her way. He said, “I do you, slag. When and where. It don’t happen opposite and you best remember that from the start.”

What Ness heard was only “from the start.” She felt the warm, wet thrill of what the words implied.

Calvin drove them north, away from the Harrow Road and beyond Kilburn Lane. Fixed upon the Blade as she was, Ness made no note of where they were going. When they finally came upon an estate of low brick terraces sprawling through a system of narrow streets with most of the lamps and all of the security lights long ago shot out, they might have been anywhere from Hackney to hell. Ness couldn’t have said. Cal parked and opened the passenger door on Ness’s side. She slid out. The Blade followed. He handed the roach to Cal, said, “Check it out, den,” and leaned against the side of the car as Cal disappeared along a path and between two buildings.

Ness shivered, not with the cold but with a kind of anticipation she’d never felt before. She tried to appear indifferent, a type, as it were. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the Blade. Everything she wanted. That was how she thought of him. It seemed to her that a miracle had come about on an evening that had earlier appeared disastrous. Cal returned in a few minutes. He said, “Clean.”

The Blade said, “You carrying?”

Cal said, “Shit, mon. What else you t‘ink?” He patted the pocket of the tattered leather jacket he wore. “Who love you more’n your gran, baby? You safe long ’s Cal Hancock watching.”

The Blade gave no response to this. He jerked his head towards the path through the buildings. Cal led the way.

Ness made up a third, like an afterthought. She kept close to the Blade, intent upon looking as if—wherever they were going—they would arrive together.

The estate they were on was a place of noise, acrid with smells that combined rotting rubbish, cooking odours, and burning rubber. They passed two drunken girls vomiting into a dead shrub and a gang of young boys accosting an old-age pensioner who’d foolishly decided to take his rubbish to the bins after dark. They came upon a vicious, ear-splitting catfight and a lone broom-thin woman plunging a hypodermic needle into her arm in the shelter of a discarded mattress that balanced against a leafl ess tree.

Their destination was a house in the middle of a terrace. To Ness, it looked either unoccupied or asleep for the night. But when Cal knocked on the door, a spy hole opened. Someone checked them out, found them acceptable, and opened up. The Blade stepped past Cal and entered. Ness followed. Cal remained outside.

Inside, there was no actual furniture. Instead, there were old mattresses piled three high in several locations, and large upended cardboard boxes scattered nearby to serve as tables. What light there was came from two lopsided floor lamps that cast their glow on the walls and the ceiling so that the floor with its tattered maroon carpet squares was mostly in shadow. Aside from graffiti depicting a wild-haired man and a nude woman riding a hypodermic needle into the stratosphere, there was nothing on the walls, and taken as a whole, the house didn’t appear to be a place where anyone actually lived.

It was occupied, however. One might have thought that a party was even going on because there was scratchy music coming low from a radio that needed to have its station adjusted. But what one normally expects to see at a party—people engaged in conversation or some other activity with one another—was not a feature of this place. Instead, the activity was confined to smoking, and where there was conversation, it was limited to comments about the quality of the crack and what it was providing in the way of mental and physical diversion.

Other smoking was going on as well, cannabis and tobacco, and substances were being bought and sold, with transactions completed by a middle-aged black woman in a purple negligee, which displayed the unfortunate, pendulous condition of her large breasts. She seemed to be the responsible party, aided by the doorman who, by means of the spy hole, inspected individuals wishing to enter.

There was no question in anyone’s mind about whether this place was a safe house in which to engage in their chosen pursuit. Across the neighbourhood and spreading out in all directions, these sorts of dens popped up like toadstools in a moist woodland. The police couldn’t keep track of them, and on the off chance that a neighbour developed the courage to report such a place and to request an arrest of its proprietor, the police had too many other irons in the fire to deal with the problem.

Purple Negligee supplied the Blade with what he’d come for, a request from him being unnecessary. Since she existed because he existed, she wanted to make him welcome. This house was his first incursion into territory controlled by an Albanian gang, and she owed him not only the roof over her head but also the form of livelihood that this business provided.

She said to him, “How your gran, darlin?” as he lit up the pipe she’d given him. It was small, disappearing into the hollow of his hand, and a thread of smoke issued from it. “She still in hospital? Dat’s so rough, innit. Your mum still keepin you ’way from the rest of the kids ’s well?

Bloody slag. Wha’ else I get you, darlin? Who dis anyway? She with you?”

The she was Ness, the Blade’s shadow, who stood one step behind him like a royal consort. She was waiting for an indication of what she was meant to do, her expression an attempt to hide uncertainty through a display of indifference. The Blade reached around and put his hand on the back of her neck. He pinched his thumb and forefi nger beneath her ear and through this means brought her forward. He put the pipe in her mouth and watched as she sucked. He smiled and said to Purple Negligee, “Who else she be with, gash, if she not wiv me?”

“Looks young, man. Dat not like you.”

“You t’inking dat cos you want me f ’r yourself.”

She laughed. “Oooh. You way too much man f’r me, baby.” She patted his cheek. “Give a shout can Melia get you anyt’ing else.” She took herself down the darkened corridor, where the only couple in the place who were engaged with each other were having an inexpert knee trembler up against the wall.

Ness felt the effect of the drug quickly. Everything that was her life receded into the background, leaving her open to the present moment. The fact that she was in danger from any number of sources didn’t occur to her. How could it when her rational mind had departed, leaving in its place what seemed not only rational but superior to any mind she’d ever possessed? The only thought she had was that she wanted more of what made her feel like this.

The Blade watched her and smiled. “You liking dis, innit.”

“’S you,” she said, for to her he was the source of all experience and sensation. He was what could make her whole. She said, “Lemme suck you, mon. You won’ b’lieve how you goin to feel.”

“Expert, are you?”

“Only one way to know.”

“Your mum know you talk to blokes like dis?”

That cut through the pleasure. She turned and walked into the sitting area, leaving him behind. She lowered herself to one of the piles of mattresses, putting herself squarely between two young men. Until her arrival they’d been concentrating on their individual highs, but Ness made that difficult by saying to one of them, “Wha’ I got t’ do get a hit of dat stuff?” and nodding at the pipe he held as she put her hand on the other’s thigh and rode it up to his crotch in the same manner she’d tried on the Blade in the backseat of the car.

Across from her, the Blade saw what she was doing and knew why she was doing it, but he was not a man who let women run his show. The little slag, he thought, could do what she wanted. He went in search of Melia, leaving Ness in the sitting room. She’d soon enough learn the price of playing men like puppets in a place like this.

The learning did not take long. Ness got the pipe for a hit, but it was a hit with a cost determined by what she appeared to be offering. She quickly found that the attention she was attracting came from more than the two men she’d placed herself between. Several others had taken note of her, and when her hand went to the crotch of her companion on the mattress, he was not the only one to feel the corresponding arousal.

There were other women present, but with more experience, they knew the wisdom of keeping to themselves and just enjoying the high they’d come for. And since none of the men wanted to waste the energy either coaxing or coercing when the same delights could be savoured with no effort whatsoever on their part, they gravitated to Ness.

They could see she was young, but it didn’t matter. These were gentlemen who’d had perfectly willing eleven-year-old girls when they themselves had been thirteen and younger. In a world in which there was little to live for and less to hope for, most of the time they didn’t even need to practise their clumsy arts of seduction.

Ness was therefore surrounded before she realised what was happening. The fact of the surrounding rather than what the surrounding meant began the process of clearing her head. A pipe was thrust at her for a hit, but she no longer wanted it. Someone said, “Ge’ her down here, den,” and from behind she was lowered to the mattress. Hot breath was what she thought of, then: the feel of it and the smell of it. Two sets of hands pulling off her tights as another set spread her legs. A fourth set held her arms imprisoned. She cried out, which was taken for delight.

She began to writhe. The escape she wanted was seen as hot anticipation. She cried out again as zips were lowered, and she squeezed her eyes shut rather than have to see what she would otherwise see. A body fell upon her and she felt the heat of it and then the bulging, throbbing head, which was when she screamed.

It was over quickly. Not how she feared it would be over, but how she dreamed. She heard a curse first and then immediately the body pulled away from her as if lifted by a force of nature. Then he was there raising her from the mattress: not to carry her out of the horrible place, in his arms in the manner of a troubadour-sung hero, but to jerk her to her feet and curse her as an idiot fool slag who, if she needed to be taught a lesson, was fucking well going to be taught it by him and not by this scum.

It felt like being wooed. Ness knew that the Blade would not have come to her rescue had he not cared about her. He was one man among many. The many were bigger, tougher, and far more menacing. He’d risked himself to make her safe. So when he shoved her in front of him in the direction of the door, Ness felt the pressure against her scapula as a form of caress, and she went without protest into the night, where Cal Hancock was waiting, to whom the Blade said, “Melia got t’ings handled. Le’s go to Lancefi eld, mon.”

“Wha’ ’bout her?” Cal said with a nod at Ness.

“She coming wiv us,” the Blade told him. “Can’t leave the slag here.”

Thus it was that some thirty minutes later, Ness found herself not in the decently appointed flat she imagined but, rather, in a squat just off Kilburn Lane, where a block of flats destined for the wrecking ball had been taken over in the meantime by those homeless individuals with the nerve to live in the same vicinity as the Blade. There on a scratchy blanket that covered a futon on the floor, the Blade did to Ness what the men in the crack house had anticipated doing. Unlike inside the crack house, though, Ness eagerly accepted this attention.

She had an agenda of her own, and she decided as she spread her legs for him that the Blade was the only man on earth she wished to fulfill it.

WHEN KENDRA HEARD Dix tell the story of taking Ness from the Falcon and driving her home, she decided to believe him. Soft-spoken and ostensibly gentle-hearted, he seemed sincere. So although she’d washed her hands of Ness on the same night that Ness had met the Blade and throughout the weeks that followed, Kendra came to realise that she needed to set her relationship with her niece back on course. How to do this was the question, however, since Ness was rarely at home.

The benefit of her absence was that Kendra was able to pursue her career without any familial disruptions, something that she was happy enough to do since it helped take her mind off what had nearly come to pass between Dix D’Court and herself postmassage in the bedsit above the Falcon. And Kendra definitely needed to take her mind off that. She wanted to think of herself as a professional.

The downside of Ness’s absence, however, was that the same conscience requiring Kendra to be professional in the area of massage also required her to reach out to the girl. This was not so much because Kendra hoped that a decent aunt-and-niece friendship might develop between them but because she’d been wrong in what she’d assumed had happened between Dix and Ness, and she needed to make amends for that. Kendra believed she owed that much to a brother who’d turned his life around: Gavin Campell, drug addled for years until the birth and the near death of Toby.

“Woke me up, that did,” Gavin had told her. “Showed me I can’t leave these kids to Carole’s minding them, and tha’s the truth.”

What was also the truth was that none of the Campbell children had ever been struck by an adult. Thus, Kendra’s encounter with Ness in front of her house that night—culminating as it had done with a blow to the face—comprised something that had to be smoothed over, explained in some way, or apologised for: whatever would work to get Ness back home where she belonged and where her father would have wanted her.

Kendra’s need to do this was heightened by a phone call she received from Social Services not long after the sports massage at the Falcon. A woman called Fabia Bender of the Youth Offending Team was making an attempt to set up an appointment with Vanessa Campbell and whatever adult stood in loco parentis in Ness’s life. The fact that Social Services were now actively engaged in the situation gave Kendra a wild card to play in her dealings with Ness. If she could find her.

Questioning Joel wasn’t helpful. While he saw his sister on occasion, he told Kendra that there was nothing regular in her comings and goings. He didn’t add that Ness was a stranger to him now. He merely said that she was sometimes there when he and Toby returned from the learning centre. She’d be having a bath, rooting through clothing, pinching packets of cigarettes from Kendra’s carton of Benson & Hedges, eating leftover curry, or dipping crisps into a container of Mexican salsa as she watched a chat show on the television. When he spoke to her, she largely ignored him. It was always evident that she wasn’t intending to stay for very long. He couldn’t add anything more.

Kendra knew that Ness had mates among the adolescents in the area. She knew two of them were called Six and Natasha. But that was the limit of what she knew although she assumed a great deal more. Alcohol, drugs, and sex topped the list. She reckoned that theft, prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, and gang-related activities were not far behind.

For weeks and despite her every effort, she didn’t get an opportunity to have with Ness the conversation that she wanted to have. She looked for the girl but could not find her, and it was only when she had resigned herself to not locating Ness until Ness was ready to be located that she actually saw her, quite by chance, in Queensway, heading into Whiteley’s. She was in the company of two girls. One was plump and one was gaunt, but they both were uniformed in the style of the streets. Tight jeans that sculpted everything from their buttocks to their pubic bones, stiletto heels, sheer tops tied at the waist over tiny colourful Tshirts. Ness was dressed in a similar fashion. Kendra recognised one of her own scarves wound through the girl’s thick hair.

She followed them into Whiteley’s and found them fi ngering costume jewellery in Accessorize. She said Ness’s name, and the girl turned around, her hand going to the scarf in her hair as if she believed Kendra intended to take it from her.

“I need to talk to you,” Kendra said. “I’ve been trying to find you for weeks.”

“I ain’t hidin from you,” was Ness’s reply. The plump girl sniggered, as if Kendra had somehow been put in her place, if not by Ness’s words then by her tone, which was churlish.

Kendra looked at the girl who’d sniggered. “Who are you, then?” she asked.

The girl didn’t reply. She produced instead a surly expression meant to put Kendra off, which it failed to do. The gaunt girl said, “I’m Tash, innit,” and was silenced for this show of marginal affability with a look from the other.

“Well, Tash,” Kendra said, “I’ve a need to speak to Vanessa alone. I’d like you and this other person—are you Six, by the way?—to give us that opportunity.”

Natasha had never heard a black woman speak such a form of English aside from on the television, so her response was to gawp at Kendra. Six’s response was to shift her weight from one hip to the other, to cross her arms beneath her breasts, and to give Kendra a head-to-toe look that was designed to make her feel like a marked woman destined for a street mugging or worse.

“Well?” Kendra said when neither of the girls moved off.

“They ain’t goin nowheres,” Ness said. “And I ain’t talking to you cos I got nothin to say.”

“But I do,” Kendra said. “I was wrong and I want to talk to you about that.”

Ness’s eyes narrowed. It had been some time since the incident in front of Kendra’s house, so she wasn’t sure what to make of the word wrong. But she’d never before had an adult admit to wrongdoing— aside from her father—so she felt a corresponding confusion that made her hesitate and robbed her of a quick reply.

Kendra took the opportunity that Ness’s silence provided. “Come with me for a coffee. You can meet your friends afterwards if you want to do that.” She took two steps towards the shop door to indicate her departure.

Ness hesitated for a moment before saying to the other girls, “Le’ me see what the cow wants. I catch you up front of the cinema.”

They agreed to this, and Kendra led Ness to a café not far from Whiteley’s. She wanted her out of the shopping centre, where the noise level was high and the gangs of kids wandering around provided too many distractions. The café was crowded, but it was mostly populated by shoppers taking a break and not by kids waiting for action. Kendra bought drinks at the counter and, while she was waiting, took the time to rehearse what she wanted to say.

She made it brief and to the point. “I was dead wrong to hit you, Nessa,” she said to her niece. “I was angry that you’d not stayed home with Joel and Toby like you’d said you would. Top of that, I thought something was going on that wasn’t going on, and I . . .” She looked for a way to explain it. “I slipped over the edge.” She didn’t add the rest of it, the two parts that completed the tale: the ache of encroaching middle age that she’d felt that night in No Sorrow when she hadn’t managed to pull even one man, and the encounter with Dix D’Court in which he’d explained what had happened between Ness and himself. Both of these parts of the tale revealed much more about Kendra than she wanted to reveal. All Ness needed to know was that her aunt had been wrong, she knew she’d been wrong, and she’d come to make things right.

“I want you to come home, Nessa,” she said. “I want to start again with you.”

Ness looked away from her. She dug her cigarettes—which were Kendra’s pinched Benson & Hedges—from her shoulder bag and lit one. She and her aunt were sitting on stools at a counter that ran along the front window of the café, and a group of boys were passing. Their steps slowed when they saw Ness in the window and they spoke among themselves. Ness nodded at them. It was a movement that seemed almost regal. In reply, they gave head jerks that appeared oddly respectful and kept moving. Kendra noted this. The brief contact between Ness and the boys, even though it was only visual, sent a chill of intuition down Kendra’s spine. She couldn’t say what it all meant—the nod, the boys, the chill she felt—except that it didn’t seem good.

She said, “Toby and Joel, Ness. They want you home as well. Toby’s birthday’s coming. With all the changes been happening in your lives over these months, if you were there—”

“You wantin me to mind dem, innit,” was Ness’s conclusion. “Dat’s why you here. Toby ’n’ Joel finally getting in your way. Wha’ else you want, den?”

“I’m here because I did wrong to you and I want you to know that I know I did wrong. I want to say sorry. I want us to be family to each other.”

“I ain’t got fam’ly.”

“That isn’t true. You have Toby and Joel. You have me. You have your mum.”

Ness sputtered a laugh. She said, “Yeah. My mum,” and drew in deeply on her cigarette. She hadn’t touched her coffee. Kendra hadn’t touched her own.

“Things don’t have to be this way,” she told Ness. “Things can change. You and I can start over.”

“T’ings end up way dey end up,” Ness said. “Ever’body want somet’ing. You no different.” She gathered up her belongings. Kendra saw that she intended to leave. She played her wild card.

“Social Services phoned,” she said. “Woman called Fabia Bender wants to meet with you. With me ’s well. We have to see her, Ness, because if we don’t—”

“Wha’? Like she goin to send me somewheres? Like I even care?”

Ness adjusted her shoulder bag and tweaked the scarf in her hair. “I got people watchin out f ’r me now. I got no worries ’bout Social Services, ’bout you, ’bout anyt’ing. An’ dat’s how it is.”

That said, she was gone, out of the café and heading back in the direction of Whiteley’s. In the sunlight of late spring, she teetered along the pavement on her high heels, leaving her aunt to wonder how much worse things could get between them.

WHEN THE DAY came for Joel to make his purchase of the lava lamp for Toby’s birthday, the first thing he had to sort out was what to do with his little brother while he made that purchase since Kendra was at work in the charity shop, and there was consequently no help from that quarter. Had Ness been at home, he would have asked her to look after him. It wasn’t an errand that would take terribly long since it comprised a jaunt to Portobello Road, a quick exchange of money in the shop, and then another jaunt back to Edenham Way. Even Ness in her present state might have been prevailed upon to remain with Toby, making sure he didn’t answer the door should a stranger knock upon it. But since she wasn’t there, Joel faced several choices. He could take Toby with him and spoil the birthday surprise; he could leave him at home and hope for the best; he could stow him in a spot where something in the place might possess an inherent interest designed to keep him occupied.

He thought of the duck pond in Meanwhile Gardens and the toast left over from breakfast. He decided that if he made a hiding place among the reeds—something akin to the fort Toby had spoken about fashioning there months ago—and he armed his brother with the toast for duck food, he could keep him safe and occupied long enough to buy the lava lamp and return.

So he gathered up the toast, added to it some extra bread just in case his errand took longer than he expected, and waited for his brother to blow up his life ring. That done, he made sure Toby wore a windbreaker against a potentially cool day, and they set off around the side of the houses to join the path that led along their back gardens. The sun was out, and the sun brought with it people wanting to enjoy the fair weather. Joel could hear them just beyond the child drop-in centre in the form of the whoosh of skateboard action in the skate bowl and children’s babble in the playing area of the drop-in centre itself. He worried at first that the pleasant weather might also mean people at the duck pond, but when he and Toby worked their way through the shrubbery and hopped on the secondary path that curved down to the water, he was relieved to see that no one was on the little dock. There were ducks aplenty, however. They paddled sublimely, occasionally bottom upping themselves as they searched beneath them for something to eat.

Along the edges of the pond, the reeds grew thickly. Although Toby complained that he wanted to be on the dock above the birds, Joel explained to him the benefits of secreting himself among the reeds instead. These were the duck houses, he told him. If he remained quiet and still in the reeds, there was a very good chance that the ducks would come to him and eat the bread right from his hand. Wouldn’t that be better than throwing it at them from the dock and hoping they’d notice?

Toby had little experience of ducks and consequently didn’t know that bread tossed into the water would attract any duck worth his feathers within a good fifty yards. The plan, as Joel explained it, sounded reasonable to him, so he was happy enough to be ensconced in a roughly fashioned duck blind in the reeds, from which he could watch the birds and patiently wait for them to discover him.

“You got to stay here,” Joel told him when he had Toby in place.

“You got dat, innit? I’ll be back direc’ly I get somet’ing over Portobello Road. You wait right here. You do dat for me, Tobe?”

Toby had positioned himself on his stomach with his chin on the life ring that he’d wriggled higher on his body. He nodded and fastened his eyes on the water, just through the reeds. “Gimme the toast, den,”

he said. “I bet dem ducks’s hungry.”

Joel made sure the toast and the bread were within reach. He backed out of the blind and climbed to the path. He was relieved to see that from above the pond, Toby was out of sight. He only hoped his brother would remain there, hidden. He didn’t intend to be gone for more than twenty minutes.

Heading for the shop in which Toby had shown him the lava lamp required him to make for Portobello Bridge, the viaduct that would take him over the railway tracks and into what remained of the open-air market of Golborne Road. He made the first part of the journey at a trot and, as he went, he wondered how much his little brother remembered about how their birthdays had once been celebrated. If it had been a good spell for their mother, there would have been five of them cramped around the little kitchen table. If it had been one of their mother’s bad times, there would have been only four, but their father would have made up for the absence of their mother by singing the special birthday song deliberately loud and deliberately out of tune, after which he would hand over a birthday present, like a pocketknife or a cosmetics bag, like in-line skates that were secondhand but cleaned up nicely or a special pair of trainers that a child longed for but never mentioned.

But all that had been before the Campbell children had been relocated to Henchman Street, where Glory did her best to create a celebration—as long as one of them reminded her that a birthday was coming up—but where George Gilbert usually threw a spanner in the works by coming home drunk, or using the birthday as an excuse to become drunk, or otherwise insinuating himself into the centre of what went for the festivities. Joel didn’t know what a birthday would be like at Kendra Osborne’s house, but he intended to make it as special as he could.

The massive estate of Wornington Green marked one of the turns Joel needed to make, but just along Wornington Road a sunken tarmac football pitch caught his attention. This pitch was lined in brick and fenced in on all four sides with chain link, and an angled top to this boundary was supposed to discourage anyone from using the area when it was not intended to be used. But a set of steps on the west side of the pitch allowed access to it since the gate at the top had long ago been destroyed, and the purpose of the pitch itself—offering a playing area for the children of Wornington Green—had been altered shortly afterwards: Below him, Joel could see one of the neighbourhood’s many graffiti artists in the midst of a project, applying his craft to the fi lthy brick walls in a rainbow of colours.

He was a Rasta, although his dreadlocks were secured beneath a large knitted cap that drooped with the weight of the hair inside it. The scent of weed drifted upward from him, and Joel could see that a spliff dangled between his lips. He appeared to be putting the fi nishing touches on a masterwork consisting of words and a cartoonlike figure. The words were red, highlighted with white and orange. They said “Question Not” and they served as the base of the figure who rose out of them like a phoenix from the ashes: a black man wielding knives in each hand, offering a suitably fi erce snarl from a tattooed face. This fi nished piece was one of many already decorating the pitch: buxom cartoon women, cigarette or dope-smoking men in various poses, menacing cops with pistols drawn, guitarists bent backwards as they sent their music heavenward. Where there weren’t graffiti of this nature, there was tagging. Initials, names, sobriquets of the streets . . . It was difficult to imagine any child able to play football on the pitch with so many distractions.

“So wha’ you gawpin at, mon? You never seen artis’ at work?”

The question came from the Rasta, who’d taken note of Joel peering down through the chain-link fence. Joel took it at face value and not as the challenge it might have been, coming from another sort of man.

This bloke looked harmless, a conclusion Joel reached based upon the somnolent expression on his face, as if he were being escorted to dreamland by the weed he was smoking.

“Dis ain’t art,” Joel said. “Art’s in museums.”

“Yeah? T’ink you could do dis, den? I hand over paint and you make something nice ’s dis?” He gestured with the spliff, pointing out his nearly finished piece.

“Who is it anyway?” Joel asked the Rasta. “Wha’s it mean ‘Question Not’?”

The Rasta approached him, leaving his spray paint behind. He came to the side of the pitch, his head cocked. He said, “You jokin, innit?

You playin Cal Hancock for a fool.”

Joel frowned. “Wha’ you mean?”

“Askin’ who dis is? Mean to tell me, you don’ know? How long you been round here, mon?”

“January.”

“An’ you don’ know?” Cal shook his head in wonder. He took the spliff from his mouth and generously handed it up to Joel for a toke. Joel put his hands behind his back, the universal sign of refusal.

“You clean, den?” Cal Hancock asked him. “Dat’s good, mon. Give yourself a future. You got a name?”

Joel told him.

Cal said, “Campbell? Got a sister?”

“Ness, yeah.”

Cal whistled and took a deep drag on the spliff. “See,” he said. His nod was thoughtful.

“You know her or summick?”

“Me, mon? No. I don’ mess with women got mental shit goin on, y’unnerstan.”

“My sister ain’t . . . ” What “mental” implied, the inescapable connection it offered to Carole Campbell, the future it promised: These were topics Joel dared not veer towards, not even to deny them. He kicked his trainer-shod toe against the low brick wall of the pitch.

“Maybe she ain’t, bred,” Cal said affably. “But she a bad piece of action have a man ragin long before she rage, lemme tell you dat. She shell-shock a bred, she want to, y’unnerstan? She leave him to wonder what hit him and how in hell he goin to manage gettin hit again.”

“You sure you ain’t her man?” Joel asked. Cal chuckled. “Oh las’ time I checked, my bollocks in place, so I pretty sure, blood.” He gave a wink and sauntered back to his artwork.

“So who is it anyways?” Joel called after him, gesturing to the figure he was working on.

Cal waved lazily in reply. “You know when it’s time,” he told him. Joel watched him for a moment, saw how he expertly laid on a curve of shading to the Q in Question. Then he moved off. Some considerable time had passed since Toby had shown Joel the lava lamp he wanted, but when Joel reached the shop in Portobello Road, he was relieved to see that the lamp was still burbling away in the window.

Joel stepped inside. An automatic buzzer signalled his entry and within three seconds, an Asian man came through a door at the back. He took one look at Joel and his eyes narrowed suspiciously. He said, “Where is your mum, boy? What do you want in my shop, please? Have you someone with you?” The man looked about as he spoke. Joel knew he wasn’t looking for his mother but for the crew of boys he assumed were lurking nearby, ready to do mischief. It was a reflex reaction in this area of town: one part paranoia and two parts experience. Joel said, “I want one of those lava lamps.” He made his English as proper as he could.

“So you do, boy, but you must pay for it.”

“I know that, don’t I. I got the money.”

“You have fifteen pounds and ninety-nine pence?” the man said. “I must see it, please.”

Joel approached the counter. Swiftly, the man put his hands beneath it. He never put his gaze anywhere but on Joel, and when Joel reached into his pockets and brought out his crumpled five-pound note plus all of his coins, the shop owner counted it with his eyes not his fi ngers, keeping his hands on whatever it was beneath the counter that was apparently making him feel secure. Joel imagined a big Arab kind of knife, one with a curved blade that could take off someone’s head. He said in reference to the money, “Here it is. C’n I get one, then?”

“One?”

“Lava lamp. Tha’s what I come for, innit.”

The Asian jerked his head towards the window display, saying, “You may have your choice,” and as Joel moved off to pick the lamp he wanted, the man whisked the money off the counter and into the till, slamming the drawer like someone afraid of a secret being seen. Joel picked out the purple and orange lamp that Toby had admired. He unplugged its flex and carried it back to the counter. The lamp wore a patina of dust from the length of time it had been in the window, but that was no matter. Dust could be dealt with easily enough. Joel placed the lamp carefully on the counter. He waited politely for the man to package it. The man did nothing save stare at him until Joel finally said, “C’n you put it in a box or summick? It’s got a box, innit?”

“There is no box for the lamp,” the Asian man told him, his voice rising as if he were being accused of something. “If you want it, take it. Take it and go at once. If you do not want it, then leave the shop. I have no boxes to give you.”

“You got a carrier bag, though,” Joel said. “A newspaper or summick to wrap this in?”

The man’s voice went higher as he saw a plot hatching: this strangelooking boy the vanguard of a crew who meant to raze his shop to the ground. “You are giving me trouble, boy. You and your sort always do. Now I say this to you: Do you want the lamp, because if you do not, you must leave at once or I shall ring the police straightaway.”

Despite his young age, Joel recognised fear when he saw it, and he knew what fear could prompt people to do. So he said, “I don’t mean you no trouble, y’unnerstan. Just asking for a bag to carry this home.”

He saw a stack of carrier bags just beyond the till and he dipped his head at them. “One of them’ll do.”

With his eyes fastened on Joel, the shopkeeper snaked his arm over to the carrier bags and plucked one up. He shoved it across the counter and watched like a cat ready to pounce as Joel shook the bag open and put the lamp inside.

Joel said, “Cheers,” and retreated from the counter. He was as reluctant to turn his back on the Asian as the Asian was to turn his back on Joel. It was a relief to get back outside.

When he retraced his steps to Meanwhile Gardens and the duck pond, Joel saw that Cal Hancock had completed his project. His place had been taken by another Rasta wearing a light blanket around his shoulders, squatting in a corner of the football pitch, where he was lighting up. In another corner huddled three sweatshirt-wearing men who looked to be in their twenties. One of them was in the process of removing a handful of small plastic bags from the pouch of his shirt. Joel gave them a glance and hurried off. Some things were better left unseen.

HE WENT THE back way to the duck pond, around Trellick Tower and through the scent garden instead of weaving through Edenham Estate to reach the spot via the path he and Toby had used earlier. Because of this, his view of the pond was altered, but the spot where he had placed the duck blind was as hidden as it had been from the other angle from which he’d seen it. This was all to the good. He decided he would use it again to tuck Toby away in safety if he needed to do so.

He scurried down towards the dock and worked his way to the hiding spot, calling his brother’s name softly. There was no reply, which caused him to pause for a moment and make sure he was in the right place, something he discovered soon enough when he saw the flattened reeds marking the spot where Toby had lain. The bread was gone and so was Toby.

Joel murmured, “Shit.” He looked around and called his brother’s name more loudly. He tried to think of all the places Toby might have taken himself to, and he worked his way out of the reeds and up to the main path. It was then that the noise from the skate bowl captured his attention: not only the whooshing of the boards against the concrete sides of the bowl but also the whoops of the riders who were enjoying it.

He picked up speed and made for the skate bowl. Because of the weather, all three of the bowl’s levels were in heavy use, and in addition to the riders and the cyclists in the immediate area, there were a few spectators pausing in their walks on the upper path along the canal to watch the action and others who were lounging on the benches that dotted the garden’s little hills.

Toby was with neither of these groups. Instead, he was sitting on the edge of the middle skate bowl, his feet dangling and his jeans rucked up so that the duct tape wrapped around his trainers was clearly visible. He was slapping his hands against his life ring as four boys whipped back and forth and up the sides of the bowl on skateboards brightly decorated with transfers. They wore baggy trousers cut to their calves and riding low beneath their crotches. They had on dingy T-shirts with faded band logos and wore knitted ski caps on their heads.

Toby was squirming back and forth on his bottom as he watched the boys zooming across the bowl and soaring the sides, expertly turning their boards in midair and swooping back down and across the bowl where they repeated the movement on the other side. So far they seemed intent upon ignoring Toby, but he wasn’t making it easy for them. He was crying out, “C’n I do it? C’n I try? Can I? Can I?” as he bounced his feet on the bowl.

Joel approached. But as he did so, he caught sight of a second group of boys up on the bridge that carried Great Western Road across the Grand Union Canal. They had paused in the midst of crossing the bridge, and they were looking down at the gardens. After exchanging a few words, they made for the spiral stairs. Joel could hear them clumping on the metal steps. He couldn’t yet tell who they were. Still, the size of them, their numbers, and their manner of dress . . . All of this suggested they were a crew, and he didn’t want to be in the vicinity when they made their way to the skate bowl if, indeed, that was where they were heading.

He hurried to the middle bowl on whose edge Toby was crying out to be part of the action. He said to his brother, “Tobe, whyn’t you wait where the ducks are? You s’posed to wait. Di’n’t you hear me tell you to wait?”

Toby’s sole response was a breathy, “Look at ’em, Joel. I ’spect I could do it. If they let me. I been askin ’em to let me. Don’ you reckon I could do it?”

Joel cast a glance to the spiral steps. He saw that the crew of boys had reached the bottom. He made a fleeting wish that they would take their business—whatever it was—somewhere along the canal. There was an abandoned barge beneath the bridge, and he fervently hoped they were using it as their lair. It had been there for weeks, just waiting for someone to take it over. But instead of making for the barge, they came directly towards the skate bowl, sweatshirts with the hoods up over baseball caps, unzipped anoraks despite the mild weather, baggy jeans riding low on their hips.

Joel said, “Come on, Tobe. We got to sort out our room, ’member?

Aunt Ken said we got to keep it neater an’ stuff’s everywhere jus’ now, y’unnerstan?”

“Lookit!” Toby cried, pointing to the boys still whipping around the skate bowl. “Hey, c’n I do it? I could do it ’f you lemme.”

Joel bent and took his brother’s arm. “We gotta go,” he said. “An’

I’m that vex you di’n’t wait where you was ’posed to wait. Come on.”

Toby resisted standing. “No. I could do it. C’n I do it, you lot? I could ’f you lemme.”

“‘I could ’f you lemme. I could ’f you lemme.’” The voice mimicked Toby’s, and Joel did not need to turn around to know that he and his brother had become the focus of the boys who’d come down from the bridge. “I could do it ’f you lemme, Joelly Joel. Only I got to wipe my arse first cos I forgot to do it when I crapped my pants dis morning.”

Joel frowned when he heard his own name spoken, but he still didn’t turn to see who the boys were. He said in a fierce whisper, “Tobe, we got to go.”

But that was overheard. “I bet you got to go, yellow arse. Bes’ run while you c’n still find your way. You an’ the li’l tosser wiv you. An’ Jesus, wha’s he doin wiv dat life ring?”

Toby finally noticed the other boys, which is to say that the nastiness of the speaker’s tone, not to mention his proximity, managed to wrest his attention from the skate bowl. He looked to Joel for guidance as to whether he was meant to reply, while in the skate bowl, the pace suddenly slowed, as if with the expectation of more fascinating action.

“Oh I know why he got dat life ring, innit?” the same taunting voice said. “He goin’ for a swim. Greve, why’n’t you help him out wiv dat?”

Joel knew what that meant. Aside from the duck pond, there was only one source of water close at hand. He felt Toby’s fi ngers close over the frayed bottom of his blue jeans. He still hadn’t risen from his position on the edge of the bowl, but his face had altered. The joy of watching the boys in the bowl had become the fear of seeing the boys behind Joel. He didn’t know them, but he could hear the menace in their voices, even if he didn’t know why that menace was directed at himself.

“Who’s he, Joel?” Toby asked his brother.

It was time for Joel to find out. He turned. The boys formed a rough crescent. At its centre was the droopy-faced, mixed-race boy whom Hibah had claimed as her boyfriend. She’d called him Neal. If there had been a surname, Joel couldn’t remember what it was. What he did remember was his only run-in with Neal and the little joke he’d made at Neal’s expense, just the sort of remark a boy like Neal was unlikely to forget. In the presence of his crew, over whom Neal was doubtless always eager to maintain suzerainty, Joel knew that the other boy might well take the opportunity to demonstrate his power, if not over a helpless child like Toby, then over his brother, the defeat of whom would score him many points.

Joel spoke to the boy called Greve, who’d taken several steps forward to put hands on Toby. “Leave him be,” he said. “He ain’t hurtin you. Come on, Tobe. We got to get home.”

“Dey got to get home,” Neal said. “Dat’s where dey swimmin. You got a nice pool in your garden, Tobe. An’ what th’ hell kind of name is dat, anyways?”

“Toby,” Toby muttered, although his head was lowered.

“Toe-bee. Dat’s sweet, innit. Well, Toe-bee, lemme jus step out of y’r way so you c’n run ’long home.”

Toby started to rise, but Joel knew the game. One step in their direction and Neal and his crew would be all over both of them, just for the fun of it. Joel reckoned he could survive an encounter with these boys because there were enough people in Meanwhile Gardens at this time of day that either someone would come to his rescue or would pull out a mobile and phone 999. But he didn’t want to let Toby fall into the clutches of this group of boys. To them, Toby was like a threelegged dog, something to humiliate, to taunt, and to hurt. He said to Neal in perfect friendliness, “Why, you c’n stay jus’ there, mon. Where we going ain’t in dat direction anyways, so you no trouble to us just like you are.”

One of the crew with Neal sniggered at this reply, so casually had Joel managed to speak it and so clearly had he communicated an utterly inappropriate lack of fear. Neal shot a look at the group of boys, seeking the source of this disrespect. When he didn’t find it, he turned back to Joel.

“Real yellow arse you are, Joe-ell. Get out ’f dis place. An’ don’t let me see you—”

“No more yellower’n you,” Joel pointed out, although the truth was that only two ethnicities had gone into Neal’s making while Joel’s had involved at least four that anyone had been willing to identify for him.

“So I wouldn’t be talkin’ bout who got wha’ colour to his skin, bred.”

“Don’ bred me, Joe-ell, like summick you ain’t. I squish bugs your size f’r breakfast, innit.”

Titters came from the group of boys. Spurred by this, Neal took a step forward. He nodded at Greve, a motion that indicated the boy was to take Toby as he’d been instructed and he then directed his attention to the bag Joel was carrying.

“Give dat over,” he said as Greve approached and Toby shrank away from him. “Le’s just have a look wha’ you got.”

Joel was perfectly caught at this point, with only one way out, which had very little hope of success. He could see what was going to happen if he didn’t act, so he acted quickly. He jerked Toby fully to his feet, thrust the bag with the lava lamp into his arms, and said, “Run. Run!

Now, Tobe, run!”

For once, Toby didn’t question instruction. He slid into the skate bowl and took off across the bottom of it. Someone shouted, “Get ’im,” and the pack of boys made a move as one unit, but Joel flung himself into their way.

He said to Neal, “You fuckin horse turd. You stick it in a pig’s arse, innit. You play at bein’ a real hot speck when you half pig and dat’s why you stick it where you stick it.”

This was, as it was intended to be, a suicide speech. But it got Neal’s attention. It also got the attention of Neal’s crew because they always did whatever Neal did, having very little in the way of brainpower of their own. Neal’s face went the colour of brick, and the spots upon it went purple. His fists balled up. He lunged. His crew moved in for the kill, but he shouted, “I wan’ it!” and descended on Joel like a rabid dog. Joel took the force of Neal’s flying body in his midsection. Both of the boys crashed to the ground with their arms swinging. A delighted shout went up from Neal’s crew, and they pressed forward to watch. The boys in the skate bowl joined them, until what Joel saw beyond Neal’s looming rage-ensanguined face was a mass of legs and feet.

Joel wasn’t a fighter. His breath had always come short whenever he was ignited to action, and the only time he’d ever been in an actual dustup, he’d not been able to catch his breath and he’d ended up in Casualty with a plastic mask over his nose and mouth. So what he knew about fighting came from what he saw on television, which consisted of ineffectively swinging his fists and hoping they made contact with some part of Neal’s body. He did manage to land a blow on the other boy’s collarbone, but Neal countered with one that hit Joel squarely on the temple and made his brain start singing.

Joel shook his head to clear it. Neal shifted position and sprawled across Joel’s chest. He put the full force of his weight on Joel’s body, and he used his knees to pin Joel’s arms to the ground. He began punching in earnest. Joel squirmed in an attempt to get him off. He threw his body right and left, but he couldn’t loose the other boy from him.

“Half breed li’tle bastard,” Neal snarled through his crooked teeth and his drooping mouth. “Teach you to disrespeck . . .” He grabbed Joel’s neck and began to squeeze.

All around him, Joel heard grunting and breathing: not only his own and Neal’s but the other boys’ as well, although theirs was excited and hot with anticipation. Not a film this time. Not a television show. But the real thing. Neal was their man.

“Get ’im,” someone muttered fiercely.

Someone else said, “Yeah. Go f ’r it, mon.”

And then someone said, “Got to finish dis, bred. Take it, take it,” and Joel realised that something had been passed to Neal from one of the boys at the edge of the crowd.

He saw the silver streak of it against Neal’s palm: a pocketknife and nicely honed. No one was coming to his rescue, as Joel had hoped, and he knew he was finished. But the certainty of this knowledge swept power into him, born of the human instinct to live. Neal had leaned to take the knife from his cohort; this put him off balance and gave Joel a chance.

He flung his body in the direction of the lean, which threw Neal off him. Joel fell upon him, then, landing blows, pounding against bone and flesh with all the strength he had. He fought like a girl: grabbing Neal’s hair, scratching at his unfortunate face, doing anything he could to stay one step ahead of the other boy’s intention and two steps ahead of his rage. He was fighting not to punish Neal, not to prove something to him, not to establish himself as bigger, better, or more adept. He was fighting simply to stay alive, because he understood with the perfect clarity that comes with terror that the other boy intended to kill him.

He no longer knew where the knife was. He was unable to tell if Neal had it or if it had been knocked from his hands. He did know that this was a fight to the death, though, and so did the other boys, for they had fallen into a tense silence although not one of them had backed away from the brawl.

It was because of this silence that Joel heard a voice, a man calling out, “What’s going on here?” And then, “Get back. Step out of my way. You heard me, Greve Johnson. And you, Dashell Patricks. What are you boys doing?” And immediately after that, “For the love of God!,” which heralded Joel’s being jerked off Neal, hauled to his feet, and thrust to one side.

Joel saw it was Ivan Weatherall, of all people, his mentor from Holland Park School. Ivan said, “Is that a knife over there? Are you out of your minds? Is that yours, Joel Campbell?” and without waiting for a reply, he shouted at the rest of them to clear off.

Despite the fact that Ivan was one and they were many, he exuded such confidence that the boys obeyed, surprised and unused to being troubled when they were in the midst of one of their pursuits. This included Neal, who was nursing a cut lip. As his mates began to pull him from the site, he shouted, “Don’ you fuck with me,” an imperative obviously intended for Joel. “I’ll have you, arse wipe. Yellow-arse roadkill. You and your bruddah. You eat your muddah’s pussy.”

At this, Joel made a move to go after Neal, but Ivan grabbed his arm. To Joel’s surprise, he said under his breath, “Fight me, boy. Fight to get away. Go on. Do it, for the love of God. I’ve got a grip . . . Good. Right-o . . . Kick me as well . . . Yes, yes. Spot on, that . . . Now I’ll get you in a lovely half nelson”—with a quick movement that imprisoned Joel under his arm—“and we’ll make our way to this bench. Keep fighting me, Joel . . . I’ll throw you down here . . . try not to hurt you . . . Ready? Here we go.”

Joel found himself on the bench as promised, and when he looked around, Neal and his crew had retreated to the spiral stairs, heading up to the Great Western Road. The skateboarders had also dispersed, and he was left with Ivan Weatherall. He couldn’t understand how the miracle had been effected.

“They think I’ve sorted you, which suffices for the moment,” Ivan said in explanation. “It appears I came along just in time. What on earth were you thinking, taking on Neal Wyatt?”

Joel said nothing in reply. He was breathing hard. He didn’t want to end up in Casualty again, so he thought it best not to waste effort on speech. Beyond that, he wanted to be away from Ivan. He needed to find Toby. He needed to get both of them safely home.

“It just happened, did it?” Ivan asked. “Well, that shouldn’t surprise me, and I suppose it doesn’t. Neal Wyatt has issues with most of the planet, I’m afraid, which is what comes from having a father in prison and a mother possessing a predilection for crack cocaine. There is, of course, a way out for what ails him, a cure if you will. But he won’t take it. More’s the pity because he’s actually quite talented at the piano.”

Joel started at this, surprised by this altered vision of Neal Wyatt. Ivan nodded in understanding. “Shame, isn’t it?” He looked over his shoulder to the bridge, across which the boys had shuffl ed on their way to whatever next piece of trouble they had in mind. “Well, then, have you caught your breath? Are you ready to go?”

“’M okay.”

“Really? You don’t quite seem it, but I shall take you at your word. I recall you live somewhere nearby but not in Trellick Tower. I shall walk you home.”

“I don’t need—”

“Nonsense. Don’t be foolish. We all need something, and the first step on the path to maturity—not to mention peace of mind—is admitting that. Come along.” He smiled, showing his terrible teeth. “I shall not require you to hold my hand.”

He fetched a parcel from beneath the bench on which they’d been sitting. He tucked it under his arm and affably explained that it contained parts for a clock that he was assembling. He nodded towards Elkstone Road, a short distance away, and led Joel in its direction while beyond and around them Meanwhile Gardens continued to get back to normal.

Ivan chatted amiably, confining his conversation to clocks. Their assembly, he informed Joel, was his hobby and his passion. Did Joel recall the conversation they’d had about creative outlets on the day they’d met? No? Yes? Had he thought about what he wished to do so that his soul could earn its expression?

“Remember,” Ivan said, “we are like machines in this, Joel. Every part of us needs to be oiled and cared for if we are to function to our utmost capacity. So where are you in the decision-making process?

What is it you intend to do with your life? Beyond brawling with the Neal Wyatts of our world.”

Joel wasn’t sure that Ivan was serious. Instead of replying, he scanned the area for Toby and said, “I got to fetch my bruvver. He ran when Neal came.”

Ivan hesitated. “Ah yes. Of course. Your little brother. That does at least explain . . . Well. Never mind. Where might he have gone? I shall help you find him and then act as your escort home.”

Joel didn’t want this, but short of being rude, he didn’t know how to tell Ivan he felt best left alone. So he followed the pavement along Elkstone Road, Ivan tagging along, and he checked to see if Toby had run to their aunt’s house. Failing to find him there, he set off between the buildings, towards the duck pond, and there he discovered Toby crouched in the duck blind with his hands over his head. He’d somehow punctured his life ring. It hung around his waist still, but it was now only partially inflated. He hadn’t lost the bag that Joel had thrust at him, though. It was at his side, and when Joel reached him through the reeds, he saw that the lava lamp had escaped damage. He was thankful for this. At least Toby’s birthday would not be ruined.

He said, “Hey, Tobe. ’S okay now. Le’s go home. This here’s Ivan. He wants to meet you.”

Toby looked up. He’d been crying, and his nose was dripping. He said to Joel, “I di’n’t wee in my pants. I have to go, but I di’n’t wee my pants, Joel.”

“Tha’s real good.” Joel lifted Toby to his feet. He said to Ivan, who remained above them on the path to the pond, “This’s Toby.”

“Delighted,” Ivan said. “And impressed with the wisdom of your apparel as well, Toby. Is that short for Tobias, by the way?”

Joel looked at his brother, dwelling on the word apparel. Then he realised Ivan was talking about the life ring in conjunction with the vicinity of water. The man thought they’d possessed forethought when it came to Toby’s safety.

“It’s jus’ Toby,” Joel informed Ivan. “I ’spect my mum and dad di’n’t know Toby was short for anything.”

They climbed the bank to join Ivan who, taking a long look at Toby, removed a white handkerchief from his pocket. Rather than see to Toby’s face on his own, though, he wordlessly handed the linen to Joel. Joel nodded a thank-you and wiped down his brother. Toby kept his gaze fixed on Ivan, as if he were seeing a creature from another solar system.

When Toby was cleaned up, Ivan smiled. He said, “Shall we, then?”

and indicated the direction of the terrace houses. He said, “As I’ve learned from school, you young gentlemen live with your aunt. Would today be an appropriate time to make her acquaintance?”

“She’s off at the charity shop,” Joel said. “Up the Harrow Road. Where she works.”

“The AIDS shop, is it?” Ivan asked. “Why, I’m quite familiar with that place. It’s noble work, she does. Ghastly disease.”

“M’uncle died of it,” Joel said. “Aunt Ken’s bruvver. My dad’s her older bruvver. Gavin. Her younger bruvver, he was Cary.”

“Quite a loss she’s experienced.”

“Her husband died, too. Her first, tha’ is. Her second husband’s . . .”

Joel realised he was saying too much. But he had felt compelled to share something, in gratitude for Ivan’s being there when he was needed and saying nothing about the oddity of Toby when they’d come upon him.

The fact that they’d reached his aunt’s house again allowed him to let the rest of what he’d almost told Ivan go unsaid, and Ivan didn’t comment upon this as Joel and Toby mounted the steps. Instead he said,

“Well, I should like to meet your aunt at a later date. Perhaps I’ll call in at the charity shop and introduce myself, with your permission of course.”

Joel thought fleetingly of Hibah’s words of warning about this man. But nothing untoward had happened between them on any of the occasions when they’d met for their mentoring sessions. Ivan felt safe to be around, and Joel wanted to trust that feeling.

He said, “You can if you want.”

“Excellent,” Ivan said and extended his hand. Joel shook it and then prodded Toby to do the same.

Ivan reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a card, which he handed to Joel. He said, “This is where you can find me outside school hours. There’s my address. My phone number as well. I don’t have a mobile—I cannot abide those wretched things—but if you phone my home and I’m not there, an answer machine will take your message.”

Joel turned the card over in his hands. He couldn’t imagine why he would ever use it. He didn’t say as much but Ivan seemed to know what he was thinking.

He said, “You might want to tell me your plans and dreams. When you’re ready, that is.” He stepped away from the building and tipped his finger at Joel and then at Toby. “Until later, then, gentlemen,” he said and went on his way.

Joel watched him for a moment before he turned to the door and opened it for Toby. Ivan Weatherall, he decided, was the oddest man he’d ever met. He knew things about everyone—personal and otherwise—and yet he still seemed to take people as they came. Joel never felt a misfi t in his presence because Ivan never acted as if there was anything unusual in his mongrel features. Indeed, Ivan acted as if the whole world were made of people who’d been taken from a shaken bag of races, ethnicities, beliefs, and religions. How peculiar he was in the world where Joel lived.

Still, Joel ran his fingers over the embossed print on the face of the card. Thirty-two Sixth Avenue, he read, with a clock below Ivan Weatherall’s name. He said to the air what he’d so far kept to himself.

“Psychiatrist,” he whispered. “That’s what, Ivan.”