What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

17 While all of this was going on with Joel, Ness’s experiences were taking an unexpected turn, beginning on the very day of her humiliation at the hands of the security guard. Had anyone told her that the result of this degrading situation would be friendship, had anyone told her that the person with whom she would come to form that friendship would be a middle-aged Pakistani woman, Ness would have called the person making that prognostication exceedingly stupid, although she probably would have phrased it in a far more colourful fashion. But that was exactly what occurred, like a slowly budding flower.

This unlikely friendship began with Majidah’s invitation—or perhaps, better said, her order—to Ness to accompany her home on the day she’d shown up at the child drop-in centre late, from Kensington High Street. They did not go directly there, however. Instead, they began with some necessary shopping in Golberne Road.

Ness went along with trepidation hanging over her. She understood perfectly that Majidah held her future in her hands: One phone call from the Asian woman to the Youth Offending Team—in the person of Fabia Bender—would be sufficient to toast her properly. In the market area, she felt that Majidah was toying with her, prolonging the moment before she lowered the boom, and this provoked a typical and very Nesslike reaction. But she managed to hold in her fury as Majidah did her shopping, knowing that it was better to wait to display it until they were not in a public forum.

Majidah went first to E. Price & Son, where the two antique gentlemen helped her with her selection of fruit and veg. They knew her well and treated her respectfully. She was a shrewd buyer and took nothing from them that she did not inspect from every angle. She went next to the butcher. This was not any butcher, but one that sold only halal meats. There, she placed her order and turned to Ness as the butcher was weighing and wrapping. She said, “Do you know what halal meat is, Vanessa?” And when Ness said, “Summick Asians eat,” she said, “This is the limit of what you know, is it? What an ignorant girl you are! What is it that they teach in school these days? But of course, you have not gone to school, have you? Sometimes I do forget how foolish you English girls can be.”

“Hey, I’m takin a course now,” Ness told her, “over the college, an’ the magistrate even approved it.”

“Oh yes indeed. A course in what? Tattoo drawing? Rolling one’s own cigarettes?” She scrupulously counted out a collection of coins to pay for the halal meat, and they left the shop with Majidah waxing on the topic, which was obviously dear to her heart. She said, “Do you know what I would have made of my life, had I had the opportunities for education that you have, you foolish girl? Aeronautical engineering, that is what I would have learned. Do you know what that is? Never mind. Do not further display your appalling ignorance to me. I would have made planes fly. I would have designed flying planes. That is what I would have done with my life had I the opportunity to be properly educated, as you have. But you English girls, you are given everything, so you appreciate nothing. This is your trouble. What you aspire to is shopping on the high street and purchasing those ridiculous high heels and pointy-toed boots that look like witch shoes. And silver eyebrow rings. What a waste of money all of that is.” She paused. Not for breath but because they’d come to a flower seller, where Majidah inspected the blooms on offer and selected three pounds’ worth.

As they were being wrapped, Ness said, “An’ these i’n’t a waste of money? Why’d ’at be, exackly?”

“Because these are things of beauty made by the Creator. High heels and eyebrow rings are not. Come along please. Here, then. Be useful. Carry the flowers.”

She led the way into Wornington Road. They passed the sunken football pitch, which Majidah looked at in some disgust, saying, “This graffiti . . . Men do this, you know. Men and boys who ought to have better things to do with their time. But they have not been brought up to be useful. And why? Because of their mothers, this is why. Girls like you, who pop out babies and care for nothing but purchasing high heels and eyebrow rings.”

“You got any other conversation?” Ness asked.

“I know what I speak of. Do not show the mouth to me, young lady.”

She marched on, Ness in tow. They passed Kensington and Chelsea College and finally turned into the southern part of Wornington Green Estate. This was one of the less disreputable housing estates in the area. It offered the same kind of vistas as the other estates: blocks of flats looking out upon other blocks of flats. But there was less rubbish strewn about, and a sense of the house proud was evident in the lack of discarded objects like rusting bicycles and torched armchairs sitting on balconies. Majidah took Ness to Watts House where her departed husband had purchased a flat during one of the Tory periods of government. “The one decent thing he did,” she informed Ness. “I confess that when the man died, it was truly one of the happiest days of my life.”

She went up the stairs beyond the entry door, leading Ness to the second floor. Some twenty paces along a lino corridor, where someone had scrawled “Eatme Eatme Eatme Fuckers” in marking pen, Majidah’s front door was an oddity. It was done up in steel like the vault of a bank, with a spy hole in the centre.

“What you got in here?” Ness asked her as the Asian woman inserted the first of four keys in the same number of locks. “Gold doubloons or summick?”

“In here, I have peace of mind,” Majidah said, “which, as you will learn eventually, one can only hope, is more valuable than gold or silver.” She opened the door and ushered Ness inside.

There was little to surprise within. The flat was tidy and redolent of furniture polish. The decorations were sparse; the furniture was old. The carpet squares were covered by a worn Persian rug, and—here was the first discordant note—on the walls hung coloured pencil sketches of a variety of headdresses. There were photographs as well, a collection of them in wooden frames. They were grouped together on a table by the sofa. Men, women, and children. A great number of children.

The second discordant note in the flat consisted of a collection of pottery. This was of a particularly whimsical nature: jugs, planters, posy holders, and vases all characterised by the presence of a cartoonlike forest creature. Rabbits and fawns predominated, although there was the occasional mouse, frog, or squirrel. Shelves on either side of the entrance to the kitchen displayed this unusual collection. When Ness looked from it to Majidah—the Asian woman seeming the person least likely to be collecting such things—Majidah spoke.

“Everyone must have something that makes them smile, Vanessa. Can you look upon them and fail to smile yourself? Ah, perhaps. But then, you are a serious young lady in possession of serious problems. Come set the kettle to boil. We shall have tea.”

The kitchen was much like the sitting room in its neatness. The electric kettle sat on a work top perfectly free of clutter, and Ness filled it at a spotless sink as Majidah put her meat in the fridge, her fruit and veg in a basket on the little kitchen table, and her fl owers in a vase. This vase she set lovingly next to a photograph on the windowsill. When Ness had the kettle plugged in and Majidah was bringing teapot and cups out of a cupboard, Ness went to examine the picture. It seemed out of place in here instead of in the sitting room with the others.

A very young Majidah was the subject of the photo, and in it she stood next to a grey-haired man with a deeply lined face. She looked ten or twelve years old, solemn and decked out in any number of gold chains and gold bracelets. She was wearing a blue and gold shalwarkamis. The old man had a white one on.

“Dis your granddad?” Ness asked, picking up the picture. “You ain’t looking so happy to be wiv him, innit.”

“Please ask before you remove an object from its place,” Majidah said. “That is my first husband.”

Ness widened her eyes. “How old ’as you? Shit, woman, you must’ve been—”

“Vanessa, profanity ceases at my front door, please. Put the photograph down and make yourself useful. Take these things to the table. Do you wish to have a tea cake or are you able to consume something more interesting than you English generally eat at this hour?”

“Tea cake’s good,” Ness said. She wasn’t about to try anything else. She replaced the photo, but she continued to eye Majidah the way one might look at a species of animal one has never seen before. She said, “So how old ’as you? What’re you doing marrying some granddad, anyways?”

“I was twelve years old when I first married. Rakin was fiftyeight.”

“Twelve years old? Twelve years old an’ hooked up permanent to some old man? What in hell’re you t’inkin? Did he . . . Did you . . . I mean . . . Wiv him?”

Majidah used hot water from the faucet to heat the teapot. She took a brown paper packet of loose tea from a cupboard. She went for the milk and poured this into a small white jug. Only then did she answer.

“My goodness, isn’t your questioning rude. This cannot be the way you’ve been brought up to speak to an older person. But”—she held up her hand to prevent Ness saying anything—“I have learned to understand that you English do not always mean to be as disrespectful of other cultures as you seem to be. Rakin was my father’s cousin. He came to Pakistan—from England—when his first wife died because he believed himself in need of another one. He had, at the time, four children in their twenties, so one would think he might have proceeded throughout the rest of his life in the company of one or all of them. But this was not Rakin’s way. He came to our house and looked us over. I have five sisters, and as I’m the youngest, it was naturally assumed that Rakin would select one of them. He did not. He wished to have me. I was introduced to him, and we were married. Nothing more was said of the matter.”

“Shit,” Ness said. And then she added hastily, “Sorry. Sorry. Slipped out, innit.”

Majidah pressed her lips together to quell a smile. “We married in my village and then he brought me to England, a little girl who spoke no English and knew not a single thing of life, not even how to cook. But Rakin was a gentle man in all ways and a gentle man is a patient teacher. So I learned to cook. And I learned other things. I had my first child two days before my thirteenth birthday.”

“You d’i’nt,” Ness said in disbelief.

“Oh yes. Indeed I did.” The kettle clicked off and Majidah made the tea. She toasted a tea cake for Ness and took it to the table with a square of butter, but for herself she brought forth pappadums and chutney, both of which she declared to be homemade. When she had everything assembled, she sat and said, “My Rakin died when he was sixty-one. A sudden heart attack and he was gone. And there I was, fifteen years old, with a small child and four stepchildren approaching thirty. I could, of course, have lived on with them, but they would not have that: an adolescent stepmother with a toddler who would have become their responsibility. So another husband was found for me. This was my unfortunate second husband, who remained alive for twenty-seven interminable years of marriage before he had the good sense to pass on from liver failure. I have no pictures of him.”

“You get kids from him?”

“Oh my goodness, yes. Five more children. They are all adults now with children of their own.” She smiled. “And how they disapprove of a mother who will not live with any one of them. They inherited, alas, their father’s traditional nature.”

“Wha’ ’bout the rest of your fam’ly?”

“The rest . . . ?”

“Your mum and dad. Your sisters.”

“Ah. They remain in Pakistan. My sisters married, of course, and raised families there.”

“You get to see ’em?”

Majidah spread a bit of chutney on a sliver of pappadum, which she broke off from the larger piece. She said, “Once. I attended my father’s funeral. You are not eating your tea cake, Vanessa. Do not waste my food or we shall not have tea together again.”

That didn’t seem like an altogether bad idea, but Ness was sufficiently intrigued by the Asian woman’s history to butter her tea cake and begin to consume it. Majidah watched her disapprovingly. Ness’s table manners were in need of adjustment as far as she was concerned, but she said nothing until Ness took up her tea and slurped it.

“This will not do,” Majidah told her. “Has no one taught you how to drink a hot beverage? Where is your mother? Who are the responsible adults in your life? Do they slurp as well? This is common, Vanessa, this noisy drinking. This is vulgar. Watch me and listen. . . . Do you hear my lips flap against the tea? No, you do not. And why is this? Because I have learned the method to drink, which has nothing to do with sucking and everything to do with—” Majidah stopped because Ness had put her cup down so abruptly that tea sloshed into her saucer, which was an even greater offence. “What is the matter with you, you foolish girl? Do you wish to break my china?”

It was the word. Sucking. Ness had not expected it. Nor had she expected it to produce a series of images in her mind: mental mementoes that she preferred to forget. She said, “C’n I go now?” Her voice was sullen.

“What do you mean with this ‘Can I go now?’ This is not a gaol. You are not my prisoner. You may go whenever you wish to go. But I can see that I have hurt you in some way—”

“I ain’t hurt.”

“—and if it has to do with your tea drinking, I must tell you that I meant no harm. My intention was to educate you. If no one bothers to inform you when your manners are not what they should be, how are you to learn? Does your mother never—”

“She ain’t . . . She’s in hospital, innit. We don’t live wiv her. Haven’t done since I was little, okay?”

Majidah sat back in her chair. She looked thoughtful. She said, “I apologise to you. I did not know this, Vanessa. She is ill, your mum?”

“Whatever,” Ness said. “Look, c’n I go?”

“Again I say: You are not a prisoner here. You may come and go as you like.”

At this second expression of liberation, Ness might have got to her feet and departed. But she did not, because of that photo on the windowsill. Little Majidah in gold and blue on the arm of a man the age of her granddad kept Ness in her chair. She looked long at that picture before she finally said, “You scared?”

“Of what?” Majidah said. “Of you? Oh my goodness, I hope not. You do not frighten me in the least.”

“Not me. Him.”

“Whom?”

“Dat bloke.” She nodded at the photo. “Rakin. He scare you?”

“What an odd question you ask me.” Majidah looked at the picture and then back at Ness. She took a reading off her, making an assessment that grew from having brought up six children, three of whom were female. She said quietly, “Ah. I was not prepared. This was a sin against me, committed by my parents. By my mother, especially. She said to me, ‘Obey your husband,’ but she said nothing else. Naturally, I had seen animals. . . . One cannot live in a village and escape the sight of copulation among the beasts of the fi eld. The dogs and the cats as well. But I did not think men and women did such strange things together, and no one told me otherwise. So I wept at first, but Rakin, as I have told you, was kind. He did not force anything upon me, which made me far luckier than I knew at the time. Things were very different when I married again.”

Ness pulled on her upper lip, listening. Within her was a tremendous stirring, a begging to be spoken. She did not know if she could manage the words, but she also did not know if she could hold them back. She said, “Yeah. I ’spect . . . ,” but that was all she could say. Majidah took the leap. She said quietly, “This has happened to you, has it not? At what age, Vanessa?”

Ness blinked. “Summick like . . . I dunno . . . ten maybe. Eleven. I forget.”

“This is . . . I am very very sorry. It was not, of course, a husband chosen for you.”

“’Course not.”

“This is very bad,” Majidah said quietly. “This is very wrong and bad indeed. This dreadful thing should not have happened. But happen it did, and I am sorry.”

“Yeah. Well.”

“Sorry for you, however, will not change things. Only how you view the past can alter the present and the future.”

“How’m I s’posed to view it?” Ness asked.

“As something terrible that happened but was not your fault. As something that was part of a larger plan that you do not yet see. I have learned in this life not to question or fight the ways of Allah—of God, Vanessa. I have learned to wait in quiet to see what will come next.”

“Nuffink,” Ness said. “Tha’s what comes next.”

“This is hardly the truth. That very terrible thing that was done to you led to this moment, to this conversation, to you sitting in my kitchen having a lesson on how to drink tea like a lady.”

Ness rolled her eyes. But she also smiled. Just a curve of her lips, but that was the last thing she would have expected, having just told Majidah part of her darkest secret. Still, the smile meant her armour had been pierced, which she didn’t want. So she said roughly, “Look. C’n I go now?”

Majidah didn’t correct her this time. Instead she said, “Not until you taste my pappadums. And my chutney, which is far superior, you will find, to anything a supermarket will sell you.” She broke a piece off of her large pappadum and passed it to Ness with a scoop of chutney.

“Eat,” she instructed.

Which was what Ness did.

JOEL’S OPPORTUNITY TO have a talk with Neal Wyatt came sooner than he expected, on a day when Toby required Joel’s guidance to complete a small assignment for school. London had wildlife—in the form of urban foxes, feral cats, squirrels, pigeons, and other assorted birds—and the children in Toby’s new year at Middle Row School were asked to document the close sighting of one of them. They were to make a sketch, create a report, and, to prevent their fanciful manufacture of either, they were to do this in the company of a parent or guardian. Kendra’s schedule precluded her doing this duty, and Ness wasn’t around to be asked. So it fell to Joel.

Toby was all afire for foxes. It took some work for Joel to talk him out of that. Foxes, he explained, weren’t going to be just swanning around Edenham Estate in convenient packs. They’d probably be solo and they’d be skulking around at night. Toby needed to choose something else.

Joel’s brother wasn’t willing to take the easy way out and document the sighting of a pigeon, so he switched to waiting for a swan to appear on the pond in Meanwhile Gardens. Joel knew that seeing a swan on the pond was about as likely as seeing a pack of foxes goose-stepping in an orderly formation along Edenham Way, so he suggested a squirrel instead. It was no infrequent sight to see one climbing the concrete face of Trellick Tower in search of food on the balconies. It shouldn’t be the least bit difficult to come across one elsewhere. Squirrels and birds being the tamest of London’s wild creatures—likely to alight on one’s shoulder in the hope of finding food on offer—this seemed a decent plan. What a fine report it would turn out to be, Joel enthused, if they had a close encounter with a squirrel. They could go into the nature walk just above and beyond the pond. They could make themselves a spot off the boardwalk that wound beneath the trees and through the shrubbery. If they sat quite still, there was every chance a squirrel would come right up to them.

The time of year was propitious. Autumn and instinct demanded that squirrels begin foraging and storing food for the winter. When Joel and Toby settled themselves in a clump of blue bean not quite ready to produce its distinctive and eponymous pods, they had to wait less than ten minutes before they were joined by an inquisitive and hopeful squirrel. Seeing the animal was the easy part for Toby. Sketching both him and where he saw him—snuffling on the ground right next to Joel’s foot—was rather more difficult. Toby got through it by means of plenty of encouragement, but he was nearly defeated by having to fashion a report about the sighting. Just write how it hap-pened was not a direction that Toby found even moderately helpful, so it took forty-five minutes of laborious printing and rubbing out before he had something that resembled a report. By that time, both of the boys needed a break and the skate bowl seemed the perfect diversion.

There was generally action in one of three bowls, and on this day, seven riders and two cyclists were doing their stuff when Joel and Toby came up the slope from the duck pond and out onto the towpath just above the gardens. Spectators sat on a couple of the hillocks watching the action, while a few others gathered on the benches nearby. Toby, of course, wanted to get as close as possible, and he was set upon doing so when Joel saw that among the spectators were Hibah and Neal Wyatt.

He said to Toby, “Headhunters, Tobe! You ’member what to do?”

To his credit and because of the many times they’d practised for just this moment, Toby stopped in his tracks. But he was overly used to rehearsals by now, so he said, “For reals? Cos I want to watch—”

“Dis is for real,” Joel said. “We’ll watch ’em later. Meantime, what’re you going to—”

Toby was, gratifyingly, on his way before Joel could finish the question. He trotted along the towpath and made for the abandoned barge beneath the bridge. In a moment he had hopped upon it. It bobbed in the water, then he was gone from sight. He was gone specifically from Neal Wyatt’s sight. Hibah there or not, Joel didn’t want Neal to get close to his brother until they had a satisfactory truce.

Joel took in a breath. It was a public place. There were others present. It was daylight. All of this should have reassured him, but when it came to dealing with Neal, nothing was a certainty. He approached the bench on which the boy and Hibah were sitting. He saw they were holding hands, and from this he understood that they’d somehow— and unwisely on Hibah’s part as far as Joel was concerned—arrived at a rapprochement after their previous altercation in the gardens. He was wise enough to realise he wasn’t going to be welcome—especially from Neal’s point of view—but he couldn’t see any help for the matter. Besides, he had the flick knife with him if things became dicey, and he doubted even Neal would take on a flick knife.

Hibah was saying, “But it i’n’t as easy as you think,” when Joel came upon them from the rear. “Mum keeps me pract’cally locked up ’n tha’ place. ’S not like your situation, innit. I make a wrong move and I’m gated f’rever.”

Joel said, “Neal, c’n I have a word?”

Neal whirled around. Hibah jumped to her feet. Joel said quickly, “S’okay. I don’t mean no harm. I ain’t rampin you.”

Neal stood, but unlike Hibah, he did it slowly. He made the movement very much like a 1930s fi lm gangster, which was indeed where he got most of his moves: from ancient Hollywood character actors with beaten-up faces. He said, “Piss off.”

“I got to talk to you.”

“You deaf or summick? I say piss off ’fore I take care of you good.”

“Down to you if we fight, bred,” Joel said calmly, although he didn’t feel calm. What he felt like was grabbing on to the flick knife as a form of security. “All’s I want is a word, but you c’n have more off me, dat how you want it.”

“Neal,” Hibah said. “You can talk to him, innit.” And to Joel with a smile, “How’s it goin, Joel? Where you been at lunchtimes, cos I look for you by the guard shack a bunch.”

Neal scowled at this. He said to Joel, “I ain’t your bred. Go suck yuh muddah’s pussy.”

It was a deliberate provocation, a begging of Joel to fling himself at the other boy. But he didn’t do it. He didn’t even need to reply. Hibah did it for him.

“Tha’s just the most disgustin thing I ever heard,” she said to Neal.

“He’s asking to talk to you, nuffink else. Wha’s the matter wiv you? I swear, Neal, sometimes I wonder ’f your head’s on right. You talk to him or I’m out ’f here. Why’d I want to take a risk like this—meetin out here which is expressly what my mum tol’ me I wasn’t to do—for someone wiv no brains to speak of?”

“Take five minutes,” Joel said, “maybe less, if we get down to it.”

“I ain’t gettin down to nuffink wiv you,” Neal said. “’F you t’ink I’m about—”

“Neal.” Hibah spoke again. But it sounded like a warning this time. For a moment Joel thought the Muslim girl had lost her mind and was going to take his side in the matter even more overtly—such as with a threat—but then he saw she was looking over at the bridge. Two uniformed constables stood there, and they were looking down at the gardens, mostly looking at the three adolescents themselves. One of the constables spoke into the radio fixed to his shoulder. The other merely waited.

It didn’t take a long leap to know what they were doing. Two mixedrace boys in conversation with a Muslim girl. They were waiting for trouble.

Neal said, “Fuck it.”

Hibah said, “I got to go. ’F they come down here . . . ’F they ask our names . . . Las’ thing I c’n cope wiv is havin my mum get a call from the cops.”

“Jus’ sit and be cool,” Joel told her. “They won’t do nuffink ’f we don’t give ’em reason.”

Neal gave Hibah a look. “Be cool,” he told her.

Joel took this as a form of agreement with what he’d said. He thought it might presage further agreement, so he spoke openly as Hibah sat back on the bench. “I been thinkin,” he said to Neal. “Why we vexin each other? ‘S not getting us anywheres ’cept—”

“You ain’t vexin me,” Neal cut in as he joined Hibah on the bench.

“You basic’ly an arse wipe needin tossed in the bin. Dat’s all I’m tryin to do wiv you. Put you where you need to be put.”

Joel wouldn’t let this remark boil inside him. He could see how Neal was going to take advantage of the presence of the police. Sitting, he’d made himself a target. If Joel launched himself at him with the cops as witnesses, Joel would take the fall for it. He said, “I don’t want to fight wiv you. Dis shit going on, it’s been happenin too long. We keep it up, summick bad’s comin down. You want dat? I don’t.”

Neal smirked. “Dat’s cos you ain’t got the bottle for a war ’tween you and me. But you know it’s comin. You c’n feel it, eh? Dat’s good. Keep you on your toes.”

“Damn it, Neal Wyatt,” Hibah said.

“Shut up!” Neal turned to her. “Shut your mouf for once, Hibah. You don’t know what you’re talkin about so jus’ stop talkin, y’unnerstan?”

Surprise stopped her. But something in his words also caused a dawn to break over her. She said, slowly and thoughtfully, with a growing awareness, “Hey, this right here . . . This stuff going on between you an’ Joel . . . Hey, this ain’t even about you, is it? Cos—”

“I said shut up!” Neal glanced to the bridge. The cops were gone. He gave Hibah a shove to indicate his desire that she leave them then.

“Your mum’s wantin you at home,” he told her. “You can’t keep it plugged, you go back and do wha’ever she tell you. Say your prayers or wha’ever.”

“You can’t tell me—”

“You do like I say. Or you want summick help you make up your mind?”

Her eyes widened. He’d said enough. She looked at Joel. “You keep clear,” she said. “Y’unnerstan?” But that was all she said before she rose from the bench and headed out of the gardens, leaving Joel alone with Neal.

“You listen good, yellow,” Neal said to Joel when Hibah was out of earshot. “You in my face, and dat’s exackly where I don’t want to see you, y’unnerstan? Piss off and be glad wha’s comin ain’t come yet. Maybe you still suckin on your muddah’s tit, but I ain’t. Got it?”

Joel felt the full weight of the flick knife then. Bring it out, press the button, thrust it at the other boy, and who’s sucking on whose tit where? But he did nothing.

He tried a final time, for Toby’s sake. “Dis ain’t the way to solve nuffink. You got to know dat. We got to put t’ings to rest between us cos there ain’t no point in it otherwise.”

Neal stood in a rush. Joel took a step backwards.

“I tell you what gets put at rest,” Neal said. “Don’t work th’other way round no way. I mark you and you stay marked. ’F you t’ink any different, you end up—”

“Joel! Joel Joel!” The cry came from the direction of the bridge, from beneath where Toby had emerged from his hiding place. He was clutching his crotch, his knees pressed together. He could not have been more specific about his needs had he sent a telegram. Nonetheless, with the disturbing honesty that was typical of him, he called out,

“I got to use the toilet. Ain’t no headhunters round anymore, is there?”

Joel felt something akin to a stab entering his heart. He heard Neal’s short, abrasive laugh. “Stupid shit,” he said in a voice that sounded like wonder. “Wha’s wrong wiv dat dumb cunt?” He looked at Joel, who’d turned back to him. “Headhunters, innit? Got yourself a spot to bolt for, eh? Mon, you got one stupid fuck of a—”

“Leave him alone.” Joel heard himself give the directive in a voice that was not quite his own. “You touch my brother again an’ I swear you die an’ die bloody. You got dat, mon? You got a problem wiv me, you leave it wiv me. Leave Toby out of it.”

He walked away, knowing the risk of turning his back on Neal but reckoning that if a brawl should start, he still had the knife. He was, at this point, more than itching to use it.

But Neal didn’t attack. Instead he said, “Next time, mon. We take care of business, you an’ me. Meantime, you keep an eye on dat brother twenty-four seven. Cos you ain’t first on the list no more, Jo-oell. No more an’ no way, y’unnerstan?”

KENDRA FELT INCREASINGLY miserable as the weeks went by. While she had more time for building her business and even enough time to take a class in Thai massage for modest clients wishing to remain loosely clothed when she worked upon them, she was acutely aware of the hole in her life.

She tried to fill it at first with a new concentration on the Campbells. But the problem with her approach to giving the children attention was that she failed to see on the horizon a different sort of danger from the dangers she’d seen before. Most of those had involved Ness, who was— for reasons remaining mysterious to Kendra—suddenly doing what she was supposed to do, which was community service, seeing her probation officer, and attempting to get herself sorted out with regard to school by taking a course at the college. Kendra’s worries about Toby she put on the back burner, along with the paperwork that she was meant to fill out to allow someone—and she didn’t want to know who that someone was—to engage in studies of the little boy. That, she swore, was not going to happen. And Joel, from what she could see on the surface, seemed to have dealt with his problems with the neighbourhood louts by himself. Thus, there seemed nothing for her to do for the children aside from offering them food, shelter, and the occasional outing that did not require paying an admission charge.

This mistaken idea of there being nothing left for Kendra to do took her thoughts ineluctably to Dix D’Court: It had been exactly as Dix had said it would be, she decided. Joel and Neal Wyatt, left to their own devices, had come to an agreement allowing both of them to live in peace.

Thus, having no idea what was really going on, Kendra possessed ample time to look at her life and find it wanting. She spoke to Cordie about this, taking the opportunity on a lunch hour to catch her girlfriend in the midst of painting a set of talonlike nails on the hands of a middle-aged overweight white lady with fuchsia hair and sunglasses that she didn’t remove despite being inside the shop. She was called Isis, Cordie informed Kendra, without a hint that she might be conscious that the name—attached to this particular female—was in no small way ironic.

Kendra nodded to Isis and spent approximately one minute watching the work being done on her nails. Cordie was something of a legend in the Harrow Road, possessing a talent for decorating artifi cial fingernails in such a way as to leave absolutely no doubt that they were entirely false from cuticle to tip. In this case and in keeping with the time of year, she was going for an autumn motif on top of the acrylic. The base colour was purple and she was painting golden corncobs and sheaves of wheat on top of it.

Kendra said to Cordie, “Nice, that.” And to Isis, “Colour’s real good with your skin.” This was not actually true, but anything directing attention away from Isis’s hair was an improvement. Isis said frankly, “She’s a fucking genius,” with a nod at Cordie. “I been telling her no way’s she going on leave of absence this time round and making me find someone else to do my nails.”

Kendra drew her eyebrows together and looked at her friend. She said, “Leave of absence?”

Cordie shrugged, nail enamel brush in hand. She looked embarrassed. Her embarrassment told the tale. “Cordie! You pregnant? What happened?”

Isis said to Kendra, “You look damn well old enough to know the fac’s of life, luv.”

Kendra waved her off. “Cordie?”

Cordie drew her mouth to one side, her way of screwing up her courage to speak. She said, “First off, he found the pills. F’r a week he rant ’bout betrayal. I c‘n handle dat, but den he talk ’bout leaving us. An’ I c’n tell he mean it.”

“That’s blackmail.”

“Di’n’t I tell her,” Isis intoned.

“It c’n be whatever it want to be,” Cordie said. “Fac is, I don’t want dat mon leavin or looking nowhere else. I love the blood. He good to me and he good to our girls. He the bes’ dad I know and all’s he asking is one more chance at a son. So I give it him. Dis here’s the result.” She as yet had no bump—wouldn’t have for months—but she gestured to her stomach. “All’s I c’n say’s I hope dis time it’s got a dick. Cos nuffink else will satisfy Gerald, lemme tell you.”

In that way in which misery loves company, Cordie’s pregnancy suggested to Kendra that she should in some way give in to her desire to have Dix back in her life. It also gave her permission to speak of this desire, which she did in short order. Cordie listened—as did Isis, unashamedly—and at the end of Kendra’s story of her last encounter with Dix and how she’d filled the time since then, the other two women weighed in with identical advice, albeit voiced differently.

Cordie said, “You, girl, jus’ need to get laid and dat’ll put an end to the matter.”

Isis said, somewhat more colourfully, “Someone needs to see to your plumbing straightaway.”

“Le’s have a girls’ night out,” Cordie said. “We ain’t done that in months, and we’re both due. Now I’ve done wha’ Gerald want, he be happy to mind the girls for an evening. You name the day, we put our dancin shoes on. We find you some nice fresh man flesh, Ken. Dat take your mind off Dix D’Court.”

So that was what they did. They chose the gastropub on Great Western Road, sitting along the side of the canal. This was a cut above their usual choice for an outing, and they had their dinner on an Indian summer night, on the patio next to the water. During their meal, they were entertained by a classical guitarist whom Cordie earmarked as up for the job that needed doing. But to Kendra he looked like a student, and she declared herself 100 percent through with younger men.

This left the young man for Cordie, who had no compunction whatsoever about reeling him in. When he took his break, she bought him a drink. Walking her fingers up his arm was enough to telegraph the message about her interests, which were not musical. As Kendra watched from the outdoor table at which she was having the last of the bottle of wine they’d ordered—when it came to her habits and her lifestyle, it must be said that Cordie had never been overly concerned about altering either when she was pregnant—Cordie and the guitarist sauntered out the front door of the pub and round the corner. This street led to Paddington Arts and Paddington Hospital. Cordie, obviously, was intent upon neither. Just a dark spot for a little snog.

Left alone, Kendra looked around to see if there were any pickings. As luck or fate would have it, at that same moment a middle-aged white man—later revealing his name as “just Geoff”—was checking out the pickings himself. He was of the ilk who harboured what he liked to call secret fantasies about sex with black women, having the notion that they were inherently more sexual—not to mention more sexually active and consequently more willing to bed a perfect stranger—than their white counterparts. He’d been encouraged in this fantasy by certain pornographic Web sites dedicated to men with such notions, and on this evening he’d spent a few hours entertaining himself with these sites in the basement of his home before finally deciding the time was right to make his dreams a reality.

Going for a woman on the job would have made sense at this point, but just Geoff was not a man who would ever consider paying. He had looks, he had money, he had the moves, he had conversation. He believed in mutual pleasure for both parties. He was married, but that was a minor detail. The wife traveled for her architectural work. They were a modern couple. They had an understanding.

He revealed most of this to Kendra—with a few variations here and there—when he came out of the pub to join her on the patio. They’d locked eyes. Neither had broken the gaze. She’d picked up her wineglass and touched her tongue to its rim. Message received. He wasted no time.

He said nothing out of the norm for the situation: She was a beautiful woman, so what was she doing here alone? (This, naturally, was a question requiring him to overlook the second wineglass out of which Cordie had been drinking before she bunked off with her guitarist.) Was she a regular here? He’d been watching her for a while and he’d finally thought, What the hell? when he’d caught her eye. It wasn’t, she was to understand, the kind of thing he generally did. But his wife was out of town and he’d been at loose ends for the evening and . . . Did she want to go some place quiet for a drink?

This last was all form. Both of them knew it since the patio of the gastropub was perfectly quiet, romantically lit, and licenced to serve alcoholic beverages. But she agreed. She liked the look of him, all squeaky clean with nice teeth, well-cut hair, and fingernails looking as if they’d been buffed. He wore a signet ring and a white shirt and tie. He had slip-on shoes with tassels, and his socks did not droop. She knew he wouldn’t be able to hold a match to Dix in the breathtaking body department, but she needed a man. He would do.

Outside she made the suggestion that both of them knew she would make. She lived close by and it was quiet, she said. She had kids there, but they’d be in bed.

She didn’t know this about Ness, but she hoped for the best. Even if Ness were still up, there was no need to see her as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. They could pass the doorway to the sitting room and keep climbing. There would be no problem. The idea of kids gave just Geoff pause. Kendra could see his dilemma: what he thought and what he clearly did not want. She said,

“They’re not mine and I’m not on the game. This, tonight. It’s just what I want. It’s not what I do regularly.”

Just Geoff allowed this to be sufficient reassurance. He had only one rationale for doing this: She was a gorgeous woman with a gorgeous body. He didn’t want her, but he wanted it. He put his hand on the small of her back and said, “Then let’s go,” with a smile. The walk was a short one, but just Geoff knew the importance of build-up, so it took them a while to cross Meanwhile Gardens. He was very good at the business of making women ready for him, so by the time they reached her front door, a walk of five minutes that took twenty-five, Kendra was throbbing in all the right places and thanking her stars she’d chosen him.

She was glad she’d worn a clingy dress that evening, held in place with a simple sash tied at the side. Aside from wisps of underwear and a pair of strappy high heels, she had nothing else on. And she had nothing on at all by the time they reached the top of the stairs.

She worked on just Geoff’s clothes while he worked on her body, all hands and tongue and mouth. She got him naked in a trail of clothes leading from the stairs to her bed, whereupon they fell upon it and coupled ferociously. Just Geoff did the job he’d set out to do on her before he positioned her legs over his shoulders, which was the way he liked to have his women in his own final moments. He then carried his fantasy to its logical conclusion. He withdrew at once and collapsed next to her.

He said, “Christ, what a fuck. I was actually seeing stars,” and he laughed weakly in the direction of the ceiling. He was panting, and his body was slick with sweat.

Kendra said nothing. She’d had pleasure from him. Truth be told, she’d had more pleasure from him than she’d ever had with anyone else, Dix included. She, too, was breathless, dripping sweat and fl uid, and by any other definition she was a woman fulfilled. But it had been the wrong prescription for the state she’d been in, and it didn’t take long for her to work that out from the emptiness she felt, beyond the lovely contractions she was still experiencing from her orgasm.

She wanted him to leave and in this she was lucky, as just Geoff had no intention of staying. He scooped up his clothing and came to the side of the bed, where he rested the tips of his fingers on her nipple.

“Good for you?” he asked.

Good depended on the definition, but she accommodated him saying, “Jesus, yeah,” and rolling on her side to reach for her cigarettes.

She didn’t see his look of distaste—women who smoked after sex were not part of his fantasy—as he turned his back to put his clothes on. She watched him dress and he asked if she had a comb or brush. She said, “The bathroom,” and still watched him as he opened the door.

He walked directly into Ness.

There were no lights on, but lights weren’t needed, as Kendra’s bedroom curtains were open. The tableau was an unmistakable one: Kendra on the bed, naked and uncovered in the warm night, lazily smoking, with the bedcovers in wild disarray around her and the man still not entirely dressed but carrying his shoes and his jacket with the clear intention of decamping at the conclusion of a successful conquest. And the scent in the air—clinging to him, to her, to the very walls, it seemed— was one that Ness could not fail to recognise.

Startled, just Geoff said, “Holy shit!” He retreated back into Kendra’s room and shut the door. Kendra said, “Damn,” and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray on her bedside table. It had always been a risk that one of the kids would see, but she would have preferred the seeing child to be one of the boys, for reasons she could not have articulated at the moment. She said unnecessarily to just Geoff, “That’s my niece. She sleeps in the sitting room. Down below.”

“Beneath . . . ?” He gestured at the bed.

“She must’ve heard.” Which was hardly a surprise, considering how they had gone at each other. Kendra pressed her fingers to her forehead and sighed. She’d got what she wanted but not what she needed. And now this, she thought. Life was not fair.

They heard a door shut. They listened for more. In a moment, the toilet flushed. Water ran. The door opened and footsteps receded down the stairs. They waited four interminable minutes before just Geoff returned to what he’d been doing. At this point, he decided that he didn’t need to comb his hair; he just needed to leave. He slipped on his shoes, donned his jacket, pocketed his tie. He looked at Kendra, who’d pulled the sheet up over her, and he nodded. Some sort of leave-taking was called for, obviously, but nothing seemed appropriate. He could hardly say, “See you later,” since he had no intention of doing that. “Thanks” seemed ghastly, and any reference to the act itself seemed untimely post Ness’s arrival on the scene. So he fell back on a combination of public school manners and costume dramas of the Edwardian period. “I’ll see myself out,” was what he said, and he quickly did just that.

Alone, Kendra sat up in the bed and stared at the wall. She lit another cigarette, with the hope that smoke could obliterate sight. For what she saw was Ness’s face. There hadn’t been judgement upon it. Nor had there been caustic knowledge. Rather, there had been surprise, quickly replaced by a world-weary acceptance that no fifteenyear-old girl was ever meant to possess. This prompted in Kendra a feeling she had not expected when she’d invited just Geoff into her bed. She felt ashamed.

She finally roused herself and went into the bathroom, where she filled the tub with water that was as hot as she could stand it. She stepped inside and scalded her skin. She sank back and raised her face to the ceiling. She wept.