What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

10 Although Joel could hardly have been declared responsible for any of the events that had crashed down upon Toby’s birthday celebration, he felt responsible. Toby’s special evening had been ruined. Realising how little his brother asked of life, Joel determined to set out to make sure no birthday ever again would come to such an end.

The end was further chaos. Once Dix D’Court had dispatched the Blade, there was Ness to see to. The cut from the flick knife wasn’t something that called for a simple plaster, so Kendra and Dix had rushed her off to the nearest Casualty, using an old tea towel imprinted with the faded visage of the Princess of Wales to staunch the bleeding. This left Joel with the detritus of the meal and the detritus of the Blade’s visit either to ignore or to contend with. He chose to contend with it: doing the washing up, setting the kitchen and the eating area back into order, carefully removing the “Happy Birthday” sign from the kitchen window, stowing the postage stamps in a container by the toaster, which was where he’d found them. He wanted to make up for what had happened in the house, and he felt a real urgency to do so as he set about his work. In the meantime, Toby sat at the table with his chin on his fists, watching his lava lamp and breathing through his new snorkel. Toby made no mention of what had happened. He’d taken himself into Sose.

Once Joel had the bottom floor of the house tidy, he took Toby upstairs. There, he supervised his bath—which Toby rightfully saw as a first opportunity to use his mask and snorkel—and he set his brother down to watch the television afterwards. Both boys finally fell asleep on the sofa and did not awaken till their aunt returned with Ness. Even then it was only a shake on their shoulders that roused Joel and Toby. Ness, said Kendra, was upstairs and in bed. Her head was bandaged— the cut requiring ten stitches—but they could see her before they went to sleep if they wanted, so that they would know she was all right.

Ness was in Kendra’s room with her head done up in white, like a Sikh’s turban. She was wearing so many bandages that she looked like a patient after brain surgery, but Kendra told them that the turban was more a fashion statement than anything else. They’d had to shave a small part of her head to get to the cut, she said, and Ness had begged them to cover the resulting bare spot.

She wasn’t asleep, but she also wasn’t talking. Joel knew the wisdom of letting her be, so he told her he was glad she was okay. He approached her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. She looked at him but not as if she actually saw him. She didn’t look at Toby at all.

That response reminded Joel of their mother and caused him to feel even more the necessity of making things better, which to him meant returning life to what it once had been for all of them. The fact that this was impossible—given their father’s death and their mother’s condition—only made the urgency of doing something that much more intense. Joel floundered around trying to come up with an appropriate anodyne. As a young boy with limited resources and only an imperfect understanding of what was going on in his family, he set upon the replacement of their happy birthday sign as an activity designed to please.

He had no money, but he quickly came up with a way to get the funds he needed. For a week, he walked all the way home from school, thus saving the bus fare. This meant leaving Toby on his own to wait for him at Middle Row School much longer than usual; it also meant taking Toby late to the learning centre for his tutoring. But to Joel it seemed a small price to pay for acquisition of the happy birthday sign.

Joel conducted his search for the sign in three locations. He began in Portobello Road. Having no luck there, he continued in Golborne Road without success. He finally ended up in the Harrow Road, where there was a small Ryman’s. But it, too, offered nothing like the sign he was looking for, and it was only when he went along in the direction of Kensal Town that he came to one of those London shops where one can find everything from phone cards to steam irons. He entered.

What he found was a plastic banner. It read “It’s a Boy!” and it featured a helmet-wearing stork on a motorcycle, a nappied bundle in its beak. Dispirited at not having unearthed what he wanted despite trudging the length of three thoroughfares in his search, Joel decided to buy the banner. He took it to the till and handed over the money. But he felt defeated by the entire enterprise.

On his way out of the shop, he caught sight of a small poster, a bright orange paper with an advertisement on it, not dissimilar to the sort of announcement he’d taken around North Kensington for his aunt’s massage business. The colour of the handout made it difficult to ignore. Joel paused to read it.

What he saw was an advertisement for a scriptwriting course at Paddington Arts, and there was certainly nothing unusual about this since Paddington Arts—supported in part by lottery money—had been designed to stimulate just this sort of creative activity in North Kensington. What was unusual, however, was the name of the instructor.

“I. Weatherall” was printed beneath the title of the course, after the words “Offered by.”

It didn’t seem possible that there could be more than one I. Weatherall in the area. To make certain, however, Joel dug around in his rucksack and found the card that Ivan had handed to him on the day he’d broken up the scuffle with Neal. There was a phone number on the bottom of the card, and it matched the number that followed the words

“For Questions and for Further Information Please Ring” on the orange handout.

Joel was reminded from the card that Ivan Weatherall lived in Sixth Avenue. He himself was that moment near the corner of Third. That coincidence was enough to prompt him into his next move.

LOGIC SUGGESTED THAT the street in question would be just a bit farther along from Third Avenue, but when Joel set off to find it, he discovered that this was not the case. Five streets separated Third from Sixth, and when Joel got there, he found a neighbourhood of terrace houses quite unlike any he’d seen since coming to live with his aunt. In contrast to the looming estates that comprised so much of North Kensington, these houses—curious remnants of the nineteenth century— were small, neat structures of only two floors, and most of them had stones imprinted with “1880” sunk into the lintels of their tiny, gabled porches. The buildings themselves were identical, differentiated from one another by their numbers, by what hung in their windows, and by their front doors and miniature gardens. Number 32 had the additional feature of a trellis attached to the wall between the front door and what would be the sitting-room window. On this trellis, four of the seven dwarves were climbing to reach a Snow White who sat at the apex of the woodwork. There was no actual front garden to speak of. Rather, a rectangle of paving stones held a bicycle chained to an iron railing, which surmounted a low brick wall. This wall ran along the pavement, marking the boundary of the tiny property.

Joel hesitated. All at once, it seemed absurd that he had come looking for this house. He had no idea what he would say if he knocked on the door and found Ivan Weatherall at home. It was true that he’d continued to meet with the mentor at school, but their meetings had been professional in nature, all about school itself and help with homework, with Ivan throwing in the occasional attempt at a probing life question and with Joel parrying that question as best he could. Thus, aside from “Any further problems with Neal, my lad?” which Joel had answered truthfully with, “Nah,” nothing personal had passed between them.

After a moment of staring at the front door and trying to decide what to do, Joel made up his mind. What his mind told him was that he really needed to get back to Toby. Joel had left him at the learning centre for his regular session, and he’d be expected there to fetch him home soon enough. He hardly had time, therefore, to pay a visit to Ivan Weatherall. It would be best to be on his way. He turned to go, but the front door opened suddenly, and there was Ivan Weatherall himself, peering out. Without preamble, he said, “What a godsend. Come in, come in. Another pair of hands is needed.” He disappeared back inside the house, leaving the door standing open in confi dent expectation.

Outside, Joel shuffled his feet, trying to make up his mind. Put to the test, he couldn’t have said exactly why he’d come to Sixth Avenue. But since he had come and since he knew Ivan from school and since all he had to show for his efforts on this day was a pathetic sign that announced “It’s a Boy” . . . He went inside the little house.

Directly within, there was a tiny vestibule, where a red bucket lettered with the word “Sand” held four furled umbrellas and a walking stick. Above it, the smallish head of a wooden elephant with its trunk curled upward served as a coat hook, and from the animal’s single tusk hung a set of keys.

Joel eased the door closed and was immediately aware of two sensations: the scent of fresh mint and the pleasant ticking of clocks. He was in a place of regimentally organised clutter. Aside from the elephant, the walls of the tiny vestibule held a collection of small black-and-white photographs of antique vintage, but not a single one was askew in that way framed pictures become when they get knocked about by the inhabitants of a house. Beneath them on one side of the vestibule and extending into the shoe-box-size sitting room that opened off it, bookshelves acted the part of wainscoting and they held volumes that filled them to bursting. But all the books were arranged neatly, with their unbroken spines facing outward and right side up. Above these bookshelves, more than a dozen clocks hung, the source of the ticking. Joel found it soothing.

“Come along. Step in.” Ivan Weatherall spoke from a table that had been pressed into the bay window of the sitting room, which explained to Joel how he’d been seen hesitating at the front of the house. He joined Ivan and saw that within the small space of the room, the man had managed to fashion a study, a workshop, and a music room. At this moment, he was using the space in workshop mode: He was attempting to empty a large cardboard box into which something was packed tightly in a block of Styrofoam. “You’ve appeared at just the right moment,” Ivan told him. “Give a hand, please. I’m having the devil of a time getting this out. It was, I assume, packed by sadists who even as I speak are having a wonderful laugh at the thought of my impotent struggles. Well, I shall have the last laugh now. Come along, Joel. Even in my own demesne, you shall find I don’t bite.”

Joel approached him. As he did, the scent of mint grew stronger, and he saw that Ivan was chewing it. It wasn’t gum, but actual mint. There was a shallow bowl of leafy sprigs at one side of the table, and Ivan dipped into it for a stem, which he held in his lips like a cigarette as Joel joined him.

“It appears we shall have to dance this out. If you’ll be so good as to hold the box down, I believe I can manage to jiggle everything else loose.”

Joel did as he was asked, setting the “It’s a Boy” banner on the floor and going to Ivan’s assistance. As Ivan jiggled, Joel said, “Wha’s in here, anyway?”

“A clock.”

Joel glanced round at the timepieces that already showed the hour of the day—and sometimes the day itself—in numbers large, numbers small, and numbers not at all. He said, “What d’you need wiv another one, then?”

Ivan followed his gaze. “Ah. Yes. Well, it’s not about telling time, if that’s what you mean. It’s about the adventure. It’s about the delicacy, balance, and patience required to see a project through, no matter how complicated it looks. I build them, in other words. I find it relaxing. Something to think about rather than thinking about”—he smiled— “what I would otherwise think about. And beyond that, I find the process a microcosm of the human condition.”

Joel frowned. He’d never heard anyone speak as Ivan spoke, even Kendra. He said, “What’re you on about anyways?”

Ivan didn’t reply until they had the block of Styrofoam released. He lifted the top piece off the lower three-quarters of it, and he gently laid this to one side. “I’m on about delicacy, balance, and patience. Just as I said. The communion one has with others, the duty one must fulfill to self, and the commitment required to attain one’s goals.” He peered into the Styrofoam container, which Joel could now see held plastic packets bearing single large letters, along with small cardboard cartons with labels affixed to them. Ivan began to lift these out and he laid them lovingly on the table, along with a pamphlet that appeared to be a set of instructions. Last to come out was a packet from which Ivan drew a pair of thin white gloves. He laid these gently on his knee and twisted in his chair to go through a wooden box sitting at one side of the table. From this he unearthed a second pair of gloves, and these he passed to Joel. “You’ll be needing them,” he said. “We can’t touch the brass or we’ll mark it with our fingerprints and that will be the end of it.”

Joel obediently put on the gloves as Ivan opened the pamphlet, spread it on the table, and pulled an ancient pair of wire spectacles from the breast pocket of his tattersall shirt. He looped the wires over his ears and then ran his finger down the first page of the pamphlet till he found what he wanted. He donned his own pair of white gloves and said, “The inventory first. Crucial, you know. Others might foolishly forge ahead without making certain they have everything they need. We, however, shall not be so foolhardy as to assume we’re in possession of all items necessary for completion of this journey. Let’s have the bag marked A. Don’t tear it, though. We shall be putting everything back inside once we’ve made certain all its contents are accounted for.”

Thus the two of them set to work, comparing what had been sent to what was on the list. They ticked off every screw and minuscule bolt, every gear, every column, and each piece of brass. As they did so, Ivan chatted away about timepieces, explaining the origin of his love affair with clocks. Upon the conclusion of this expatiation, he said suddenly,

“What brings you to Sixth Avenue, Joel?”

Joel went for the easiest reply. “Saw the advert.”

Ivan raised an eyebrow in need of trimming. “Which would be . . . ?”

“The one for the script class. At Paddington Arts. Dat’s you teachin it, innit?”

Ivan looked pleased. “Indeed. Are you going to enrol? Have you come to ask me about it? Age is no object, if that concerns you. We always engage in a collaborative effort, from which will emerge the fi lm itself.”

“What? You make a real fi lm?”

“Yes indeed. I did tell you I once produced films, yes? Well, this is where every film begins: with a script. I’ve found that the more minds that engage in the process, the better the process in its initial stages. Later on as we begin to edit and polish, someone emerges as the strongest voice. Does this interest you?”

“I was getting a sign f’r birthdays,” Joel said. “Down the Harrow Road.”

“Oh. I see. Don’t fancy a career in film, then? Well, I suppose I can hardly blame you, modern films being mostly blue screens, miniatures, car chases, and explosions. Hitchcock, I tell you, Joel, is spinning in his grave. Not to mention what Cecil B. DeMille is doing. So what do you have in store for yourself? Rock ’n’ roll singer? Footballer? Lord chief justice? Scientist? Banker?”

Joel got to his feet abruptly. While other elements of the conversation might have been tough for him, he did know when someone was having a laugh at his expense, even if that person was not actually laughing. He said, “I’m off, man,” and he took off the gloves and picked up his banner.

“Good heavens!” Ivan jumped to his feet. “What’s wrong? Have I said . . . ? See here, I can see I’ve offended you in some way, but rest assured I had no intention . . . Oh. I do think I know. You’ve assumed . . . I say, Joel, have you assumed I was taking the mickey? But why should you not be lord chief justice or prime minister if that’s what you prefer?

Why shouldn’t you be an astronaut or a neurosurgeon if that’s your interest?”

Joel hesitated, gauging the words, their tone, and Ivan’s expression. The man stood with his hand extended, white gloved like Mickey Mouse.

Ivan said, “Joel. Perhaps you ought to tell me.”

Joel felt a chill. “What?”

“Most people do find me as harmless as a box of cotton wool. I do natter on sometimes without thinking exactly how I sound. But, good Lord, you know that by now, don’t you? And if we’re to become friends instead of acting out the roles assigned to us at Holland Park School— and by this I mean mentor and pupil—then it seems that as friends—”

“Who says friends?” Joel felt laughed at again. He ought to have felt cautious as well, with a grown man talking about friendship between them. But he didn’t feel cautious, just confused. And even then it was a confusion born of the novelty of the situation. No adult had ever asked him for friendship, if that was what Ivan was indeed doing.

“No one, actually,” Ivan said. “But why shouldn’t we be friends if that’s what we mutually decide and want? Can one actually have enough friends when it comes down to it? I don’t think so. As far as I’m concerned, if I share with someone an interest, an enthusiasm, a particular way of looking at life . . . whatever it is . . . that makes that person a kindred soul no matter who he is. Or she, for that matter. Or even what, because frankly, there are insects, birds, and animals with whom I have more in common sometimes than with people.”

At this Joel smiled, taken by the image of Ivan Weatherall in communion with a flock of birds. He lowered the banner to his side. He heard himself saying what he’d never expected even to whisper to another living soul. “Psychiatrist.”

Ivan nodded thoughtfully. “Noble work. The analysis and reconstitution of the suffering mind. Assisted brain chemistry. I’m impressed. How did you settle on psychiatry?” He returned to his seat and gestured Joel back to his side to continue their inventory of parts for the clock.

Joel didn’t move. There were some things that didn’t bear speaking of, even now. But he decided to try, at least in part. He said,

“Toby’s birthday was las’ week. When it was someone’s birthday, we used to . . .” He felt a sting in his eyes, the way they would feel if smoke were seeping beneath his closed lids from someone’s cigarette. But there was no cigarette languishing in an ashtray in this room. There was only Ivan, and he was reaching for another sprig of mint, which he rolled between his fingers and popped into his mouth. He kept his gaze fixed on Joel, though, and Joel continued because it felt as if the words were actually being drawn from him, not as if he were truly speaking. “Dad sang on birthdays, innit. But he couldn’t sing, not really, and we always had a laugh ’bout that. He had dis mad ukulele—yellow plastic, it was—an’ he pretend he knew how to play.

‘Takin requests now, boys and girls,’ he’d say. If Mum was there, she’d ask for an Elvis. An’ dad say, ‘Dat ol’ bag, Caro? You outta step wiv the times, woman.’ But he sing it anyways. He sing so bad, it’d make your ears hurt an’ everyone’d shout at him to stop.”

Ivan sat still, one hand on the pamphlet they’d been using for the inventory and the other on his thigh. “And then?”

“He’d stop. Bring the presents in instead. I got a football once. Ness got a Ken doll.”

“Not then.” Ivan’s words sounded kind. “I meant later. I know you don’t live with your parents. The school told me that, of course. But I don’t know why. What happened to them?”

This was no-man’s-land. Joel made no reply. But for the first time, he wanted to. Yet to speak was to violate a family taboo: No one talked about it; no one could cope with saying the words. Joel tried. “Cops said he went to the off licence. Mum told ’em no cos he was cured. He wa’n’t usin anymore, she said. He wasn’t usin nuffink. He was jus’ fetchin Ness from her dancin lesson like he always did. ’Sides, he had me an’ Toby wiv him. How’d they t’ink he meant to use if he had me an’ Toby wiv him?”

But that was all he could manage. The rest of it . . . It was too sore a place. Even thinking about it hurt at a level no palliative could ever reach.

Ivan was watching him. But now Joel didn’t want to be watched. There was only one option he could see at this point. Taking his banner with him, he hurried from the house.

IN THE AFTERMATH of the Blade’s descent upon Edenham Way, Dix made his decision. And he communicated it to Kendra in a way that brooked neither refusal nor argument. He was moving in, he informed her. He wasn’t going to let her live on her own—even in the company of three children and perhaps because of the company of those particular three children—while some lout like the Blade was intent upon sorting them out in a fashion anyone could easily guess at. Besides, whatever the Blade’s intentions had been on the night of his visit to Kendra and the Campbells, those intentions would now be fortifi ed by the treatment he’d received at Dix’s hands. And make no mistake about it, Dix told Kendra when she attempted to protest his plans, the Blade wasn’t going to target Dix for payback. That was not the way his type sought revenge. Instead, he was going to go after one of the other members of the household. Dix meant to be there to stop him.

He didn’t mention the fact that, by moving in, he’d be one step closer to getting what he wanted, which was a sense of permanency with Kendra. He couched the rest of his explanation in terms of his own need to get away from the Falcon, where living with two bodybuilding flatmates had long since constituted swimming in an excess of testosterone. To his parents he merely said that this was something he had to do. They had little choice but to accept his decision. They could see that Kendra was not an ordinary sort of woman—and this they decided was to her credit—but still they’d always had their own dreams about what sort of life their son ought to be leading, and that life had never contained a forty-year-old woman responsible for three children. Aside from their initial murmurs of caution, however, they kept their reservations to themselves.

Joel and Toby were happy to have Dix join their household, for to them he was something of a god. Not only had he appeared from out of nowhere and saved the day in the fashion of a cinematic action hero, but he was also in their eyes perfect in all ways. He talked to them as if they were equals, he clearly adored their aunt—which was a plus, as they were becoming fond of her too—and if he was perhaps rather too single-minded on the subject of bodily perfection in general and his bodily perfection in particular, that was easy enough to ignore because of the security his presence brought them.

The only problem was Ness. It soon became apparent that, as drunk as she had been on the occasion, she didn’t remember Dix as the man who’d delivered her from a nasty fate at the Falcon. She simply bore no liking for him despite his timely arrival during the Blade’s attack upon her. There were several reasons for this, although she was prepared to admit to none of them.

The most obvious was her displacement. Since coming to North Kensington from East Acton, she’d shared Kendra’s bed on the nights when she’d actually slept at home, and upon Dix’s arrival she found herself removed from her aunt’s bedroom and stationed on the sofa instead. The fact that Dix built a screen to give her privacy did not ameliorate her feelings in the matter, and these feelings were aggravated by the knowledge that Dix—a mere eight years older than she and a breathtaking specimen of man flesh—was markedly indifferent to her presence and instead besotted with her aunt. She felt like a rack of cold toast in his presence, and she translated what she felt into a renewal of surliness towards her family and a renewal of friendship with Six and Natasha.

This perplexed Kendra, who’d mistakenly assumed that Ness would be a changed young woman after the Blade’s attack upon her, seeing the error of her previous ways and grateful that a man’s protection was now available to all of them. In frustration at Ness’s continued churlishness, she pointed out to her niece that it was down to her, anyway, that Dix D’Court was moving in with them. Had she not involved herself with the Blade, she wouldn’t have found herself in the position she now was in: on the sofa at night, in the sitting room, behind a collapsible screen.

This fruitless—albeit understandable—approach to dealing with Ness possessed the unmistakable potential to make the situation worse. Dix pointed this out to Kendra privately, telling her to go easier on the girl. If Ness didn’t want to speak to him, fine. If she stalked out of the room when he came into it, fine as well. If she used his razor, dropped his body lotion in the toilet, and poured his 100 percent organic juices down the kitchen sink, let her. For now. The time would come when she realised that none of this was changing reality. She would have to choose a different course, then. They needed to be ready and willing to provide her with one so that she didn’t choose a course that would take her into more trouble.

To Kendra, this was an overly sanguine way of looking at the problem of Ness. The girl had brought nothing but ever-increasing difficulty into Kendra’s life from the moment of her arrival, and something had to be done about her. Kendra could not, however, come up with anything beyond giving orders and making threats, most of which—out of duty to her brother, Ness’s father—she lacked the courage to carry out.

“You keep ’spectin her to be like you,” was Dix’s maddeningly reasonable assessment of the situation when he and Kendra discussed it.

“You get past that, you got a chance of ’ceptin her for what she is.”

“What she is is a tart,” Kendra told him. “A truant, a layabout, and a slag.”

“You don’t mean dat,” Dix replied, laying a finger across her lips and smiling down at her. It was late. They were drowsy from lovemaking and readying themselves for sleep. “Dat’s your frustration talking. Just like hers is talkin as well. You letting her vex you ’stead of lookin at the why of what she’s doing.”

Mostly, they circled each other, wary as cats. Kendra walked into a room; Ness flounced out of it. Kendra assigned a chore for the girl; Ness did it only when the request became the demand and the demand became the threat and even then she did it as badly as possible. She was monosyllabic, angry, and sarcastic when what Kendra expected of her was gratitude. Not gratitude for the roof over her head—which even Kendra knew was too much to ask for, considering how it had come to pass that Ness and her brothers were living in Edenham Way—but gratitude at least for the deliverance from the Blade as effected by Dix. The second time, in fact, that Dix had delivered her from trouble, a truth that Kendra pointed out to her.

“He was dat bloke?” Ness responded to this news. “From the Falcon? No way.” But after learning this, Ness eyed him differently and in a manner that would have caused concern in a woman less sure of herself than Kendra.

“Yes way,” was Kendra’s reply. “How drunk were you, girl, that you don’t remember?”

“Too drunk to study up on his face,” she said. “But wha’ I do remember . . .” She smiled and rolled her eyes expressively. “My, my, my, Ken dra. Ain’t you one lucky slag.”

Her remark was a small pebble thrown into a large pond, but the ripples still made their way outward. Kendra tried to avoid attending to them. She told herself that Ness, in her present state, liked to mess with minds and didn’t care how she did it.

Still, she couldn’t avoid a reaction deep within herself, one that eventually prompted her to say to Dix as a way of approaching the topic obliquely, “Blood, what’re you doing loving on this middle-aged body of mine? You don’t like girl flesh? Is that what it is? Your age, I’d think you’d want someone young.”

“Y’are young,” he said promptly, a gratifying response. But he went on with an intuitive question. “Wha’s dis really about, Ken?”

That maddened Kendra: Dix’s seeing through her indirections. She said, “It’s about nothing.”

He said, “Don’t think so.”

“All right, then. You mean me to think you don’t look at girls?

Young women? Down the pub, at the gym, sunning themselves in the park?”

“Course I look. Ain’t a robot.”

“And when Ness walks round here with half her clothes off? You take note of that?”

“Like I said, Ken. Wha’s dis really about?”

Pressed to it, however, Kendra couldn’t bring herself to say more. More would have indicated a lack of trust, a lack of confidence, and a lack of esteem. Not esteem for herself but esteem for him. To take her mind off what Ness clearly wanted her mind on, Kendra redoubled her efforts to increase her list of clients for massage, telling herself that everything else was secondary to the future that she was trying to build.

She hadn’t intended that future to include the Campbells, though, and as Ness continued to demonstrate how unpleasant life with an adolescent girl could be, Kendra understandably gave thought to ways in which life with an adolescent girl could be brought to an end. She considered the possibility that their mother might reenter their world and take them off her hands. She even visited Carole Campbell privately to assess whether her maternal instincts—such as they were—might be reawakened. But Carole, having “a faraway day” as her lapse into a fugue state was called, was mute on the subject of Ness and Joel. Toby, Kendra knew, was a topic best left unmentioned.

The fact that Dix wasn’t bothered by the presence of the Campbells— and particularly by Ness—increased Kendra’s sense of guilt about her own feelings. She told herself that she was “good God their aunt, for heaven’s sake” and she tried to shake the general sense of uneasiness that had her waiting endlessly for the worst.

As for Ness, she knew that her aunt was wary and, powerless for so long, she enjoyed the fleeting feeling of supremacy she was able to experience simply by being in the same room with her aunt and Dix D’Court. For Kendra had begun to study her like a microscopic specimen on a slide, and reading her aunt’s suspicions as jealousy, Ness couldn’t help trying to give her something to be jealous about. This required Dix’s cooperation. Since, to Ness, he was a man like all men—governed by base desires—she set out to seduce him. There was nothing subtle in her approach.

He was standing at the kitchen sink when she accosted him. He’d made himself one of his protein-packed juice drinks, and he was powering it down. His back was to her. They were alone in the house. She murmured, “Ken’s got all the luck. You, blood, are one fine man.”

He turned to her, surprised because he thought she’d left the house. He had things to do—primary among them his daily workout—and having a tête-à-tête with his woman’s niece wasn’t among them. Besides, he’d seen the way Ness had started looking at him, assessing and deciding, and he had a fairly good idea of where a private colloquy with her might lead. He drank down the rest of his smoothie and turned to rinse out the glass.

Ness joined him at the sink. She put her hand on his shoulder and ran it down his arm. It was bare, as was his chest. Ness turned his wrist and traced his vein. Her touch was light, her hands were soft, and there was no mistaking her intentions.

He was human, and if he thought fleetingly of returning her touch and if his eyes dropped even more fleetingly to the rich dark nipples that, braless, pressed against her thin white T-shirt, it was owing to this humanity. Pure biology worked in him for a moment, but he mastered it. He removed Ness’s hand from his body. He said, “Good way to get into trouble, innit.”

She caught his hand, pressed it to her waist and held it there. She fixed her eyes on his and raised his hand slowly till she had it at the swell of her breast. “Why she got all the luck?” she repeated. “’Specially when I saw you first. Come on, mon. I know you wan’ it. I know how you wan’ it. An’ I know you wan’ it from me.”

Biology again and he felt himself heating in spite of his wishes. But this prompted him to jerk away from her. He said, “You readin t’ings wrong, Ness. Dat, or you makin ’em up.”

“Oh right. You was bein’ noble at the Falcon dat night, Dix? You tellin me dat? You sayin you don’ re mem ber just before you drove me home? We go to your car. You put me inside. You make sure I got dat seat belt fastened. ‘Here, lemme help you, lit’le lady. Lemme draw it ’cross you, make sure you’re snug.’”

Dix held up a hand to stop her words. “Don’t go dat way,” he told her.

“What way? Way of you grazin your fingers cross me like you want to do now? Way of your hand sliding up my leg, high as you can, till you find what you want? Which way is it you don’t want me to go?”

He narrowed his eyes. His nostrils flared when he breathed, and he took in her scent. Kendra was sexy, but this girl was sex. She was raw, she was present, and she scared him to death. He said, “You a liar as well as a slag, den, Ness? Keep away from me. I mean it, y’unnerstan.”

He pushed past her then and left the kitchen. What he left behind was the sound of her laugh. A single note of it, high and possessing neither heart nor amusement. It felt like a scalpel peeling back his flesh.

NESS WAS NOT of an age to understand what she felt. All she knew about what was going on inside her was that she was roiling. To her, this roiling was a thing demanding action, for action is always easier than thought.

Her opportunity for taking an action to express herself came soon enough. She’d imagined the action being sexual: herself and Dix entwined hotly in such a manner and in such a place that discovery by Kendra was guaranteed. But that was not how her life played out. Instead, Six and Natasha supplied the opportunity for expression, which came about because two circumstances to which none of them were strangers occurred simultaneously: Lack of cash collided with a desire for substance on an evening when the girls had nothing to do.

This should have presented no problem. Following hand jobs, blow jobs, full penetration, or whatever else they had negotiated for, the area’s bicycle-delivery boys had always been happy to hand over to the girls payment in the form of cocaine, cannabis, Ecstasy, crystal meth . . . the beauty for them being that the girls weren’t choosy about substance. But lately, the situation had altered. The source of dope had begun watching the boys more carefully because a wary customer along the line had complained about someone skimming. Thus, the well had run dry and no number of sexual favours appeared to be able to prime it.

There was no question that the girls needed money. But they had nothing to sell, and the idea of actually seeking employment—had any of them been employable, which they were not—didn’t occur to them. They were of the instant-gratification generation anyway, so they thrashed around through their options in order to decide how best to come up with cash. There seemed to be two possibilities: They could sell sexual favours to someone other than the delivery boys or they could nick the money. They chose the latter option, as it seemed quicker, and it left them with merely deciding from whom they should lift what they needed. Here again, there were further choices: They could nick money from Six’s mother’s purse; they could nick it from someone using a cash-point machine; they could nick it from someone defenceless in the street.

Since Six’s mother was rarely around, neither was her bag and she had no cache of cash in the flat that Six knew about, so that eliminated her as a possibility. The cash-point machine sounded quite good until Tash, of all people, pointed out that most machines had CCTV cameras mounted nearby and the last thing they wanted was to have their faces photographed in the midst of mugging someone using the machine. That left them with a confrontation in the street. This was agreed to, and all that remained was selecting the area in which to carry out the operation and selecting the appropriate victim.

The three estates in which the girls lived were rejected at once. So were Great Western Road, Kilburn Lane, Golborne Road, and the Harrow Road. These, they decided, were far too crowded and a person mugged would likely send up a cry that would get them noticed if not get them stopped. They settled on an estate directly across from the Harrow Road police station. While others might have rejected this as a ludicrous spot in which to mug a London citizen, the girls liked it for two reasons: It had a locked entry gate, which would foster a false sense of security in their potential victim; it was so close to the police station that no one would expect to be mugged there. It was, the girls decided, sheer brilliance on their part to make the estate their selection.

Getting onto the estate proved no problem. They merely hung around three wheelie bins near the gate and waited until an unwary elderly woman approached, toddling along with a shopping trolley in tow. Tash dashed forward to hold the gate open for her once she had it unlocked, saying, “Lemme help you wiv dis, ma’am,” and the woman was so surprised to be spoken to and dealt with politely that she had no suspicions when Tash followed her inside and gestured for Six and Ness to do likewise.

Six shook her head to indicate that they’d let the woman go on her way. A pensioner, she’d be unlikely to have enough cash on her for what they wanted, and anyway, Six drew the line at mugging defenceless old ladies. They reminded her of her own gran, and not mugging them was a form of deal making with fate, guaranteeing that her gran would remain unmolested on her own estate.

So the girls began to prowl up and down the paths, watching and waiting. Neither operation took long. They hadn’t been inside the walls ten minutes when they saw their target. A woman came out of one of the terrace houses and set off towards the Harrow Road, foolishly— and in direct defi ance of everything the police recommended—taking a mobile phone from her bag.

She seemed a godsend as she punched in a few numbers, oblivious of what was going on around her. Even if she had no cash, she had a mobile, and nothing had changed in the lives of Six and Natasha heretofore, so possession of a mobile phone still represented the apex of their dreams.

Three of them and one of her: The odds seemed excellent. All it would take was two girls in front of her and one behind. A confrontation without violence but with the threat of bodily harm omnipresent. Looking tough because they were tough. What’s more, she was white and they were black. She was middle-aged and they were young. It was, in short, a match made in heaven, and the girls had no hesitation about going forward.

Six led the way. She and Tash would confront. Ness would be surprise backup behind the lady.

“Patty? This is Sue,” the woman was saying into her mobile. “Could you unlock the door for me? I’m running late, and the students aren’t likely to wait more than ten minutes if . . .” She saw Tash and Six in front of her. She stopped on the path. From behind, Ness clamped a hand on her shoulder. The woman stiffened.

“Le’s have the moby, bitch,” Six said. She closed in quickly. Tash did the same.

“Le’s have the purse ’s well,” Tash said.

Sue’s face was white to her lips, although the girls had no way of knowing this was her natural colour. She said, “I don’t know you girls, do I?”

“Well, ain’t that true,” Six said. “Give us the moby an’ do it now. You don’t, you get cut.”

“Oh yes, oh of course. Just . . .” Sue said into the phone, “Listen, Patty, I’m being mugged. If you wouldn’t mind ringing—”

Ness shoved her forward. Six shoved her back. Tash said, “Don’t play games wiv us, cunt.”

The woman, appearing flustered, said, “Yes. Yes. I’m terribly sorry. I just . . . Here. Let me . . . My money’s inside . . .” And she fumbled round to reach into her bag, which had straps and buckles all over it. She dropped it and the mobile on the ground. Six and Tash bent to get them. And in an instant the complexion of the mugging altered. From her pocket the woman whipped out a small can, which she began spraying wildly at the girls. It was nothing more than a strong room freshener, but it did the trick. As Sue sprayed and began screaming for help, the girls fell back.

“I’m not afraid of you! I’m not afraid of anyone! You rotten little . . .”

Sue shrieked and shrieked. And to prove whatever point she was attempting to make, she grabbed the girl nearest her and sprayed her directly in the face. This was Ness, who doubled over just as lights went on in nearby porches and residents began opening their doors and blowing whistles. It was a neighbourhood watch from hell.

All this was enough for Six and Natasha, who took off in the direction of the gate. The mobile and the bag they left behind, along with Ness. Since she was already incapacitated by the spray, she was easy for Sue to deal with, and this she did summarily. She threw her to the ground and sat upon her. She reached for her phone and punched in three nines.

“Three girls have just attempted to mug me,” she said into the phone when the emergency operator answered. “Two of them are heading west on the Harrow Road. The third I’m sitting on . . . No, no, I have no idea . . . Listen to me, I suggest you send someone straightaway because I don’t intend to let this one go, and I won’t answer for her condition if I have to spray her in the face again . . . I’m directly across the street from the Harrow Road station, you absolute ninny. You can send the janitor for all I care.”