What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

5 Since part of his job was to know when the pupils in his PSHE group were floundering in one area or another—after all, the class wasn’t called Personal Social Health Education for nothing—Mr. Eastbourne, who otherwise was mentally, spiritually, and emotionally consumed by an unfortunate relationship he was attempting to foster with an oft-suicidal, out-of-work actress, eventually noticed that Joel Campbell needed a bit of special attention. This became apparent to him when a colleague routed Joel from his lunchtime hiding place for the third time, delivering him to Mr. Eastbourne for an intimate colloquy that was supposed to reveal the nature of the boy’s problems. Anyone with eyes could see the nature of the boy’s problems, of course: He kept to himself, had no friends, spoke only when spoken to and not always then, and spent his free time attempting to blend into the notice boards, the furniture, or whatever else comprised the environment in which he found himself. What remained to be excavated from Joel’s psyche were the reasons for the problems.

Mr. Eastbourne possessed one quality above all others that made him an exceptional instructor in PSHE: He knew his limitations. He disliked faux bonhomie, and he understood that spurious attempts to be matey with a troubled adolescent were unlikely to produce a positive result. So he availed himself of a member of the school’s mentoring programme, a human inventory of community members who were willing to assist pupils with everything from reading to relieving anxiety. Thus, not long after the visit to his mother, Joel found himself being ushered into the presence of an odd-looking Englishman.

He was called Ivan Weatherall, a white man on the far side of fifty who favoured hunting jackets with tatty leather in all the appropriate places as well as baggy tweed trousers worn too high on the waist and held there with both braces and a belt. He had appalling teeth but exceptionally nice breath, chronic dandruff but freshly washed hair. Manicured, closely shaven, and polished where polish was called for, Ivan Weatherall knew what it was to be an outsider, having endured both fagging and bullying at boarding school, as well as possessing a libido so low as to make him a misfit from his thirteenth birthday right into his dawning old age.

He had a most peculiar way of speaking. So anomalous was it to what Joel was used to—even from his aunt—that at first he concluded Ivan Weatherall was having a monumental joke at Joel’s own expense. He used terms like Right-o, I dare say, Spot on, and Cheerio, and behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, his blue eyes locked on Joel’s and never looked away, as if he were waiting for a reaction. This forced Joel into either giving him one, meeting his gaze, or looking elsewhere. Most of the time he chose to look elsewhere.

He and Ivan met twice a week during PSHE, tucked away in an office made available for the mentoring programme. Ivan began their relationship with a formal bow from the waist, and, “Ivan Weatherall, at your service. I haven’t seen you hereabouts. How pleasant to meet you. Shall we perambulate or is remaining stationary your preference?”

To this bizarre opening, Joel made no reply since he thought the man was having him on.

Ivan said, “Then I shall make the decision. As rain appears imminent, I suggest we avail ourselves of what seating accommodations are on offer.” Then he ushered Joel into the little office, where he deposited his gangly frame into a red plastic chair and hooked his ankles round its front legs.

“You’re a relative newcomer to our little corner of the world, I understand,” he said. “Your habitation is . . . where? One of the estates, I believe? Which one?”

Joel told him, managing to do so without looking up from his hands, which played with the buckle on his belt.

“Ah, the location of Mr. Goldfinger’s grand building,” was Ivan’s reply. “Do you live inside that curious structure, then?”

Joel correctly assumed that Ivan was referring to Trellick Tower, so he shook his head.

“Pity,” Ivan Weatherall said. “I live in that general area myself, and I’ve wanted to explore that building forever. I consider it all a bit grim—well, what can one do with concrete besides make it look like a minimum-security prison, don’t you agree?—and yet those bridges . . . floor after floor of them . . . They do make a statement. I dare say one still wishes that London’s postwar housing problems could have been solved in a more visually pleasing manner.”

Joel raised his head and ventured a look at Ivan, still trying to work out if he was being made fun of. Ivan was watching him, head cocked to one side. He’d altered his position during his prefatory remarks, leaning back so that his chair rested only on its two back legs. When Joel’s eyes met his, Ivan gave him a little friendly salute. “Entre nous, Joel,” he said in a confidential tone, “I’m a type one generally refers to as an English eccentric. Quite harmless and engaging to have at a dinner party where Americans are present and declaring themselves desperate to meet a real Englishman.” They were hard enough to come by in this part of town, he went on to tell Joel, especially in his own neighbourhood, where the small houses were mostly occupied by large Algerian, Asian, Portuguese, Greek, and Chinese families. He himself lived alone—“Not even a budgerigar to keep me company”—but he liked it that way, as it gave him time and space to pursue his hobbies. Every man, he explained, needed a hobby, a creative outlet through which one’s soul earned expression. “Have you one yourself?” he inquired.

Joel ventured a reply. The question seemed harmless enough. “One what?”

“A hobby, a soul-enriching extracurricular endeavour of one form or another?”

Joel shook his head.

“I see. Well, perhaps we can find you one. This will, naturally, involve a minor bit of probing with which I will ask you to cooperate to the best of your ability. You see, Joel, we are creatures of parts. Physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and psychological parts. We are akin to machines, if it comes down to it, and every mechanism that makes us what we are needs to be attended to if we are to function both effi ciently and to our utmost capacity. You, for instance. What do you intend to do with your life?”

Joel had never been asked such a question. He knew, of course, but he was embarrassed to admit it to this man.

“Well, then, that is part of what we’ll search for,” Ivan said. “Your intentions. Your path to the future. I myself, you see, longed to be a film producer. Not an actor, mind you, because at the end of the day I could never abide people ordering me about and telling me how to act.

And not a director because I could also never abide being the one doing the ordering. But producing . . . Ah, that was my love. Making it happen for others, giving their dreams life.”

“Did you?”

“Produce films? Oh yes. Twenty of them, as it happens. And then I came here.”

“Whyn’t you in Hollywood, then?”

“With a starlet hanging from my every appendage?” Ivan shuddered dramatically, then smiled, revealing his tortured teeth. “Why, I’d made my point. But that’s a conversation for another time.”

Over the ensuing weeks, they had many such conversations, although Joel kept his darkest secrets to himself. So while Ivan knew that Joel and his siblings lived with their aunt, he didn’t know precisely why. And while he knew that Joel’s responsibility was to stop by Middle Row School for Toby so that the little boy did not have to walk anywhere alone, where Joel actually took Toby and why he did so were topics that never came up between him and his assigned mentor. As for Ness, Ivan knew that she was a chronic truant whose attendance problems had not been resolved by the single phone call made from the admissions officer to Kendra Osborne. Other than that, Ivan did most of the talking. Joel, listening, grew used to the eccentricities of the older man’s speech. He actually found himself liking Ivan Weatherall, as well as looking forward to their meetings. But this factor in their relationship—the liking part of it—made Joel even more reluctant to speak honestly with him. Should he do so, which he assumed was the purpose of their visits, he believed that he would be seen as “cured” of whatever the school had decided ailed him. Cured, he would no longer need to meet with Ivan, and he didn’t wish that to happen.

It was Hibah who revealed a way that Joel might keep Ivan chatting in his life even if the school decided that it was no longer necessary. Near the fourth week of their meetings, she saw Joel emerging from the library with the Englishman, and she plopped down next to Joel on the number 52 bus later that afternoon to put him into the picture. She began with, “You seeing that mad English bloke, eh? You watch out f’r him.”

Joel, working on a maths problem he’d been given for homework, didn’t at first take note of the menace behind her words. He said,

“Wha’?”

“Tha’ Ivan bloke. Hangs round kids, he does.”

“’S his job, innit.”

“Not talkin ’bout school,” she said. “Other places is where. You been over to Paddington Arts?”

Joel shook his head. He didn’t even know what Paddington Arts was, let alone where it was.

Hibah told him. Paddington Arts was a centre for creative works, not far from the Grand Union Canal and just off the Great Western Road. Classes were offered there—yet another stab at giving the area’s youth something to do besides head into trouble—and Ivan Weatherall was one of the instructors.

“So he says,” Hibah told Joel. “I hear otherwise.”

“From who?” Joel asked.

“My boyfriend’s who. He say Ivan got a thing for boys. Boys just like you, Joel, innit. Mixed boys, he likes, an’ my boyfriend oughta know.”

“Why?”

She rolled her large eyes expressively. “You can fi gger. You not thick or summick, are you? Anyways, more’n jus’ my boyfriend say it. Older blokes’s grew up in the area. Tha’ bloke Ivan, he been round here for ev er, an’ it’s always been the same wiv him. You watch yourself ’s what I’m saying.”

“He never do nothing but talk wiv me,” Joel told her. Again the eye roll. “Don’ you know nuffink? Tha’s how it always begin,” she said.

KENDRA’S LIE TO the admissions officer at Holland Park School comprised the reason that it took several weeks for the next level of educational concern to be triggered regarding Ness’s lack of attendance. During this time, Ness carried on much as before, with only a slight variation, leaving the house with her brothers and parting from them in the vicinity of Portobello Bridge. What made it look to her aunt as if she were actually attending school this time around was the fact that she no longer carried a change of clothes in her rucksack but rather two notebooks and a geography text pinched from Six’s brother, the Professor. Her change of clothes she merely left at Six’s.

Kendra chose to be soothed into belief by this. It was the path of least resistance. It was also, unfortunately, only a matter of time before that path went from bumpy to impassable.

It was late March and in the midst of a classic English downpour when several occasions conspired against her. The first of these occurred when a lithe and well-dressed black man entered the charity shop, shook off a tan umbrella, and asked to speak to Mrs. Osborne. He was Nathan Burke, he said, the education officer from Holland Park School.

Cordie Durelle was in the shop with Kendra, on her break from the Princess European and Afro Unisex Hair Salon. As before, she was smoking. As before, she wore her purple smock, with her surgical mask slung around her neck. She and Kendra had been discussing Gerald Durelle’s recent inebriated and destructive hunt through the house for what he assumed—correctly—had to be the birth control pills, which he believed were keeping his wife from becoming pregnant with the son he desired, and Cordie had just reached the climax of her tale when the shop door opened and its bell rang.

Their conversation ceased as if by telepathic agreement, largely because Nathan Burke was breathtaking and both of the women needed to take that breath. He spoke politely and precisely, and he moved across the shop to the counter with the confidence of a man who’d had a decent upbringing, a decent education, and a life spent largely outside of England and in an environment where he’d been treated as the equal of everyone else.

Burke asked which one of the ladies was Mrs. Osborne and could he speak to her on a private matter. Kendra identified herself cautiously and told him he could speak in front of her best friend, Cordie Durelle. Cordie shot her a grateful glance at this, for she always appreciated being in the presence of an attractive man. She lowered her eyelids and attempted to look as sultry as a woman in a purple smock and surgical mask can look.

Nathan Burke didn’t have the time to notice her, however. He’d been paying visits to the parents of Holland Park’s truant pupils since nine o’clock that morning, and he had five more to get through before he could end his day and finally go home to the sympathetic ministrations of his life partner. Because of this, he got directly to the point. He brought out the relevant attendance records and broke the news to Kendra.

Kendra looked at the records, feeling the pounding of dread begin in her head. Cordie glanced at the records as well. She said the obvious. “Shit, Ken. She ain’t ever gone to school, innit.” And then to Nathan Burke, “Wha’ kinda school you got over there? She get bullied or summick dat she don’ want to go?”

Kendra said, “She could hardly get bullied if she never went in the first place.”

Cordie showed mercy and ignored Kendra’s choice of dialect. She said, “She gettin up to trouble, den. Only question’s what kind: boys, drugs, drink, street crime.”

“We’ve got to get her in school,” Nathan Burke said, “no matter what she’s been doing while she’s been truant. The question is how to do this.”

“She ever felt the belt?” Cordie said.

“Fifteen. She’s too old for that. And anyway, I won’t beat those children. What they’ve faced already . . . They’ve had enough.”

Mr. Burke appeared to be all ears at this, but Kendra wasn’t about to give him the bible on her family’s history. Instead she asked him what he recommended, short of beating a girl who would probably be only too happy to beat her aunt in response.

“Establishing consequences usually does the trick,” he said. “Do you object to discussing a few you might try?”

He went over them and their various outcomes: driving Ness to school and walking her to her first scheduled class in front of all the other pupils to cause her an embarrassment she wouldn’t want to endure a second time; removing privileges like use of the phone and the television; gating the girl; sending her to boarding school; arranging for private counselling to get to the root of the matter; telling her that she—Kendra—would accompany her to each of her classes if she continued to avoid them. . . .

Kendra couldn’t imagine a single one of those listed consequences that her niece wouldn’t shrug at. And short of handcuffing Ness to her wrist in an attempt to control her behaviour, Kendra couldn’t come up with an outcome of her truancy that might impress upon her niece the importance of attending school. Too much had been taken away from the girl over the years, with nothing to replace those elements of a normal life that she had lost. One could hardly tell her that education was important when no one was giving her a similar message about having a stable mother, a living father, and a dependable home life. Kendra saw all this, but she had no idea what to do about any of it. She put her elbows on the counter in the shop and drove her fingers into her hair.

This prompted Nathan Burke to offer a final suggestion. The problem of Vanessa, he said, might be something that required a group home. Such things existed, if Mrs. Osborne felt unequal to the task of coping with the girl. In care—

“They ain’t . . .” She raised her head and corrected herself. “These children are not going into care.”

“Does that mean we’ll begin to see Vanessa at school, then?” Mr. Burke asked.

“I don’t know,” Kendra said, opting for honesty.

“I’ll have to refer her onward, then. Social Services will need to become involved. If you can’t get her to attend school, that’s the next step. Explain this to her, please. It might help matters.”

He sounded compassionate, but compassion was the last thing Kendra wanted. To get him to leave—which was what she did want— she nodded. He departed soon after, although not before choosing a piece of Bakelite jewellery to take home to his partner. Cordie went for Kendra’s cigarettes, having long finished her own. She lit up two of them, handing one to her friend. She said, “Okay. I got to say it.” She inhaled as if for courage and went on in a rush.

“Maybe, Ken, jus’ maybe you in over your head wiv dis sort of t’ing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Mothering sort of t’ing.” Cordie went on hastily. “Look, you ain’t never . . . I mean, how c’n you ’spect to know wha’ to do wiv this lot when you never done it before? Anyways, did you ever even wan’ to? I mean, maybe puttin dem some place else . . . I know you don’ wan’ to do dat, but could be real families could be found . . .”

Kendra stared at her. She wondered at the fact that her friend knew her so little, but she was honest enough with herself to accept her own responsibility for Cordie’s ignorance. What else could Cordie assume when she herself had never told her the truth? And she didn’t know why she’d never told her except that it seemed so much more modern and liberated and I-am-woman to allow her friend to believe she’d actually had a choice in the matter. She said simply, “Those kids’re staying, Cordie, least till Glory sends for them.”

Not that Glory Campbell had ever had any intention of doing so, a supposition of Kendra’s that became fact just a few days later when she picked up the post to find the first letter that Glory had sent from Jamaica in the months since she’d been gone. There was nothing surprising in its contents: She’d had a serious think about the situation, Kendra, and she’d come to realise that she couldn’t remove the grandkids from England. Taking them so far from dear Carole would probably put the final nail in the coffin of the woman’s precarious sanity, what was left of it. Glory didn’t want to be responsible for that. But she would send for Joel and Nessa for a little visit sometime in the future when she had the money put together for their tickets. There was, unsurprisingly, no mention of Toby.

So that was that. Kendra had known it would come. But she couldn’t spend time dwelling on the matter. There was Ness to contend with and the future hanging over her if she did not agree to go to school. As far as consequences were concerned, nothing worked because to Ness, there was simply nothing worthwhile to lose. And what she was after, she couldn’t find anyway, not in school and certainly not in her aunt’s tiny house in Edenham Estate. For her part, Kendra lectured Ness. She shouted at her. She drove her to the school and walked her to the first class on her schedule, as Nathan Burke had suggested. She tried gating her, which, naturally, was impossible without either Ness’s agreement to be gated or chains and locks to make sure she stayed put. But nothing worked. Ness’s response was unchanging. She wasn’t wearing those “disgustin rags,” she wasn’t sitting in “some stupid-ass classroom,” and she wasn’t about to waste her time “workin fuckin sums and such” when she could be out and about with her mates.

“You need a break,” Cordie told Kendra the afternoon Nathan Burke phoned the charity shop to inform Kendra that Ness had been assigned a social worker as a last resort before the magistrate became involved. “We ain’t had our girls’ night in however long. Le’s take one, Ken. You need it. So do I.”

That was how Kendra found herself in No Sorrow on a Friday night.

KENDRA PREPARED FOR her girls’ night out by informing Ness that she would be left in charge of Toby and Joel for the evening, which meant that she would remain at home despite what her other plans might be. The instructions were to keep the boys happy and occupied, which meant that Ness was to interact with them in some way to make sure they were both distracted and safe. As this wasn’t something Ness was likely to do even when ordered, Kendra honeyed her directives and ensured compliance by adding that there would be money in it for Ness if she cooperated.

Joel protested, saying that he didn’t need minding. He wasn’t a baby. He could cope on his own.

But Kendra wasn’t to be talked out of the arrangement. For God only knew what might happen if someone streetwise wasn’t in charge of refusing to open the front door to a knock after dark. And despite all the trouble she was causing, it could not be denied that Ness was streetwise. So: There’s money in it for you, Nessa, she repeated to her niece. What’s your decision? Can you be trusted to stay home with the boys?

Ness did some quick calculations in her head, only some of which had to do with money and what she could do with it once she got it. She decided that, having nothing on for the night but the usual, which was hanging with Six and Natasha over at Mozart Estate, she’d opt for the money. She said Whatever to her aunt, which Kendra mistakenly embraced as an acquiescence that would not be dislodged by any tempting vagaries of the coming evening.

It had been Cordie’s turn to choose their outing, and she’d selected clubbing. They began their night with dinner, and they prefaced the dinner with drinks. They went for Portuguese in Golborne Road, and they washed down their starters with a Bombay Sapphire martini each and their main courses with several glasses of wine. Neither of the women drank much on a regular basis, so they were more than a little inebriated when they staggered back across Portobello Bridge where, beyond Trellick Tower, No Sorrow was coming to life for the evening.

They’d pull a couple of men, Cordie said. She needed an extramarital snogging diversion, and as for Kendra: It was high time for Kendra to get a length.

No Sorrow announced itself in neon script across translucent front windows, just those two green words done in a classy Art Deco style. The club was a complete anomaly in the neighbourhood, with owners who were banking on this part of North Kensington lurching towards gentrification. Five years earlier, no one in his right mind would have invested ten pounds in the property. But that was the nature of London in a nutshell: One might call a neighbourhood or even an entire borough down for the count at any time, but only a fool would ever label it out.

The club was the last of a strip of disreputable-looking shops: from launderette to library to locksmith. Its door was angled away from these establishments, as if it couldn’t bear to see the company it was forced to keep. Beyond that door, No Sorrow existed on two floors of the building. The ground level offered a crescent-shaped bar, tables for chatting at, dim lighting, and walls and ceiling made grubby by the cigarette smoke that perpetually thickened the air. The first floor offered music and drinks, a DJ spinning disks at head-splitting volume, and strobe lights making the entire environment look like something out of a bad acid trip.

Kendra and Cordie started out on the ground floor. This would constitute their reconnaissance of the place. They secured drinks and took a few minutes to “scope out the man flesh,” as Cordie put it. To Kendra, it looked like a case of the odds being good but the goods being odd: Men—most of whom were advanced middle-aged and showing it—outnumbered women on the ground floor, but when she looked them over, Kendra told herself that not a single one of them interested her. This was the safest conclusion for her to draw since it was fairly obvious that she interested none of them either. The handful of young women in the place had captured all the attention. Kendra felt every one of her forty years.

She would have insisted upon leaving had Cordie not already determined that Kendra needed some fun. To her suggestion that they depart, Cordie said, “In a bit, but le’s go above first,” and she headed in the direction of the stairs. To her way of thinking, if there were no men available up there, at least she and Kendra could get in a few dances, by themselves or with each other.

On the first floor, they found that the noise was deafening, and the light came from only three sources—a small anglepoise lamp shining on the DJ’s equipment, two dim bulbs above the bar, and the strobe. Because of this, at the top of the stairs, Kendra and Cordie paused to get used to the murk. They also had to get used to the temperature, which was very nearly tropical. London in early spring meant no one would dare think to open a window, even to be rid of some of the cigarette smoke which—lit by the strobe—made the room look like a tableau demonstrating the perils of yellow fog.

There were no tables up here, just a chest-high shelf running round the room, on which a dancer could place a glass for safekeeping while experiencing the joys of the music. This was currently rap, all lyrics, all beat and no tune, but no one was finding that a problem. It seemed as if two hundred people were mashed together in the dancing area. It seemed as if another hundred or so were vying for the attention of the three bartenders, who were mixing drinks and pouring pints as fast as they could.

With a whoop, Cordie plunged directly into the action, handing over her drink to Kendra and shimmying between two young men who appeared happy to have her company. Watching them, Kendra began to feel worse than she’d felt below—her age and more—which illustrated how different life was for her now. Prior to the Campbells’ arrival, she’d been living primarily with the knowledge—fueled by both of her brothers’ deaths— that life was fleeting. She’d been experiencing things rather than reacting to them. She made things; they did not make her. But in the months since her mother had foisted an unexpected form of parenthood upon her, she’d managed to do very little that even resembled her old life. It seemed to her that she’d ceased being who she was, in fact, and what was worse, she’d ceased being who she’d long ago intended to be.

Time and experience—and especially two marriages—had taught Kendra that she had only herself to blame if she didn’t like the way her bed was made. If she was feeling her age and feeling burdened by responsibilities that she did not want, it was up to her to do something about it. It was for this reason and because at that precise moment the something appeared to be dancing in a crowd of perspiring twenty-yearolds that Kendra decided to join them. But fuelled by that chemical depressant—the alcohol she’d consumed that evening—she found that the activity did not uplift her. It did not bring about the desired secondary result, either, which was finding someone to shag at the end of the evening.

Cordie was all apologies for this as they walked home later. She herself had managed a very nice fifteen minutes of snogging with a nineteen-year-old boy in the corridor leading to the toilets, and she couldn’t believe that Kendra—whom she declared to be “dead-on-anybloke’s-feet gorgeous, girl”—had not managed at least as much. Kendra tried to be philosophical about this. Her life was too complicated to accommodate a man, even temporarily, she said.

“Jus’ don’ start t’inking you ain’t got it no more, Ken,” Cordie warned her. “’Sides, men being wha’ dey are, you c’n always get one, you lower your standards enough.”

Kendra chuckled. It didn’t matter, she told her friend. Stepping out for the evening had been enough. In fact, they needed to do this more often, and she intended to turn over a new leaf in the matter, if Cordie was in agreement.

Cordie said, “Jus’ tell me where t’sign up,” and Kendra was about to reply when they emerged from the gloom of the path that passed in front of Trellick Tower into Edenham Way. There she caught a glimpse of the front of her house. A car was parked to block her garage door, a car she couldn’t identify.

She said, “Shit,” and quickened her pace, determined to see what Ness had got up to in the hours they’d been gone. She had her answer before she reached either the car or her front door. For it soon became apparent that the car was occupied, and one of the two people inside it was unmistakably her niece. Kendra could tell this from the shape of Ness’s head and the texture of her hair, from the curve of her neck as the man she was with lifted his head from the region of her breasts.

He reached across her to open her door, much like a kerb crawler dismissing a common whore. When Ness didn’t remove herself, he gave her a little push, and when that didn’t work, he got out of the vehicle himself and walked around to her door. He pulled her out, and her head lolled back. She was either drugged or exceedingly drunk. Kendra needed no further invitation. She shouted, “You bloody well hang on right there!” and she charged forward to accost the man. “You take your hands off that girl!”

He blinked at her. He was much younger than she’d thought, despite being entirely bald. He was black, bulky, and pleasant featured. He wore odd harem trousers like an exotic dancer, white trainers, and a black leather jacket zipped to his throat. He had Ness’s bag slung across his back and Ness herself under one arm.

“You hear me? Let her go.”

“I do that, she crack her head on the steps,” he said reasonably. “She bleedin drunk. I found her up in—”

“You found her, you found her,” Kendra scoffed. “I don’ fucking care where you found her. Get your bloody hands off her, and do it now. You know how old she is? Fifteen, fifteen.”

The man looked at Ness. “Lemme tell you, she don’ act—”

“Give her here.” Kendra reached the car and grabbed Ness by the arm. The girl stumbled against her and raised her head. She looked like a ruin; she smelled like an illegal distillery. She said to the man, “You wan’ t’ stick it in me or wha? I tol’ you I ain’t doin no free shots, innit.”

Kendra glared at him. “Get out of here,” she said. “Give me that bag and just get out. I get your number plates. I phone the cops.” And to Cordie, “You take down his number plates, girl.”

He said in protest, “Hey. I jus’ bringin her home. She up at the pub. It clear she goin to get herself into a bad situation ’f she stays there, so I get her out of th’ place.”

“Like Sir Bloody Lancelot, eh? Get those numbers, Cordie.”

As Cordie began to go through her shoulder bag for something to write on, the young man said, “Fuck it, den.” He shook Ness’s bag from his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. He bent to look her in the face, and he told her to tell the truth.

Ness said cooperatively, “You wanted me to suck is the truth, innit. You wanted it bad. ”

He said, “Shit,” and slammed the passenger door. He went back to the driver’s side and said over the roof of the car to Kendra, “You better deal with her ’fore someone else does,” which resulted in Kendra taking note that the term seeing red was an accurate description of what happened to one’s vision when anger’s heat reached a certain degree. He drove off before she could reply: a stranger standing in judgement of her.

She felt utterly exposed. She felt enraged. She felt used and foolish. So when Ness giggled and said, “Tell you, Ken, dat one got a prong like a fuckin mule,” Kendra slapped her so hard that her palm sent pain up the length of her arm.

Ness toppled. She fell against the house. She dropped to her knees. Kendra surged forward to hit her again and drew her arm back. Cordie caught it. She said, “Hey, Ken. Don’t,” and that was enough. It was also enough to sober Ness up, at least partially. So when Kendra finally spoke to her, she was more than ready to make a reply.

“You want the world to know you as a slag?” Kendra cried. “’S that what you want for yourself, Vanessa?”

Ness struggled to her feet and backed away from her aunt. “Like I bloody fuckin care,” she said.

SHE STUMBLED TOWARDS the path between the terraces of houses and from there into Meanwhile Gardens. Behind her, she heard Kendra call out her name, she heard her shout You get back home, and she felt a harsh bubble of laughter force its way up into her throat. For Ness, there was no home any longer. There was just a place where she shared a bed with her aunt while her little brothers slept on hastily purchased camp beds in the room next door. Under those beds, Joel and Toby had persisted in keeping their suitcases neatly packed for more than two months. No matter the time that had passed since her departure, the boys still believed what they wanted to believe about their grandmother and her promise of a life of eternal sunshine in the land of her birth.

Ness hadn’t once tried to make them see the truth of the matter. She hadn’t once pointed out the significance of the fact that they hadn’t heard a word from Glory Campbell since the day she’d left them on Kendra’s doorstep. As far as Ness was concerned, Glory Campbell’s disappearance from their lives was a case of good riddance. If Glory didn’t need or want her grandchildren, then her grandchildren certainly didn’t need or want her. But telling herself that week after week hadn’t done much to ease Ness’s feelings in the matter. When she left her aunt in front of number 84 Edenham Way, Ness gave no real thought to where she was going. She just knew that she didn’t want to be in her aunt’s presence a moment longer. She was sobering up more quickly than she would have thought possible, and with that sobriety came the nausea she otherwise would have felt the next morning. This propelled her towards water in which she might bathe her sweating face, depositing her on the footpath that ran along the canal at the top of the garden.

Despite her condition, she knew the danger of falling into the canal, so she took some care. She lowered herself to the footpath and lay on her stomach. She bathed her face in the greasy water, felt its oiliness cling to her cheeks, caught the scent of it—not unlike that of a stagnant pool—and promptly vomited. Afterwards, she lay there weakly and listened to the sound of her aunt searching for her in Meanwhile Gardens. Kendra’s voice told Ness that her aunt was working her way past the child drop-in centre and into the heart of the gardens, a direction that would take her along the path winding between the hillocks and ultimately to the foot of the spiral staircase. She staggered to her feet, then, and knew the way she herself had to go: She headed for the duck pond at the east border of the gardens and then beyond it and through the wildlife garden with its boardwalk path that curved into a darkness that was at once sinister and welcoming. She was beyond the point of caring about danger, so she didn’t flinch at the sudden movement of a cat dodging across her path, nor was she bothered by the crack and crunch of twigs that suggested she was being followed. She just kept going, plunging into the darkness till she came upon the last of Meanwhile Gardens, which was the scent garden, and she registered the looming shape of its potting shed that marked the end of the path she’d taken.

She came to her senses there and saw she’d come around the back side of Trellick Tower, which rose to her left like the neighbourhood sentry and told her she was close to Golborne Road. She didn’t so much make a decision about where to go as she accepted the simple logic of where she would go. Her feet took her to Mozart Estate. She knew Six was at home, having rung her earlier upon Kendra’s departure. She’d learned her friend had been entertaining Natasha along with two boys from the neighbourhood. That meant being a fi fth wheel on a vehicle trundling to nowhere, so Ness had set out into the night alone. But now, Six was necessary to her.

Ness found the group—Six, Natasha, and the boys—gathered in the sitting room of the family’s flat. The boys were Greve and Dashell—one black and the other yellow skinned—and they were both as drunk as football hooligans on the winning side. The girls were in much the same condition. And everyone was semi-dressed. Six and Natasha wore what went for knickers and bras but actually looked like three cough drops apiece, while the boys were draped in towels inexpertly wrapped around their waists. Six’s siblings were nowhere to be seen. Music was issuing forth at a stupendous volume from two refrigeratorsize speakers on either side of a broken-down sofa. On this Dashell was sprawled, and he’d apparently and recently been receiving the affectionate ministrations of Natasha, who was retching into a tea towel as Ness came into the room. An open carton from Ali Baba Homemade Pizza lay discarded at one end of the sofa, an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle lolling lazily nearby.

The sexual aspect of the goings-on didn’t bother Ness. The Jack Daniel’s aspect did. She hadn’t gone to the Mozart Estate to seek out drink, and the fact that the teenagers had resorted to whiskey when they might have chosen something else suggested that what she wanted wasn’t to be had tonight in this location.

Nonetheless, she turned to Six and said, “You holdin substance?”

Six’s eyes were bloodshot, and her tongue wasn’t working well, but her brain was functioning at least moderately. She said, “I look like I holdin substance, Moonbeam? Wha’ you need? An’ shi’, Ness, why you coming here now? I up to get mine from dis bred, y’unnerstan?”

Ness understood. Only a mental case from an alien planet would have failed to understand. She said, “Look, I got to have something, Six. Gimme and I’m out ’f here. A ziggy’ll do.”

Natasha said, “This one here’ll give you a mouthful and tha’s the troof, lemme tell you.”

Dashell laughed lazily as Greve sank into a three-legged chair. Six said, “You t’ink we’d be doin Mr. Jack ’f we had a ziggy? I hate this shit, Nessa. Goddamn bu’ you know it.”

“Fine. Great. Come on an’ we’ll find something better, yeah?”

“She got somet’ing better right here,” Greve said, and he indicated the gift he had for Six beneath the towel he was wearing. All four of them laughed. Ness felt like smacking each of them in turn. She walked back towards the door and jerked her head meaningfully, the message being that Six was to follow. Six staggered in her direction. Behind them, Natasha collapsed onto the floor, where Dashell ran his left foot through her hair. Greve lolled with his head hanging forward, as if the effort to hold it upright defeated him. Ness said to Six, “Jus’ make the call. I do everything else.” She felt agitated. Since her first night in North Kensington she’d been relying on Six for substance, but now she saw she was going to need a more direct route to the source.

Six hesitated. She looked over her shoulder. She said sharply to Greve, “Hey, you ain’t passin out, bred, no way.”

Greve made no answer. Six said, “Fuck,” and then to Ness, “Come on wiv you, den.”

The telephone was in the bedroom shared by the household’s female siblings. There, next to one of the three unmade beds, a shadeless lamp shone a meager cone of light on a grimy plate, upon it a half-eaten sandwich curling in on itself. The phone was next to this, and Six picked it up and punched in a number. Whoever was on the other end answered immediately.

Six said, “Where you? . . . Who the hell you t’ink it is, bred? . . . Yeah. Right. So . . . Where? . . . Shit, den, how many you got to do? . . . Hell, forget it. We be dead ’f we wait dat long . . . Nah. I ring Cal . . . Hah. Ask me ’f I care ’bout dat.” She punched the phone off and said, “This ain’t goin be easy, Moonbeam.”

“Who’s Cal?” Ness asked. “An’ who’d you call?”

“Don’t matter to you.” She punched in another number. This time there was a wait before she said, “Cal, dat you? . . . Where’s he at? I got someone lookin for—” A questioning glance at Ness. What did she want? Crank, olly, tranks, skag? What?

Ness couldn’t come up with a reply as quickly as either Six or the recipient of her phone call wanted. Weed would have done well. Pressed to it in desperation, even the Jack Daniel’s would have been acceptable had there been any left in the bottle. She just, at the moment, wanted out of where she was, which was in her own body.

Into the phone, Six said, “Blow? . . . Yeah, but where’s he operatin?

. . . No shit. No shit . . . They ain’t goin to— Oh yeah, I bet he got one or two tricks up his sleeve, dat bred.”

She ended the conversation after that, with a “Someone ’sides your mum love you, bred.” She replaced the phone and turned to Ness.

“Straight to the top, Moonbeam,” she said. “The source.”

“Where?”

She grinned. “Harrow Road police station.”

THAT WAS THE extent of what Six was willing to do for Ness. Going with her to the station was out of the question since Greve was waiting for her in the sitting room. She told Ness that she was going to have to acquaint herself with someone called the Blade if she needed to get loaded and couldn’t wait for some other means of sending herself into oblivion. And the Blade—according to his right-hand man, Cal—was at that moment being questioned at the Harrow Road police station on some matter involving the burglarising of a video shop in Kilburn Lane.

“How’m I s’posed to know who dis bred is?” Ness asked when given this information.

“Oh b’lieve it, Moonbeam, you know when you see him.”

“An’ how I s’posed to know he even goin to get released, den, Six?”

Her girlfriend laughed at the naïveté of the question. “Moonbeam, he the Blade,” she said. “Cops ain’t plannin to mess wiv him.” She waggled her hand at Ness and returned to Greve. She straddled his chair, lifted his head, and lowered the scraps that went for her bra.

“Come on,” she said. “I’s time now, mon.”

Ness shuddered at the sight. She turned away quickly and left the flat.

She could have gone home at that point, but she was on a mission that demanded completion. So she left the estate for the short walk down Bravington Road. It finished at the Harrow Road, which was peopled at this time of night with the undesirables of the area: drunks in doorways, crews of boys in hoodies and baggy jeans, and older men of ambiguous intentions. She walked fast and kept her expression surly. Soon enough she saw the police station dominating the south side of the street, its blue lamp glowing on steps that climbed to an impressive front door.

Ness didn’t expect to recognise the man Six had sent her to meet. At this time of night, there were comings and goings aplenty at the station, but as far as she could tell, the Blade might have been any of them. She tried to think what a burglar might look like, but all she came up with was someone dressed in black. Because of this, she nearly missed the Blade altogether when at last he came out of the door, took a beret from his pocket, and slipped it onto his hairless head. He was slender and short—not much taller than Ness herself—and had he not stopped under the light to apply a match to a cigarette, Ness would have dismissed him as just another half-caste from the neighbourhood.

Under the light, however, and despite its blue glow, she saw the tattoo that curled from beneath the beret and permanently disfigured his cheek: a cobra, fangs bared. She also saw the line of gold hoops hanging from his earlobes and the casual way he balled up the empty cigarette packet and tossed it to land at the threshold of the door. She heard him clear his throat, then spit. He pulled out a mobile and flipped it open.

This was her moment. Because the night had unfolded as it had, Ness went for that moment and all it would bring. She crossed the street and walked up to the man, who looked to her to be somewhere in his twenties.

He was saying into the mobile, “Where the fuck are you, mon?” when Ness touched him on the arm, giving a toss of her head as he turned to her, wary. She said, “You the Blade, innit? I got to score t’night, bred, and I need substance bad so jus’ say yes or no.”

He didn’t respond, and for a moment Ness thought she’d chosen wrong: either the person or the approach. Then he said impatiently into the phone, “Jus’ get over here, Cal,” after which he snapped it closed and regarded Ness. “Who the fuck’re you?” he demanded.

“Someone wantin to score and dat’s all you need to know, mon.”

“Dat right, eh? An’ just’ wha’ is it you wishing to score?”

“Weed or blow do me jus fine, innit.”

“How old’re you, anyway? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“Hey, I’m legal ’n’ I can pay.”

“Bet you can, woe-man. Wiv what, den? You got twenty quid in dat bag ’f yours?”

She didn’t, of course. She had less than five pounds. But the fact that he’d pegged her as twelve or thirteen and the fact that he was so ready to dismiss her spurred her on and made her want more than ever what he had to provide. She shifted her weight so one hip jutted out. She cocked her head to one side and regarded him. She said, “Mon, I c’n pay wiv wha’ever you want. More’n ’at, I c’n pay wiv what you need.”

He sucked on his teeth in a way that made her go cold inside, but Ness dismissed this and what it suggested. Instead she told herself she had exactly what she wanted when he said, “Now dat’s one very in’ersting turn of events.”