You Don't Know Me

7

When Mum and Bless met her for the first time, they both loved her. Kira loved them too. Sometimes a good thing can happen to a person for no reason. She was the good thing that happened to all of us. Don’t get me wrong, she was no angel by any means. She could have these dark moods that would stretch out for weeks. She could snap at you for the tiniest thing and she could rage at you like it was the end of days and she was there to judge you. But underneath all that and underneath all the pretty features and the wide eyes, she was a good person. When she came round to the flat she would always make some food up for Mum and Bless and clean up the place a little before she left. And even though Bless was more or less silent, when Kira was around, she picked up a lot and sometimes you even got the feeling that she was on the verge of coming back to us.

Over the seven years we been together Bless and Kira became more like sisters than anything else. Bless liked being round her. She liked the quiet that she came with. They would sit together sometimes. Ki would read her books and Bless would just be Bless. She could just ‘be’, you get me. And sometimes you got the feeling that they didn’t need words to say what they were saying. But as for me and Kira, in my mind, we were Romeo and Juliet, well maybe Romeo and some girl who was like Juliet but could be a bitch and if she wanted to could probably knock you out, especially if you called her a bitch, which I only did very rarely. Seriously, though, we were tight.

We clicked but it’s hard to see why we did. We weren’t exactly similar. In fact you could say that we were like chalk and cheesestring. I was sixteen and I left school. She went to college. I was eighteen and was just starting with the whole buying and selling cars thing. She got her A levels and signed up to one of them Open University things. I loved cars. She loved books. I hated books then. She hated cars. You couldn’t even say that we looked at things the same way.

This will give you an idea of what she was like. About a year and a half ago, she was still living in her flat with the books but she came round my yard every now and then to stay over but mainly I stayed at hers. She didn’t really feel my place if you get me, but I always made a point of ‘How comes it’s always me round at yours and you never like to come to mine?’ so from time to time she came. Anyway this one Saturday afternoon she comes round to mine and starts to make herself a cup of tea. I’m playing on my PS3 or whatever and she comes and sits next to me drinking her tea. Anyway, maybe fifteen minutes go by and eventually I get the hint and feel like I should close down the game. I’m like, ‘Just let me finish this level off and save it’ but she ain’t really that bothered. She just seems to be chilling.

So when I finally switch off the game she goes, ‘You know that boy who’s so and so’s little brother?’ and I go, ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘He’s just broken into your car.’

‘What?’

‘The red one. The convertible.’

‘What the fuck you talking about? He’s just broken into my Z3?’ I get up and start looking for the keys.

‘I don’t know. It’s the red one.’

‘What and you saw him doing it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why the fuck didn’t you say something?’

‘I did. I’m saying now.’

‘Fuck Kira. Didn’t you stop him? Did you call the police?’

‘No! Why would I call the police?’

‘Ki he’s just jacked my car and you don’t do nothing? What is wrong with you man?’ I say and run out of the door to my car.

Fucking thing has a smashed window and the glove compartment has been cleaned out and even the little coins or whatever I had in the ashtray are all gone. But it’s the window man. Fucking window’s smashed. And you might think I’m overreacting and that but windows on a car, they are almost impossible to replace properly. You can never get that factory finish thing right. The seals ain’t ever the same again and in the morning the fucking thing will steam up every time. And all the little fucking shitty pieces of glass everywhere that you keep finding for the next ten years. Shit. Sorry, just thinking about it rages me.

So Kira has followed me into the street and I’m all vex still and I’m shouting at her. What the fuck is she thinking of, you know what I mean?

‘Where you going?’ she says when she sees me get in the car.

‘I’m going to murder him,’ I go.

‘You ain’t going nowhere,’ she says and gets in the other door and leaves it open so I can’t drive away.

‘Give me one fucking reason why not?’ I say looking at her.

‘You don’t know what’s going on with him,’ she says. ‘There could be a hundred reasons he had to jack your car.’

‘I don’t give a fuck Ki,’ I say, shouting. ‘That boy has to pay one way or another.’

‘You go round there and we are over.’

‘What? What the fuck you talking about? Why do you care about that little shit?’

‘Do you even know that boy?’ she asks. ‘He could be starving. He could be on drugs. There could be anything going on with him.’

‘So fucking what?’

‘So people don’t do shit for no reason,’ she says and gets out of the car.

I didn’t speak to her for a week after that but I didn’t go round and sort out that boy. I never really understood what the hell she cared about him for, she didn’t even know him. But she didn’t want to talk any more about it. All she said was, ‘You don’t know what you would do if you were in his shoes.’ And that was good enough for her. Although I never said it to her, I think I worked out later what it was all about. At the bottom of it, it was all about her brother Spooks I reckon. He was inside on a long stretch for some drug shit and the way she saw it, was the way only family would see it. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As far as she saw it this kid was just the same as Spooks. Victim of circumstances. I didn’t see the shit the same way. You don’t go past jail and straight to Go or whatever. If you do your crime and you get caught. You pay up. Simple as that.

I let it go though, for her sake. I really didn’t want to and I really wasn’t taken in by how she laid it down. Her brother was a waste man too as far as I could tell but she loved him and I loved her. So it was what it was. And I tell you this, I wouldn’t have let this go for anyone but her. I needed her in my life. I had no doubt that she would have left me if I had gone that day and given the boy a taste of something. Whether it was because she believed in what she believed or whether it was because she was born stubborn, she would have walked out. I didn’t exactly respect that, it was more that I couldn’t do without her in my life. She was like the roof over my head. I needed her to keep me dry. It seemed like she had been around since for ever and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like if she hadn’t been there.

So when she went then, that first time, it proper knocked me out.