You Don't Know Me

8

I know to you guys, this seems like another one of them bus replacements. Proper long. But if you just stay with me you will see why you need to hear all this.

See, Kira, she literally just disappeared. It was only a week after this whole car thing so at first I thought she was still pissed off about it. She had no reason to be pissed off though because I had dropped it, like I said I would. But you know how it is with some women, they can be pissed off at you even when you do exactly what they want you to do. No offence to the jury ladies you get me. And the worst thing is that they expect you to know why you pissed them off even when as far as you are concerned, it’s you that should be pissed off at them.

I had been expecting her to drop into my place that Saturday and help me with picking out some paint and stuff. It was kind of a surprise for her. I had just sold a car and I was a bit flush and I thought if I maybe did the place up more in like a ways that she would, she might be happier to stay round more. She didn’t turn up though. Which was weird because this girl was never late. I mean never.

I waited for an hour maybe before trying her mobile but it rang dead. But then she was always changing her digits as we all were. You’d get a sim with a deal on it, use it and then move on to the next sim with the next deal. That was standard. So when I couldn’t get her on her phone to me it was just one of them things. Nothing to stress about. She was pissed off for no reason but as I knew, she didn’t always need a reason. She sometimes did that. She would get on one about something that I never even knew I had done and then the next day I would hear all about it. So even though I was worried I wasn’t really. I was more angry by then. I was doing my usual thing, racking my brains trying to work out what shit I might have done wrong. I checked my texts – did I say something wrong in one of them? I checked her birthday and other days for if I had missed any ‘special’ ones. I couldn’t work it out.

I didn’t hear from her all that day. The whole day was wasted. I didn’t get no paints. I didn’t get anything done in fact because I was stressing about why she was mad at me. By the time I went to bed, truth be told I was angry. In my head I was wishing all kinds of shit on her. I was screaming at her, I was having these imaginary conversations with her, everything. I’d be doing her voice in my head and then I’d come back at her with my own voice. Like a proper row. It was fucked up.

The next morning I woke up and checked my phone. Nothing. I called Mum and Bless who were still living together then, but they hadn’t heard from her either. Then I thought about trying her friend, Maria. She had this one friend who, to tell you the truth, I didn’t like all that much. Whenever I saw her she always gave me this look like I weren’t good enough for her friend. She might have been right about that but I didn’t think she really needed to make it that obvious. Ki was like, ‘Leave her alone, she’s just looking out for me’, but I reckoned maybe she was into her herself. But the problem was I didn’t have her number. I mean, why did I need her mate’s number? Except I did need her number at that moment. Then I remembered that she worked in some women’s clothes shop in Elephant and decided I would just have to go there and speak to her face to face.

It was one of them shops that had a name like Uniqueé and which only someone like my mum might go into. I jumped on the bus down there thinking that if I didn’t get no joy from Maria, I could go back via Kira’s flat and see if she was maybe there. I pushed open the door and it made this kind of clanging sound to tell the till people that someone had come in. The place was darker than it should have been because some of the ceiling lights had gone and it smelled like those rolls of cloth my mum bought to make clothes out of. There were these round rails full of patterned blouses or whatever and I squeezed past to get to the counter. No one was there so I waited until eventually some old lady shows up and makes a face at me.

‘Is Maria here?’ I go trying to act like I don’t feel too awkward in this place. She shouts out at the back and then Maria comes through, stone by stone. I don’t mean to be you know, fattist, but she was so fat that it was like she came through in instalments. She looked at me and crossed her arms in front of her.

‘You seen Ki?’ I say as cool as I can.

‘Why what you done to her?’ she says, because she was always suspicious of me for some reason.

‘Nothing man! Just wondered if you’d seen her?’

‘I haven’t seen her or heard from her. But tell her why she not replying to my texts when you see her,’ she says and turns back to where she came from.

‘Yeah,’ I say to her back and then duck back out the shop, worried that Ki hadn’t even contacted her friend. Maria didn’t look like she was covering for her. She didn’t even seem that bothered. But why would she? To her, she wasn’t even missing.

So I jumped back on the bus to get to her yard. I walked the short distance from the bus stop and straight away started having that row with her in my head again. By the time I knocked on her door, the argument was in full flow. I was still expecting her to be there, you see. I waited. I swear I could almost see her walking to the door, her face pale from no sleep. Her eyes maybe fat from crying. But she wasn’t there. So I sat on the floor outside her door for maybe half an hour not knowing what to do next. I needed to call somebody who knew her, knew where she might be.

Spooks as I said was in prison so I couldn’t ask him where she was, not that I would even know how to get hold of him. I didn’t even know his real name because even Kira called him Spooks. There was no other family so that was a dead end. And Ki wasn’t really a person for loads of friends so there was nothing to check there after I had tried Maria.

On the second day when she weren’t there I started worrying properly. No texts or calls on my phone. I tried her yard again but there was no answer. I went to the phone shop where she was temping, but they hadn’t heard from her even though she was supposed to be there that day. By then I was getting so para I even considered going to the Feds. But that would have made it into something else I wasn’t ready for so I didn’t. I tried Mum and Bless again but they hadn’t heard anything either. What had happened? I checked my phone every two minutes hoping for something. By then I wasn’t even angry any more, I just wanted to know she was somewhere and alive. Then, when I had basically run out of hope, I tried all the hospitals in the area. Nothing. Thank God though, you get me?

That night I put away my pride and went to the Feds. They did their thing and took a few details but as far as they was concerned I wasn’t really anybody who could be asking them sort of questions. A parent, maybe a brother even, but some next boy like me? Nah they weren’t interested but at least they did tell me that as far as they knew she weren’t dead. I swear down, I was besides myself and baffled at the same time. Where the fuck, sorry Judge but I need to say it, where the fuck was she and how was I going to find her? It was like she’d just gone up in smoke.

I had basically run out of ideas so on the third day I broke into her yard. She had been wanting me to have a key anyway but I had been all weird about it because then she would want a key to my place and well, at the end of the day I am a guy innit? Anyway I went round there at night, quite late, and basically just pushed the door in. All it had was a Yale lock and the door was just plywood really so it didn’t fight back all that much. The door splintered at the lock and swung open. I went in. It was dark and smelled kind of musty but not really anything unexpected. I turned on the light and the place jumped into view. It was just the same as the last time I had been there. The books had grown in number but now they were mainly on the shelves that I had put up for her in every room. Part of me still had a hope she would be there. Maybe lying in bed or something. Even lying in bed with another guy would have been better than what I saw, which was basically no Kira. Just a space without her in it.

I spent the night at the flat rooting around seeing if there was something somewhere that might explain where she was. Her clothes were all still in her wardrobe. All her stuff was untouched. There was a half-drunk cup of tea in the sink. A couple of unopened letters on the doormat. Nothing at all though to tell what might have happened. I stayed till the morning because I didn’t want to leave the place with a broken lock and then as soon as it was light I called Bless round to babysit the place while I got some tools and fixed the door. She stayed while I mended the door and then we left together. As we were walking down the concrete steps, Bless turned to me squinting one eye against the daylight. Something about her expression at that moment or the way the light touched her skin, suddenly reminded me of the Bless I knew from years ago. From the days when I could look at her without sinking. She looked at me hard and took a breath as if she was going to speak. And right then she did. For the first time in nearly seven years. ‘Y-you have to find her. You h-have to.’

‘I know Bless,’ I said, ‘but how?’