You Don't Know Me

25

Anyway this is how eight days after the shooting, me, Kira, Curt and Bless end up sitting around my mum’s table eating dinner like we are just any family.

Except we ain’t like just any family and this ain’t just any dinner. I was paranoid about going out of the flat. We could be seen at any minute once we were out and about, and if we were then we were toast. So far nobody had come knocking but believe, as soon as they had even a slight thing about where I was, they would. Then there was Mum and Bless. I didn’t know whether anyone knew where my mum lived but so far they hadn’t been tapped so I could only hope that they didn’t. So that being the case, the very last thing I wanted was to be seen, let alone at my mum’s door.

I wanted no part of it. Mum was cool with it. I told her we couldn’t do dinner. I told her it was dangerous for Ki but that was all I said. She didn’t ask too many questions. She knew Ki had been missing that time and deep down she would have known that whatever I was doing, I was doing to keep her safe. Mum, as I said to you, loved Ki and the last thing she would have done was put any risk on her. But it was Ki herself. She wanted it.

We had it down like a military op. First of all dinner weren’t going to be at dinner time. It was going to be at breakfast time. You remember I said, gang-bangers don’t like being up early since they spend all night dealing. The plan was that Curt would do a drive-by in his whip round Mum’s in the morning and see what was what. If it looked hot, then the plan was off.

If it all looked cold and nobody seemed like they was watching then he would park up round the back entrance to our flats. There was like a long alleyway there that led to the main road. He was going to park up to block the alley. We would come running down. Jump in the back and shoot off. Sorry. I didn’t meant to say ‘shoot off’.

Curt’s ride has tints in the back so once we were in we would be invisible more or less. Then we would do a couple of loops of Mum’s house and if everything was still cold, he would drop us round the back of the house. The back gate would be open and then we’d be in.

Although it all went to plan the shit was still tense. Kira and I had hoods pulled right up the whole journey. In the back of Curt’s Range Rover Sport I had my eyes peeled back for any sign of something. There was only working people and some schoolkids up at that time but even the postman makes me sus you get me. Even when we had done a loop of the house I wasn’t sure and wanted to do another.

‘Nah man, we can’t,’ says Curt with a sigh. ‘We do any more circuits and some nosy neighbour fucker’s going to be all over the phone to Five-O. We look proper shady man.’

Only when we were all sat down in Mum’s warm kitchen did I finally relax.

‘Mum, come and sit down with us and eat,’ I say to her back as she fries more food at the stove. The smell of fried food in the morning feels surreal but since we haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday, my stomach ain’t fussy.

‘How can I sit down eh? If I sit down who will feed the horse?’ she says and turns back to her cooking. I think that she is smiling but I can’t see her face. I did see it though when Curt walked in through the back door and she looked as if she was going to cry.

I look back around the table. Bless looks like she has made a special effort for me and I am almost touched. I haven’t seen her looking so, well maybe pretty isn’t the right kind of word to say about your sister, but yeah pretty. I haven’t seen her look so pretty in a long time.

She is wearing what looks like a new dress. It’s like a dusty soft pink colour which kind of makes her cheeks glow. And Ki too. Some of that worry seems to have washed off her face and she looks at me for the first time in ages like she is glad of me. Her eyes are so intense I can’t hold their gaze. In my head I change the subject like I am changing gears. It makes a clunk in my ears as I do it.

‘So Curt what about Guilty?’ I say trying to make sure Mum ain’t listening too hard. I didn’t need to worry truth be told. She never listens to us. She treats us like we are an alien race. ‘You people. You don’t even speak in English any more.’ I tell you what though, just as well my mum ain’t in the courtroom at the moment. She would give me some beatings for that terrible Nigerian accent innit Bless? Oh shit. That is her coming back into the court now. So where was I?

Yeah, at that moment Mum walks over to the table and dumps like a hundred pieces of fried chicken on the table. Curt looks like he’s choosing between speaking and eating. In the end he picks up two drumsticks and chews off huge chunks before remembering that we were talking. He wipes the grease off his mouth with his sleeve and when Mum has shuffled back to the stove he carries on.

‘Yeah so JC been shouting his mouth off to the Olders about how I was the one who taxed him. Word got to Guilty.’

‘Shit,’ I say.

‘Seen bruv. Seen. But here’s the crazy thing. Guilty goes to me, “Fuck dat little Somali fucker. He’s been fucking around in our patch for long. He’s getting iced next time I scope him.” ’

‘Is it?’ I say.

‘Yeah for real. And get this, he then gives it all, “And I am pretty fucking sure that that fucker was the one who grabbed the bitch from under the bridge. No other fucker would have dared. Mans thinks he’s gangster but man’s just a pussy boy with Olders watching his back. Thinks he can fuck with mans, mans got a bullet coming for him.” ’

‘Shit,’ I say pushing my chair back from the table and slapping my leg.

‘Yeah so I go, “Fuck brother, I’ll waste him for you. It would be my pleasure.” ’

Curt starts laughing and then before you know it all four of us round the table are laughing so much that there are tears. It feels like we can’t even stop it.

Eventually Mum turns around from the cooker with a big spoon in her hand which she starts waving at us.

‘Eh eh. Stop it for goodness sake. You know what they say. As much as you laugh now is as much as you will cry later.’

Once ‘dinner’ was over we realized that we couldn’t just leave. It was proper busy out there and too dangerous. So we stayed. It felt like a kind of lazy Christmas. We just hung back. Took off our shoes and lay on the sofa or on cushions on the floor as Mum brought us snacks and tea. It felt nice. It’s hard to explain. It felt like someone had pressed a pause button on our lives and we could escape it for a while. Be normal again. I didn’t want the day to end.

By the time we left early the next morning to go home, I was feeling better than I had in long. I think we all did. Bless saw us to the door and hugged me and Ki goodbye.

‘Bruv? Come on we better jet,’ I say.

‘Nah man. I’m cool here,’ says Curt looking sketchy. ‘Here. Take my keys, I get ’em laters. I think I will just hang back here for a while if that’s okay with your, erm, mum. I ain’t seen her in a while. You know.’

‘Sure,’ I say and then look over at Bless who quickly slips off to the kitchen where Mum for some reason is cooking again.

‘You going be able to get back okay?’

‘Yeah’ he says, ‘I’ll just get a cab.’

‘So,’ I say drawing Curt close, ‘you think we might be in the clear?’

‘Yeah it’s possible. Guilty don’t believe the rumours about me being there at the trap-house. Shit I think he partly wishes he had done the taxing. He hates Jamil like you wouldn’t believe.’

‘And what about if the Olders get heavy? What then?’

‘Nah man. Glockz is proper. I don’t think they going to back down from no Olders. Yeah there’s going to be a war, but I think we are sweet, as long as we keep our heads down,’ he says and turns to go back into the kitchen.

‘Swing by tomorrow if you can. We still got some details to tie up innit,’ I say to his back and then leave.

And I tell you what right now. I swear down at that moment I thought that was it. Over. We were in the clear. But I had not counted on what kind of mans Jamil was linked up to. It was that that changed everything I reckon. A man who people just knew as Face.