What Came Before He Shot Her

            “An’ you  been there for a visit,” Ness cried, clinging to Kendra and pounding at her back. “You come round ’fore you going to dis club, dat club, anywheres, innit, pullin dis man, dat man. An’ ever’one sees what you mean to do cos you got dat look an’ how you dress. But only a certain age you want and you make dat clear cos they got to be young cos if they old like sixty, sixty-five, seventy, you don’t want ’em. But they hot  now, see? All of ’em. They hot an’ they hard and they know what they want. So you leave, she leaves cos she always  go to the fruit machines and dat’s when they take it. They bloody fuckin take  it. George an’ his mates on the bed in Gran’s room. They all got their cocks out . . . They climb on . . . And I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

            “Ness! Ness!” Kendra cried. She held her, she rocked her. And to Joel, “Did you know?”

            He shook his head. He’d bitten into his fist as his sister was talking, and he could taste the coppery fl avour of his blood. Whatever had happened to Ness had happened in silence and behind closed doors. But he could recall how often they’d come to his gran’s—those friends of George, there to play cards, sometimes as many as eight of them. He could remember Glory saying as she pulled on her coat, “George, you be able to mind the kids wiv all your mates here like dis?”

            And George saying happily in reply, “Don’t you worry, Glor. Don’t you worry ’bout nuffink. I got ’nough help here to man a ocean liner or two, so three kids ain’t a problem. Sides, Ness old enough to help out ’f the boys get out ’f hand. Ain’t you, Nessa?” with a wink at her. And Ness saying only, “Don’t go, Gran.”

            And Gran saying, “You make your bruvs some Bournvita, darlin’. Time you got it drunk up, your gran be home.”

            But not home soon enough.

            SO WHEN NESS sharpened a paring knife, it seemed the logical outcome of what she’d revealed and what had happened in the kitchen. Joel saw her do it, but he said nothing. He could see that Ness was, in this, just like him. If the paring knife made her feel secure, what of it? he thought.

            In the aftermath of what happened with the children, Dix questioned everything. His dream had always centred around the romantic ideal of family, for his dream of the future was grounded in the past, which had as its most notable characteristic the warm kinship he’d always experienced with his own relations. To him family  meant paterfamilias sitting at the head of the table, carving a joint of beef at Sunday lunch. It meant fairy lights strung from the ceiling at Christmastime and day trips to Brighton on the odd bank holiday when there was money enough for candy floss, a bag of rock, and fish and chips by the sea. It meant parents keeping a watchful eye over children’s schoolwork, their afternoon activities, their mates, their dress, their manners, and their growth. Dentist for their teeth. Doctor for their inoculations. Thermometer thrust beneath their tongues, soup and soldiers when they were ill. Children spoke respectfully to their parents in this sort of family, and parents responded with firm but loving guidance, disciplining when necessary and making sure the lines of communication were occluded by nothing. If any family can be described as normal, it was the family in which Dix D’Court had grown up. This had provided him with an image of what life should look like when it came to his own future with wife and offspring, but nothing about it had prepared him for dealing with children who were plagued by trouble and by horror.

The Campbells, he believed, needed help. More help than either Kendra or he would be able to give them in a hundred thousand lifetimes. Dix broached this subject with her, but she did not take it well.

            “You want me to get rid of them?” she demanded.

            “Ain’t saying dat,” he told her quietly. “Jus’ dat they been through too much and we ain’t got the skills to lead ’em away from where they are.”

            “Ness’s in  counselling. Toby’s in his learning centre. Joel’s doing what he’s meant to do. What more do you want?”

            “Ken, dis is bigger ’n you and it’s bigger ’n me. You got to see dat.”

            But Kendra could not. She told herself that if she had not been so bloody-minded about keeping her life exactly as it was when Glory dropped the children upon her like three sacks of grain, she might have built an adequate life for them. So anything that even smacked of abandoning them at this point was something she would not consider. She would do what she had to do to save them, even if it meant doing so on her own.

            “Even if it means givin up everyt’ing you been workin for?” Cordie asked when they saw each other next. “The massage business? The someday spa? You lettin dat go?”

            “Isn’t that what you’ve done?” Kendra countered. “Didn’t you give in to Gerald and give up on your dreams?”

            “What? Cos he wants ’nother baby and I’m makin him one? How’s dat givin up on dreams? An’ what  dreams, anyways? I was doing fi ngernails, f ’r God’s sake, Ken.”

            “You were going to be part of the spa.”

            “Yeah. True. But bottom line is dis: I gonna choose Gerald if I got to make a choice. I always gonna choose Gerald. Spa come along and if it fit in wiv what I got goin at th’ moment, I join dat dream. If it don’t fit in, I choose Gerald.”

            “What about the others?”

            “Wha’ others?”

            “Men you pull. You know what I mean.”

            Cordie looked at her blankly. “You mistaken,” she said. “I don’t pull men.”

            “Cordie, you been snogging wiv nineteen-year-old boys—”

            “I know wha’ I got here,” Cordie said firmly, always a woman capable of turning a blind eye to her own weaknesses of the flesh. “An’ I choose Gerald. You best look at what you got and make a choice you c’n live wiv as well.”

            That was the issue: making a choice and living with it afterwards. Kendra didn’t want to do either.

            THE ONLY ANSWER seemed to be to make a move that would communicate a willingness to deal with the children’s difficulties.

            “We must file charges,” was how Fabia Bender reacted when Kendra revealed the information. They met by prior arrangement at Lisboa Patisserie in Golborne Road, with Castor and Pollux waiting patiently outside as their mistress indulged in cafe au lait, along with a prawn mayonnaise sandwich, which she brought forth from her briefcase. Fabia set her sandwich on a napkin and took out a day planner in which she kept everything from her diary to coupons for her grocery shopping. She began to flip through it.

            “File charges against who?” Kendra asked. “George’s gone. As for his mates . . . Ness doesn’t know their names and my mum’s not likely to know them either. And what do we gain, putting her in the hands of cops for questioning or the CPS for examining? She’s not about to talk to cops about this. She’s barely even talking to me.”

            Fabia looked thoughtful. “It explains a great deal, doesn’t it? Especially about why she won’t talk to Ruma. Or cooperate with testing. Or anything, really. Most girls have deep shame about being molested. They believe they said something, did something, encouraged something. That’s how the molesters condition them to think. And in Ness’s case, no one prepared her as a young child to think anything else: her mum mental, her dad dead, her gran consumed with other things. As she was developing into a woman, there was no one present to talk to her about the right she had to protect her own body.”

            Fabia was mostly thinking aloud, gazing out towards the street where a light rain was falling. When she moved her eyes to take in Kendra, Fabia read her expression. She added, “This isn’t  your fault, Mrs. Osborne. You weren’t in the home. Your mother was. If there’s blame to be handed out—”

            “What does it matter?” Kendra asked. “I feel what I feel.”

            Fabia nodded. She said, “Well, Ruma is going to have to be told. And . . .” She hesitated, lost in thought. She observed Kendra and knew she meant well. But the aunt’s attempts at parenting had been indescribably inadequate, so there was no real hope that Kendra could reach into her niece’s psyche and soothe it. Still, there were other ports to turn to. Fabia Bender said, “I’m going to talk to Majidah Ghafoor. There’s something