What Came Before He Shot Her

or money. Neither would he deflate it in order to make more room for his family or the other passengers. At Kendra’s suggestion that he do so, he’d said no  and no!

            louder and louder and he’d started crying that he had  to keep it on cos Gran was coming for them and anyway Maydarc told  him it was helping him breathe  and he would suff’cate  if anyone took it from him. Ness had said Shit, give it here, then, and had taken matters into her own hands, which only exacerbated a bad situation that was already causing everyone’s attention to fall upon them. Toby began to shriek, Ness began to snarl, “I am narked now, mon. You got that, Toby?” and Joel cringed and wanted more than anything just to disappear.

            “Vanessa,” Kendra said firmly to her, in part to defuse the situation but also in part because Ness would be required to remember the route in the future, “this is the number twenty-three bus. You’ve got that, right?”

            “You are startin to vex me as well, Aunt Ken,” was Ness’s reply.

            “Why I need gettin it, anyways?” She didn’t add bitch, but it was in her tone.

            “You need gettin it  because I’m telling you to get it,” Kendra told her. “Number twenty-three bus. Westbourne Park to . . . Ah yes. Here we are. To Paddington station.”

            Ness’s eyes narrowed. She knew very well what debarkation at Paddington station likely presaged. Along with her siblings, she’d been to this place many times over the years. She said, “Hey. I ain’t—”

            Kendra grabbed her arm. “You are,” she said. “And if I know you, the last thing you really want is to make a scene like a five-year-old right here in front of strangers. Joel, Toby? Come along with us.”

            Ness could have run off when they alighted, but in the past few years she’d become a girl who liked to plan her defiance for a moment when the other party least suspected that defi ance was on her mind. Running off as they made their way into the cavernous railway station was the expected response, so Ness adopted a different strategy. She tried to shake off her aunt’s grip. She said, “All right. All right, ” and she even attempted to speak what was, to her, her aunt’s excessively irritating Lady Muck English. “You can let go now,” she went on. “I’m not doing a bloody runner, okay? I’ll go, I’ll go. But it won’t make a diff ’rence to anything, cos it never does. Gran ain’t told you that? Well, you’ll see fast enough.”

            Kendra didn’t bother to correct either her lapses in grammar or her pronunciation. Instead, she rooted twelve pounds from her bag. She gave the money to Joel and not to Ness, whom she didn’t trust, no matter the girl’s ostensible cooperation. She said, “While I do the tickets, you lot go over to WH Smith. Buy her the magazine she likes and her sweets, and get something for yourselves. Joel?”

            He looked up. His face was solemn. He had just turned twelve—one week into it—with the weight of the world settling on his shoulders. Kendra could see this, and while she regretted it, she knew there was also no help for the matter. “I’m depending on you. You keep that money from your sister, all right?”

            “I don’t want your bleeding money, Ken dra,” Ness snapped. “Come on.” This last she said to her brothers, leading them towards the station’s WH Smith. She grabbed Toby by the hand and tried, by pressing down on his shoulders, to force him into walking on the flat of his feet instead of on his toes. He protested and squirmed to get away from her. She gave up the effort.

            In the meantime, Kendra watched to make sure they were heading towards WH Smith. She went to fetch their tickets. The machines were out of order as usual, so she was forced to join the queue in the ticket hall.

            The three Campbells negotiated the surging crowd, most of whom were jockeying for position to stand with their gazes fixed on the departures board as if they’d just received word of the imminent Second Coming. Joel guided Toby through the travelers, in Ness’s wake, pointing out sights like a demented tour guide to keep his brother moving forward: “Lookit dat surfboard, Tobe. Where you ’spect dat bloke is going?” and “You see dat, Tobe? They were triplets in dat pushchair.”

            In this way, he got his brother into WH Smith, where he looked around for Ness and finally caught sight of her at the magazines. She’d selected Elle  and Hello!  and she was heading for the display of sweets and other snacks when Joel caught up with her.

            If anything, it was even more crowded in WH Smith than it had been on the concourse. Toby’s life ring made things worse for them in the shop, but this difficulty was ameliorated by the fact that he stuck to Joel’s side like a foxtail in fur.

            He said, “I don’ want crisps wiv flavours, dis time. Jus’ the reg’lar kind. C’n I get a Ribena ’s well?”

            “Aunt Ken didn’t say about drinks,” Joel replied. “We’ll see wha’ kind of money we got left.” It would be little enough, and Joel saw this when the boys joined their sister. He said to Ness, “Aunt Ken di’n’t say two magazines. We got to have enough money for her chocolate, Ness. For the snack ’s well.”

            “Well, sod Aunt Kendra with a broomstick, Joel,” was Ness’s reply.

            “Gi’ me the money to pay for these.” She gestured with Hello!  On its cover, an antique rock ’n’ roller posed toothily, displaying his twenty something wife and an infant young enough to be a great-grandchild.

            “C’n I get a Milky Way?” Toby asked. “Crisps, Milky Way, and Ribena, Joel?”

            “I don’t think we got enough to—”

            “Gi’  me that money,” Ness said to Joel.

            “Aunt Ken said—”

            “I got to bloody pay,  don’t I?”

            At this, several people turned in their direction, including the Asian boy who was working the till. Joel flushed, but he didn’t give in to his sister. He knew he’d get hell from her later on, but for now, he decided he’d do as he’d been told and damn whatever consequences Ness would force him to face.

            He said to Toby, “So what kind of crisps you want, Tobe?”

            Ness said, “Shit. You are one pathetic—”

            “Kettle Crisps okay?” Joel persisted. “These here don’t got fl avours on them. These do you okay?”

            It would have been a simple matter for Toby just to nod so that they could get out of the shop. But as usual, he went his own way. In this case, he decided he had to look at each bag of crisps on display, and he refused to be contented until he’d touched every one of them as if they were possessed of magical properties. Ultimately, he chose the one Joel had been holding out to him all along, making this choice based not on nutritional value—of which as a seven-year-old he knew nothing at all and cared even less—but rather on the colour of the bag. He said, “Dat one’s real pretty. Green’s my favourite. Di’ you know dat, Joel?”

            “Would you stop him being so bloody lame and gimme the money?”

            Ness demanded.

            Joel ignored her and, having made his own snack selection from among the chocolate bars, he picked up an Aero for their mother. At the till, he handed over the money, and he made certain his was the palm the change got dropped into, and not his sister’s. Kendra was waiting for them outside the shop. She took the bag of their purchases and inspected them, pocketing the change that Joel gave her. In a moment of concession, she gave Ness the bag to carry. Then she made all three of the children stand still and look at the departures board above them. She said, “Now. How d’you tell which train we take?”

            Ness rolled her eyes. “Aunt Ken,” she said, “’xactly how stupid you think—”

            “Look at the destination?” Joel said helpfully. “Look at the stops between here and there?”

            Kendra smiled. “Think you can work it out for us, then?”

            “Platform fucking nine,” Ness said.

            “You watch your mouth,” Kendra said. “Joel, platform nine is right. You take us there?”

            He did so.

            Once they were under way, Kendra resumed her quiz about the trip to make certain they could find their way in the future. She directed the questions to all three of the Campbells, but only one of them answered. How many stops till they were to get off? she wanted to know. What d’you give the conductor when he passes