What Came Before He Shot Her

            Kendra couldn’t imagine a single one of those listed consequences that her niece wouldn’t shrug at. And short of handcuffing Ness to her wrist in an attempt to control her behaviour, Kendra couldn’t come up with an outcome of her truancy that might impress upon her niece the importance of attending school. Too much had been taken away from the girl over the years, with nothing to replace those elements of a normal life that she had lost. One could hardly tell her that education was important when no one was giving her a similar message about having a stable mother, a living father, and a dependable home life. Kendra saw all this, but she had no idea what to do about any of it. She put her elbows on the counter in the shop and drove her fingers into her hair.

            This prompted Nathan Burke to offer a final suggestion. The problem of Vanessa, he said, might be something that required a group home. Such things existed, if Mrs. Osborne felt unequal to the task of coping with the girl. In care—

            “They ain’t . . .” She raised her head and corrected herself. “These children are not  going into care.”

            “Does that mean we’ll begin to see Vanessa at school, then?” Mr. Burke asked.

            “I don’t know,” Kendra said, opting for honesty.

            “I’ll have to refer her onward, then. Social Services will need to become involved. If you can’t get her to attend school, that’s the next step. Explain this to her, please. It might help matters.”

            He sounded compassionate, but compassion was the last thing Kendra wanted. To get him to leave —which was what she did  want— she nodded. He departed soon after, although not before choosing a piece of Bakelite jewellery to take home to his partner. Cordie went for Kendra’s cigarettes, having long finished her own. She lit up two of them, handing one to her friend. She said, “Okay. I got to say it.” She inhaled as if for courage and went on in a rush.

            “Maybe, Ken, jus’ maybe you in over your head wiv dis sort of t’ing.”

            “What sort of thing?”

            “Mothering sort of t’ing.” Cordie went on hastily. “Look, you ain’t never . . . I mean, how c’n you ’spect to know wha’ to do wiv this lot when you never done it before? Anyways, did you ever even wan’  to? I mean, maybe puttin dem some place else . . . I know  you don’ wan’ to do dat, but could be real families could be found . . .”

            Kendra stared at her. She wondered at the fact that her friend knew her so little, but she was honest enough with herself to accept her own responsibility for Cordie’s ignorance. What else could Cordie assume when she herself had never told her the truth? And she didn’t know why  she’d never told her except that it seemed so much more modern and liberated and I-am-woman to allow her friend to believe she’d actually had a choice in the matter. She said simply, “Those kids’re staying, Cordie, least till Glory sends for them.”

            Not that Glory Campbell had ever had any intention of doing so, a supposition of Kendra’s that became fact just a few days later when she picked up the post to find the first letter that Glory had sent from Jamaica in the months since she’d been gone. There was nothing surprising in its contents: She’d had a serious think about the situation, Kendra, and she’d come to realise that she couldn’t  remove the grandkids from England. Taking them so far from dear Carole would probably put the final nail in the coffin of the woman’s precarious sanity, what was left of it. Glory didn’t want to be responsible for that. But she would  send for Joel and Nessa for a little visit sometime in the future when she had the money put together for their tickets. There was, unsurprisingly, no mention of Toby.

            So that was that. Kendra had known it would come. But she couldn’t spend time dwelling on the matter. There was Ness to contend with and the future hanging over her if she did not agree to go to school. As far as consequences were concerned, nothing worked because to Ness, there was simply nothing worthwhile to lose. And what she was after, she couldn’t find anyway, not in school and certainly not in her aunt’s tiny house in Edenham Estate. For her part, Kendra lectured Ness. She shouted at her. She drove her to the school and walked her to the first class on her schedule, as Nathan Burke had suggested. She tried gating her, which, naturally, was impossible without either Ness’s agreement to be gated or chains and locks to make sure she stayed put. But nothing worked. Ness’s response was unchanging. She wasn’t  wearing those “disgustin rags,” she wasn’t  sitting in “some stupid-ass classroom,” and she wasn’t  about to waste her time “workin fuckin sums and such” when she could be out and about with her mates.

            “You need a break,” Cordie told Kendra the afternoon Nathan Burke phoned the charity shop to inform Kendra that Ness had been assigned a social worker as a last resort before the magistrate became involved. “We ain’t had our girls’ night in however long. Le’s take one, Ken. You need it. So do I.”

            That was how Kendra found herself in No Sorrow on a Friday night.

            KENDRA PREPARED FOR her girls’ night out by informing Ness that she would be left in charge of Toby and Joel for the evening, which meant that she would remain at home despite what her other plans might be. The instructions were to keep the boys happy and occupied, which meant that Ness was to interact with them in some way to make sure they were both distracted and safe. As this wasn’t something Ness was likely to do even when ordered, Kendra honeyed her directives and ensured compliance by adding that there would be money in it for Ness if she cooperated.

            Joel protested, saying that he didn’t need  minding. He wasn’t a baby. He could cope on his own.

            But Kendra wasn’t to be talked out of the arrangement. For God only knew what might happen if someone streetwise wasn’t in charge of refusing to open the front door to a knock after dark. And despite all the trouble she was causing, it could not be denied that Ness was streetwise. So: There’s money in it for you, Nessa, she repeated to her niece. What’s your decision? Can you be trusted to stay home with the boys?

            Ness did some quick calculations in her head, only some of which had to do with money and what she could do with it once she got it. She decided that, having nothing on for the night but the usual, which was hanging with Six and Natasha over at Mozart Estate, she’d opt for the money. She said Whatever to her aunt, which Kendra mistakenly embraced as an acquiescence that would not be dislodged by any tempting vagaries of the coming evening.

            It had been Cordie’s turn to choose their outing, and she’d selected clubbing. They began their night with dinner, and they prefaced the dinner with drinks. They went for Portuguese in Golborne Road, and they washed down their starters with a Bombay Sapphire martini each and their main courses with several glasses of wine. Neither of the women drank much on a regular basis, so they were more than a little inebriated when they staggered back across Portobello Bridge where, beyond Trellick Tower, No Sorrow was coming to life for the evening.

            They’d pull a couple of men, Cordie said. She needed an extramarital snogging diversion, and as for Kendra: It was high time for Kendra to get a length.

            No Sorrow announced itself in neon script across translucent front windows, just those two green words done in a classy Art Deco style. The club was a complete anomaly in the neighbourhood, with owners who were banking on this part of North Kensington lurching towards gentrification. Five years earlier, no one in his right mind would have invested ten pounds in the property. But that was the nature of London in a nutshell: One might call a neighbourhood or even an entire borough down for the count at any time, but only a fool would ever label it out.

The club was the last of a strip of disreputable-looking shops: from launderette to library to locksmith. Its door was angled away from these establishments, as if it couldn’t bear to see the company it was forced to keep. Beyond that door, No Sorrow existed on two floors of the building. The ground level offered a crescent-shaped bar, tables for chatting at, dim lighting, and walls and ceiling made grubby by the cigarette smoke that perpetually thickened the air. The first floor offered music and drinks, a DJ spinning disks at head-splitting volume, and strobe lights making the entire environment look like something out of a bad acid trip.

            Kendra and Cordie started out on the ground floor. This would constitute their reconnaissance of the place. They secured drinks and took a few minutes to “scope out the man flesh,” as Cordie put it. To Kendra, it looked like a case of the odds being good but the goods being odd: Men—most of whom were advanced middle- aged and showing it—outnumbered women on the ground floor, but when she looked them over, Kendra told herself that not a single one of them interested her. This was the safest conclusion for her to draw since it was fairly