than two months. No matter the time that had passed since her departure, the boys still believed what they wanted to believe about their grandmother and her promise of a life of eternal sunshine in the land of her birth.
Ness hadn’t once tried to make them see the truth of the matter. She hadn’t once pointed out the significance of the fact that they hadn’t heard a word from Glory Campbell since the day she’d left them on Kendra’s doorstep. As far as Ness was concerned, Glory Campbell’s disappearance from their lives was a case of good riddance. If Glory didn’t need or want her grandchildren, then her grandchildren certainly didn’t need or want her. But telling herself that week after week hadn’t done much to ease Ness’s feelings in the matter. When she left her aunt in front of number 84 Edenham Way, Ness gave no real thought to where she was going. She just knew that she didn’t want to be in her aunt’s presence a moment longer. She was sobering up more quickly than she would have thought possible, and with that sobriety came the nausea she otherwise would have felt the next morning. This propelled her towards water in which she might bathe her sweating face, depositing her on the footpath that ran along the canal at the top of the garden.
Despite her condition, she knew the danger of falling into the canal, so she took some care. She lowered herself to the footpath and lay on her stomach. She bathed her face in the greasy water, felt its oiliness cling to her cheeks, caught the scent of it—not unlike that of a stagnant pool—and promptly vomited. Afterwards, she lay there weakly and listened to the sound of her aunt searching for her in Meanwhile Gardens. Kendra’s voice told Ness that her aunt was working her way past the child drop-in centre and into the heart of the gardens, a direction that would take her along the path winding between the hillocks and ultimately to the foot of the spiral staircase. She staggered to her feet, then, and knew the way she herself had to go: She headed for the duck pond at the east border of the gardens and then beyond it and through the wildlife garden with its boardwalk path that curved into a darkness that was at once sinister and welcoming. She was beyond the point of caring about danger, so she didn’t flinch at the sudden movement of a cat dodging across her path, nor was she bothered by the crack and crunch of twigs that suggested she was being followed. She just kept going, plunging into the darkness till she came upon the last of Meanwhile Gardens, which was the scent garden, and she registered the looming shape of its potting shed that marked the end of the path she’d taken.
She came to her senses there and saw she’d come around the back side of Trellick Tower, which rose to her left like the neighbourhood sentry and told her she was close to Golborne Road. She didn’t so much make a decision about where to go as she accepted the simple logic of where she would go. Her feet took her to Mozart Estate. She knew Six was at home, having rung her earlier upon Kendra’s departure. She’d learned her friend had been entertaining Natasha along with two boys from the neighbourhood. That meant being a fi fth wheel on a vehicle trundling to nowhere, so Ness had set out into the night alone. But now, Six was necessary to her.
Ness found the group—Six, Natasha, and the boys—gathered in the sitting room of the family’s flat. The boys were Greve and Dashell—one black and the other yellow skinned—and they were both as drunk as football hooligans on the winning side. The girls were in much the same condition. And everyone was semi-dressed. Six and Natasha wore what went for knickers and bras but actually looked like three cough drops apiece, while the boys were draped in towels inexpertly wrapped around their waists. Six’s siblings were nowhere to be seen. Music was issuing forth at a stupendous volume from two refrigeratorsize speakers on either side of a broken-down sofa. On this Dashell was sprawled, and he’d apparently and recently been receiving the affectionate ministrations of Natasha, who was retching into a tea towel as Ness came into the room. An open carton from Ali Baba Homemade Pizza lay discarded at one end of the sofa, an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle lolling lazily nearby.
The sexual aspect of the goings-on didn’t bother Ness. The Jack Daniel’s aspect did. She hadn’t gone to the Mozart Estate to seek out drink, and the fact that the teenagers had resorted to whiskey when they might have chosen something else suggested that what she wanted wasn’t to be had tonight in this location.
Nonetheless, she turned to Six and said, “You holdin substance?”
Six’s eyes were bloodshot, and her tongue wasn’t working well, but her brain was functioning at least moderately. She said, “I look like I holdin substance, Moonbeam? Wha’ you need? An’ shi’, Ness, why you coming here now? I up to get mine from dis bred, y’unnerstan?”
Ness understood. Only a mental case from an alien planet would have failed to understand. She said, “Look, I got to have something, Six. Gimme and I’m out ’f here. A ziggy’ll do.”
Natasha said, “This one here’ll give you a mouthful and tha’s the troof, lemme tell you.”
Dashell laughed lazily as Greve sank into a three-legged chair. Six said, “You t’ink we’d be doin Mr. Jack ’f we
“Fine. Great. Come on an’ we’ll find something better, yeah?”
“She got somet’ing better right here,” Greve said, and he indicated the gift he had for Six beneath the towel he was wearing. All four of them laughed. Ness felt like smacking each of them in turn. She walked back towards the door and jerked her head meaningfully, the message being that Six was to follow. Six staggered in her direction. Behind them, Natasha collapsed onto the floor, where Dashell ran his left foot through her hair. Greve lolled with his head hanging forward, as if the effort to hold it upright defeated him. Ness said to Six, “Jus’ make the call. I do everything else.” She felt agitated. Since her first night in North Kensington she’d been relying on Six for substance, but now she saw she was going to need a more direct route to the source.
Six hesitated. She looked over her shoulder. She said sharply to Greve, “Hey, you ain’t passin out, bred, no
Greve made no answer. Six said, “Fuck,” and then to Ness, “Come on wiv you, den.”
The telephone was in the bedroom shared by the household’s female siblings. There, next to one of the three unmade beds, a shadeless lamp shone a meager cone of light on a grimy plate, upon it a half-eaten sandwich curling in on itself. The phone was next to this, and Six picked it up and punched in a number. Whoever was on the other end answered immediately.
Six said, “Where you? . . . Who the hell you
“Who’s Cal?” Ness asked. “An’ who’d you call?”
“Don’t matter to you.” She punched in another number. This time there was a wait before she said, “Cal, dat you? . . . Where’s he at? I got someone lookin for—” A questioning glance at Ness. What did she want? Crank, olly, tranks, skag? What?
Ness couldn’t come up with a reply as quickly as either Six or the recipient of her phone call wanted. Weed would have done well. Pressed to it in desperation, even the Jack Daniel’s would have been acceptable had there been any left in the bottle. She just, at the moment, wanted out of where she was, which was in her own body.
Into the phone, Six said, “Blow? . . . Yeah, but where’s he operatin?
. . . No shit. No
She ended the conversation after that, with a “Someone ’sides your mum love you, bred.” She replaced the phone and turned to Ness.
“Straight to the top, Moonbeam,” she said. “The source.”
“Where?”
She grinned. “Harrow Road police station.”
THAT WAS THE extent of what Six was willing to do for Ness. Going with her to the station was out of the question since Greve was waiting for her in the sitting room. She told Ness that she was going to have to acquaint herself with someone called the Blade if she needed to get loaded and couldn’t wait for some other means of sending herself into oblivion. And the Blade—according to his right-hand man, Cal—was at that moment being questioned at the Harrow Road police station on some matter involving the burglarising of a video shop in Kilburn Lane.
“How’m I s’posed to know who dis bred is?” Ness asked when given this information.
“Oh b’lieve it, Moonbeam, you know when you see him.”
“An’ how I s’posed to know he even goin to get released, den, Six?”
Her girlfriend laughed at the naivete of the question. “Moonbeam, he the
