What Came Before He Shot Her

returned to Greve. She straddled his chair, lifted his head, and lowered the scraps that went for her bra.

            “Come on,” she said. “I’s time now, mon.”

            Ness shuddered at the sight. She turned away quickly and left the flat.

            She could have gone home at that point, but she was on a mission that demanded completion. So she left the estate for the short walk down Bravington Road. It finished at the Harrow Road, which was peopled at this time of night with the undesirables of the area: drunks in doorways, crews of boys in hoodies and baggy jeans, and older men of ambiguous intentions. She walked fast and kept her expression surly. Soon enough she saw the police station dominating the south side of the street, its blue lamp glowing on steps that climbed to an impressive front door.

            Ness didn’t expect to recognise the man Six had sent her to meet. At this time of night, there were comings and goings aplenty at the station, but as far as she could tell, the Blade might have been any of them. She tried to think what a burglar might look like, but all she came up with was someone dressed in black. Because of this, she nearly missed the Blade altogether when at last he came out of the door, took a beret from his pocket, and slipped it onto his hairless head. He was slender and short—not much taller than Ness herself—and had he not stopped under the light to apply a match to a cigarette, Ness would have dismissed him as just another half-caste from the neighbourhood.

Under the light, however, and despite its blue glow, she saw the tattoo that curled from beneath the beret and permanently disfigured his cheek: a cobra, fangs bared. She also saw the line of gold hoops hanging from his earlobes and the casual way he balled up the empty cigarette packet and tossed it to land at the threshold of the door. She heard him clear his throat, then spit. He pulled out a mobile and flipped it open.

            This was her moment. Because the night had unfolded as it had, Ness went for that moment and all it would bring. She crossed the street and walked up to the man, who looked to her to be somewhere in his twenties.

            He was saying into the mobile, “Where the fuck are  you, mon?” when Ness touched him on the arm, giving a toss of her head as he turned to her, wary. She said, “You the Blade, innit? I got to score t’night, bred, and I need substance bad so jus’ say yes or no.”

            He didn’t respond, and for a moment Ness thought she’d chosen wrong: either the person or the approach. Then he said impatiently into the phone, “Jus’ get over here, Cal,” after which he snapped it closed and regarded Ness. “Who the fuck’re you?” he demanded.

            “Someone wantin to score and dat’s all you need to know, mon.”

            “Dat right, eh? An’ just’ wha’ is it you wishing to score?”

            “Weed or blow do me jus fine, innit.”

            “How old’re you, anyway? Twelve? Thirteen?”

            “Hey, I’m legal ’n’ I can pay.”

            “Bet you can, woe-man. Wiv what, den? You got twenty quid in dat bag ’f yours?”

            She didn’t, of course. She had less than five pounds. But the fact that he’d pegged her as twelve or thirteen and the fact that he was so ready to dismiss her spurred her on and made her want more than ever what he had to provide. She shifted her weight so one hip jutted out. She cocked her head to one side and regarded him. She said, “Mon, I c’n pay wiv wha’ever you want. More’n ’at, I c’n pay wiv what you need.”

            He sucked on his teeth in a way that made her go cold inside, but Ness dismissed this and what it suggested. Instead she told herself she had exactly what she wanted when he said, “Now dat’s one very in’ersting turn of events.”

            Chapter

      6 A few weeks ahead of his eighth birthday, Toby showed Joel the lava lamp. It sat in the window of a shop near the top of Portobello Road, far north of the area for which the thoroughfare is famous: that sprawl of markets which burst like the weeds of commerce they are, in the vicinity of Notting Hill Gate.

            The shop in which the lava lamp gave its oozing performance did its business between a halal butcher and an eatery called Cockney’s Traditional Pie Mash and Eels. Toby had caught a glimpse of it when, in a crocodile of the smaller pupils from Middle Row School, he’d tripped along Portobello Road for an enlightening field trip to the local post office, where the children were to practise buying stamps in a respectful manner that their teacher intended would be remembered for the rest of the purchases they would make in their lives. It was an exercise involving common maths and social interaction. Toby did not excel in either. But he did take note of the lava lamp. In fact, the mesmerising rise and fall of the material within it that constituted the “lava” drew him out of the crocodile and to the window where he immediately took a journey to Sose. He was roused from this by his crocodile partner’s shouting out and attracting the attention of the teacher at the head of the line. The volunteer parent accompanying the group at the back of the line saw to the problem. She wrested Toby from the window and put him back into place.

But the memory of the lava lamp lingered in Toby’s mind. He began talking about it that very night over their fried scampi, chips, and peas. Dousing everything with brown sauce, he called the lamp wicked, and he continued to bring it up until Joel consented to be introduced to its visual pleasures.

The liquid in it was purple. The “lava” was orange. Toby pressed his face to the window, sighed, and promptly fogged up the glass. He said,

            “Innit wicked, Joel?” and he flattened his palm on the window as if he’d push right through it and become as one with the object of his fascination. “C’n I have it, you think?”

            Joel searched for the price, which he found displayed on a small card at the black plastic base of the lamp, “?15.99” scrawled in red. This was eight pounds more than he currently possessed. He said, “No way, Tobe. Where’s the money goin’ to come from?”

            Toby looked from the lava lamp to his brother. He’d been talked out of the inflated life ring on this day, wearing it deflated beneath his clothing, but his fingers plucked at it anyway, spasmodically fingering the air at his waist. His face was crestfallen. He said, “Wha’ ’bout my birthday?”

            “I c’n talk to Aunt Ken. Maybe Ness ’s well.”

            Toby’s shoulders dropped. He wasn’t so oblivious of the state of things in number 84 Edenham Way as to think Joel was promising anything but disappointment. Joel hated to see Toby with lowered spirits. He told his brother not to worry. If the lava lamp was what he wanted for his special day, then somehow the lava lamp would be his.

            Joel knew that he couldn’t get the funds from his sister. Ness wasn’t to be talked to for love and certainly not for money these days. In the time since they’d left Henchman Street, she’d become increasingly unapproachable. Who she’d once been was like a daguerreotype now: Tilted this way or that he could almost see the girl from East Acton, angel Gabriel in the Christmas pageant, with white wings like clouds and a golden halo over her head, ballet shoes and a pink tutu, leaning from the window in Weedon House and spitting to the ground far below. She made no pretence of attending school any longer. No one knew how she spent her days.

            That something profound had occurred to Ness somewhere along the line Joel understood. He simply didn’t know what it was, so in his innocence and ignorance he concluded it was something to do with the night she’d left them on their own while Kendra went out clubbing. He knew Ness hadn’t returned that night, and he knew there had been a violent argument between his aunt and his sister. But what went before that argument he did not know.

            He did know that his aunt had finally washed her hands of Ness and Ness seemed to like things this way. She came and went at all hours and in all conditions, and while Kendra watched her with narrowed eyes and an expression of disgust, she seemed to be playing a waiting game with Ness, although what she was waiting for was not clear. In the meantime, Ness pushed the envelope of objectionable behaviour as if daring Kendra to take a stand. The tension was palpable when the two of them were in the house together. Something, sometime, was going to give way, and a landslide was going to follow.

What Kendra was actually waiting for was the inevitable: those ineluctable consequences of the way her niece was choosing to live. She knew this was going to involve a youth-offending team, magistrates, possibly the police, and likely an alternative living situation for the girl, and the truth of the matter was that she had reached the