What Came Before He Shot Her

their pubic bones, stiletto heels, sheer tops tied at the waist over tiny colourful Tshirts. Ness was dressed in a similar fashion. Kendra recognised one of her own scarves wound through the girl’s thick hair.

She followed them into Whiteley’s and found them fi ngering costume jewellery in Accessorize. She said Ness’s name, and the girl turned around, her hand going to the scarf in her hair as if she believed Kendra intended to take it from her.

            “I need to talk to you,” Kendra said. “I’ve been trying to find you for weeks.”

            “I ain’t hidin from you,” was Ness’s reply. The plump girl sniggered, as if Kendra had somehow been put in her place, if not by Ness’s words then by her tone, which was churlish.

            Kendra looked at the girl who’d sniggered. “Who are you, then?” she asked.

            The girl didn’t reply. She produced instead a surly expression meant to put Kendra off, which it failed to do. The gaunt girl said, “I’m Tash, innit,” and was silenced for this show of marginal affability with a look from the other.

            “Well, Tash,” Kendra said, “I’ve a need to speak to Vanessa alone. I’d like you and this other person—are you Six, by the way?—to give us that opportunity.”

            Natasha had never heard a black woman speak such a form of English aside from on the television, so her response was to gawp at Kendra. Six’s response was to shift her weight from one hip to the other, to cross her arms beneath her breasts, and to give Kendra a head-to-toe look that was designed to make her feel like a marked woman destined for a street mugging or worse.

            “Well?” Kendra said when neither of the girls moved off.

            “They ain’t goin nowheres,” Ness said. “And I ain’t talking to you cos I got nothin to say.”

            “But I do,” Kendra said. “I was wrong and I want to talk to you about that.”

            Ness’s eyes narrowed. It had been some time since the incident in front of Kendra’s house, so she wasn’t sure what to make of the word wrong. But she’d never before had an adult admit to wrongdoing— aside from her father—so she felt a corresponding confusion that made her hesitate and robbed her of a quick reply.

            Kendra took the opportunity that Ness’s silence provided. “Come with me for a coffee. You can meet your friends afterwards if you want to do that.” She took two steps towards the shop door to indicate her departure.

            Ness hesitated for a moment before saying to the other girls, “Le’ me see what the cow wants. I catch you up front of the cinema.”

            They agreed to this, and Kendra led Ness to a cafe not far from Whiteley’s. She wanted her out of the shopping centre, where the noise level was high and the gangs of kids wandering around provided too many distractions. The cafe was crowded, but it was mostly populated by shoppers taking a break and not by kids waiting for action. Kendra bought drinks at the counter and, while she was waiting, took the time to rehearse what she wanted to say.

            She made it brief and to the point. “I was dead wrong to hit you, Nessa,” she said to her niece. “I was angry that you’d not stayed home with Joel and Toby like you’d said you would. Top of that, I thought something was going on that wasn’t going on, and I . . .” She looked for a way to explain it. “I slipped over the edge.” She didn’t add the rest of it, the two parts that completed the tale: the ache of encroaching middle age that she’d felt that night in No Sorrow when she hadn’t managed to pull even one man, and the encounter with Dix D’Court in which he’d explained what had happened between Ness and himself. Both of these parts of the tale revealed much more about Kendra than she wanted to reveal. All Ness needed to know was that her aunt had been wrong, she knew she’d been wrong, and she’d come to make things right.

            “I want you to come home, Nessa,” she said. “I want to start again with you.”

            Ness looked away from her. She dug her cigarettes—which were Kendra’s pinched Benson & Hedges—from her shoulder bag and lit one. She and her aunt were sitting on stools at a counter that ran along the front window of the cafe, and a group of boys were passing. Their steps slowed when they saw Ness in the window and they spoke among themselves. Ness nodded at them. It was a movement that seemed almost regal. In reply, they gave head jerks that appeared oddly respectful and kept moving. Kendra noted this. The brief contact between Ness and the boys, even though it was only visual, sent a chill of intuition down Kendra’s spine. She couldn’t say what it all meant—the nod, the boys, the chill she felt—except that it didn’t seem good.

            She said, “Toby and Joel, Ness. They want you home as well. Toby’s birthday’s coming. With all the changes been happening in your lives over these months, if you were there—”

            “You wantin me to mind dem, innit,” was Ness’s conclusion. “Dat’s why you here. Toby ’n’ Joel finally getting in your way. Wha’ else you want, den?”

            “I’m here because I did wrong to you and I want you to know that I know  I did wrong. I want to say sorry. I want us to be family to each other.”

            “I ain’t got fam’ly.”

            “That isn’t true. You have Toby and Joel. You have me. You have your mum.”

            Ness sputtered a laugh. She said, “Yeah. My mum,” and drew in deeply on her cigarette. She hadn’t touched her coffee. Kendra hadn’t touched her own.

            “Things don’t have to be this way,” she told Ness. “Things can change. You and I can start over.”

            “T’ings end up way dey end up,” Ness said. “Ever’body want somet’ing. You no different.” She gathered up her belongings. Kendra saw that she intended to leave. She played her wild card.

            “Social Services phoned,” she said. “Woman called Fabia Bender wants to meet with you. With me ’s well. We have to see her, Ness, because if we don’t—”

            “Wha’? Like she goin to send me somewheres? Like I even care?”

            Ness adjusted her shoulder bag and tweaked the scarf in her hair. “I got people watchin out f ’r me now. I got no worries ’bout Social Services, ’bout you, ’bout anyt’ing. An’ dat’s how it is.”

            That said, she was gone, out of the cafe and heading back in the direction of Whiteley’s. In the sunlight of late spring, she teetered along the pavement on her high heels, leaving her aunt to wonder how much worse things could get between them.

            WHEN THE DAY came for Joel to make his purchase of the lava lamp for Toby’s birthday, the first thing he had to sort out was what to do with his little brother while he made that purchase since Kendra was at work in the charity shop, and there was consequently no help from that quarter. Had Ness been at home, he would have asked her to look after him. It wasn’t an errand that would take terribly long since it comprised a jaunt to Portobello Road, a quick exchange of money in the shop, and then another jaunt back to Edenham Way. Even Ness in her present state might have been prevailed upon to remain with Toby, making sure he didn’t answer the door should a stranger knock upon it. But since she wasn’t there, Joel faced several choices. He could take Toby with him and spoil the birthday surprise; he could leave him at home and hope for the best; he could stow him in a spot where something in the place might possess an inherent interest designed to keep him occupied.

            He thought of the duck pond in Meanwhile Gardens and the toast left over from breakfast. He decided that if he made a hiding place among the reeds—something akin to the fort Toby had spoken about fashioning there months ago—and he armed his brother with the toast for duck food, he could keep him safe and occupied long enough to buy the lava lamp and return.

            So he gathered up the toast, added to it some extra bread just in case his errand took longer than he expected, and waited for his brother to blow up his life ring. That done, he made sure Toby wore a windbreaker against a potentially cool day, and they set off around the side of the houses to join the path that led along their back gardens. The sun was out, and the sun brought with it people wanting to enjoy the fair weather. Joel could hear them just beyond the child drop-in centre in the form of the whoosh of skateboard action in the skate bowl and children’s babble in the playing area of the drop-in centre itself. He worried at first that the pleasant weather might also mean people at the duck pond, but when he and Toby worked their way through the shrubbery and hopped on the secondary path that curved down to the water, he was relieved to see that no one was on the little dock. There were ducks aplenty, however. They paddled sublimely, occasionally bottom upping themselves as they searched beneath them for something to eat.

Along the edges of the pond, the reeds grew thickly. Although Toby complained that he wanted to be on the dock above the birds, Joel explained to him the benefits of secreting himself among the reeds instead. These were