What Came Before He Shot Her

of the route—was not under the ground at all, and by a growing need in Joel, at least, to find a toilet.

Neither of the boys had any knowledge of this place, so in the gloom that fast became the darkness, it began to take on disturbing qualities. The sound of male voices approaching meant they could be accosted by members of whatever gang of drug dealers, muggers, burglars, or bag snatchers dominated life on this particular estate. The sound of raucous rap music from a car passing on Elkstone Road just to the west of them declared the arrival of that same gang’s kingpin who would accost them and demand a tribute that they could not pay. Anyone entering Edenham Way—the little lane in which their aunt’s terrace house sat—was someone who would notice them, who would question them sharply, and phone the police when they did not provide appropriate answers. The police would then come. Care would follow. And that word Care—which was always rendered with an uppercase C, at least in Joel’s mind—was something akin to the bogeyman. While other children’s parents might have said in a fit of frustration or in a desperate attempt to garner cooperation from their recalcitrant offspring, “Do what I say or I swear you’re going to end up in care,” for the Campbell children the threat was real. Glory Campbell’s departure had brought them one step closer. A phone call to the police would seal the deal.

 So Joel wasn’t sure what to do as he and Toby entered the second hour of their wait for their aunt. He needed a toilet terribly, but if he spoke to a passerby or knocked on a door and asked could he relieve himself inside, he ran the risk of attracting unwanted attention. So he squeezed his legs together and tried to concentrate on something else. The options were the unnerving noises already mentioned or his little brother. He chose his brother.

            Next to him, Toby remained in a world where he had long spent most of his waking hours. He called it Sose, and it was a place inhabited by people who spoke gently to him, who were known for their kindness to children and animals, and for their embraces, which they gave freely whenever a little boy felt afraid. With his knees drawn up and his life ring still around his waist, Toby had a place to rest his chin, and that was what he had been doing since he and Joel had situated themselves on the top step. For all that time, he had kept his eyes closed and had gone where he vastly preferred to be.

            Toby’s position exposed his head to his brother, the very last thing that—aside from the occasional unnerving interloper on the estate— Joel wished to see. For Toby’s head with its great gaps of hairlessness spoke of a failure of duty. It made a declaration and an accusation, and both of them pointed in Joel’s direction. Glue had been the cause of Toby’s hair loss, which wasn’t actually loss at all but rather a painful removal by scissors, the only way to free his scalp from what a ring of young bullies had dumped upon him. This ring of thugs-in-the-making and the torments they had foisted upon Toby whenever they had the chance were just two of the reasons Joel was not unhappy to leave East Acton. Because of bullies, no walk for sweets to Ankaran Food and Wine was safe for Toby to make alone, and on the rare occasion when Glory Campbell supplied money for lunch instead of cheese- and-pickle sandwiches, if Toby managed to keep the cash in his pocket until the appointed hour, it was only because the local miniature yobs had targeted someone else for once. So Joel didn’t want to look at his brother’s head because it reminded him again that he had not been there the last time Toby had been set upon. Since he’d appointed himself his brother’s protector in Toby’s infancy, the sight of him wandering up Henchman Street with his anorak’s hood pulled up and fixed to his head with glue had caused Joel’s chest to burn so much that he couldn’t breathe, had caused him to duck his head in shame when Glory in her own guiltdriven fury had demanded to know how he’d let this happen to his own little brother.

            Joel roused Toby as much not to have to look at his head as in desperate need to find a place to empty his bladder. He knew his brother wasn’t asleep, but getting him back to present time and place was like awakening a very small child. When Toby finally looked around, Joel stood and said with a bravado he didn’t particularly feel, “Le’s check this place out, mon.” Since being called man  was a source of pleasure to the little boy, Toby went along with the plan without questioning the wisdom of leaving their belongings in a place where someone might likely steal them.

            They went in the direction Ness had taken, between the buildings and towards Meanwhile Gardens. But rather than pass by the child drop-in centre, they followed the path along the walled back gardens of the terrace houses. This gave onto the eastern section of Meanwhile Gardens, which here narrowed to a mass of shrubbery beside a tarmac path and, beyond that, the canal once again.

            The shrubbery was an invitation Joel did not decline. He said,

            “Hang on, Tobe,” and while his brother blinked at him affably, Joel engaged in what the London male tends to do unashamedly whenever he’s in need: He peed on the bushes. He found the relief enormous. It gave him a new lease on life. Despite the fears he’d earlier harboured about the estate, he cocked his head at the tarmac path on the other side of the shrubbery. Toby was meant to follow him, and he did. They trotted along and within thirty yards they found themselves looking down at a pond.

            This glimmered with black menace in the darkness, but that menace was vitiated by the waterfowl perched along the edge of the water and clucking in the reeds. What light there was shone on a little wooden landing. A path curved down to this, and the boys ran along it. They clomped across the wood and hunkered at the edge. To their sides, ducks plopped from the land and paddled away.

            “Wicked this, innit, Joel?” Toby looked around and smiled. “We c’n make it a fort here. Can we do dat? If we build it over’n dem bushes, no one—”

            “Shh.” Joel put his hand over his brother’s mouth. He had heard what Toby in his excitement had not. A footpath accompanied the Grand Union Canal above them and just beyond Meanwhile Gardens. Several people were coming along it, young males by the sound of them.

            “Gimme toke ’f dat spliff, blood. Don’ hol’ back on me now.”

            “You c’n pay or wha’, cos I not off’ring charity, man.”

            “Come on, we know you deliverin weed an’ bone all over dis place.”

            “Hey, don’ fuck wiv me. You know wha’ you know.”

            The voices faded as the boys passed on the path above them. Joel stood when they had gone and made his way up the side of the bank. Toby whispered his name fearfully, but Joel waved him off. He wanted to see who the boys were because he wanted to know in advance what this place promised him. At the top, however, when he looked down the path in the direction that the voices had taken, all he could see was shapes, silhouetted where the towpath curved. There were four, all identically dressed: baggy jeans, sweatshirts with the hoods drawn up, anoraks over them. They shuffled along, impeded by the low crotches of their jeans. As such, they looked anything but threatening. But their conversation had indicated otherwise.

            To Joel’s right a shout went up, and he saw in the distance someone standing on a bridge that arched over the canal. To his left the boys turned to hear who’d called them. A Rasta by the look of him, Joel saw. He was dangling a sandwich bag in the air.

            Joel had learned enough. He ducked and slid down the bank to Toby. He said, “Le’s go, mon,” and pulled Toby to his feet. Toby said, “We c’n have the fort—”

            “Not now,” Joel told him. He led him in the direction they’d come from until they were back in the relative safety of their aunt’s front porch.

            Chapter

      2 Kendra Osborne returned to the Edenham Estate just after seven o’clock that evening, rattling around the corner from Elkstone Road in an old Fiat Punto made recognisable, to those who knew her, by its passenger door on which someone had spray-painted           “Take it in the mouth,” a dripping, red imperative that Kendra had left, not because she couldn’t afford to have the door repainted but because she couldn’t find the time to do so. At this point in her life, she was working at one job and trying to develop a career in another. The first was behind the till in an AIDS charity shop in the Harrow Road. The second was massage. This latter field of employment was in its infancy in Kendra’s life: She’d completed eighteen months of course work at Kensington and Chelsea College, and in the last six weeks she’d been trying to establish herself as a masseuse.

            She had a two-fold plan in mind as far as the massage business went. She would use the small spare room in her house for clients who wished to come to her; she would travel by car with her table and her essential oils stowed in the back for clients who wished her to go to them. She would, naturally, charge extra for this. In time, she’d save enough money to open a small massage salon of her own.