What Came Before He Shot Her

            Dix said, “Ken, I been all over in th’ car. All I got was dat Joel set off like he said he was going to do. A bloke busking near the bus stop at the Barbican tol’ me—”

            “He’s here,” Kendra said. “They’re both here. Thank God.”

            Thank God  also meant no thanks to you. Dix understood that from the tone and from the look Kendra cast at him. In concert, that look and that tone stopped him in his tracks. He knew he was being blamed for what had happened, and he accepted that. What he couldn’t sort out was Kendra’s state of mind. It seemed more logical to Dix that she would be feeling relief at this juncture and not whatever it was that she was  feeling, which read like hostility.

            He approached their encounter cautiously. “Dat’s good. But what th’ hell happened? Why di’n’t they come straight home like Joel said?”

            “Cause they didn’t have the means,” Kendra told him. “Which you apparently didn’t consider. You got the damn tickets in your gym bag, Dix. They didn’t want to disturb your concen tra tion, so they tried to come home on the bus. Which of course they couldn’t.”

            Dix’s gym bag was where he’d left it earlier, near the doorway to the stairs. His gaze went to it and his mind’s eye saw the tickets where he’d stuffed them—indeed where he’d actually seen them when he dug out his own to return home after the competition. He said, “Damn. I’m dead sorry ’bout this whole t’ing, Ken.”

            “Sorry.” Kendra was a missile, seeking culpability. “You let an eightyear-old boy wander round London—”

            “He’s wiv Joel, Ken.”

            “—without the means to even get home. You let a boy been sick all down the front of him try to find his way out of the middle of a city he never been into before . . .” Kendra paused to breathe, not so much to dismiss her anger but to organise her thoughts and to express them from a position of power. “You talk a good talk about being a father to these kids,” she pointed out. “But at th’ end of the day, it all comes down to you, not to them. What you want and not what they need. That sort of thinking has nothing to do with being anyone’s dad, y’unnerstand?”

            “Now that ain’t fair,” he protested.

            “You got . . . You have your competition to attend and that’s what the whole day’s about to you. Nothing’s going to distract you from that. Not another lifter—cause you got to be like bloody Arnold, ’f course, and he’d  never be distracted by anything, not even a nuclear bomb—and surely not a little boy being sick. Concentration is the name of the game. And God knows you a man who can concentrate.”

            “Joel said he could cope. I trusted him. You got someone you want to rave at, Ken, you rave at Joel.”

            “You blaming him? He’s bloody twelve years old, Dix. He thinks your competition counts more ’n anything he might need from you. You di’n’t see that? You don’t see that?”

            “Joel said he’d bring him straight home. ’F I can’t trust Joel to tell the truth of the matter—”

            “Don’t you blame him! Don’t you bloody  blame him.”

            “I’m not blamin anyone. Seems to me you the one doing the blamin here. Makes me wonder why, Ken. Joel’s back home. Toby’s back home. I ’spect they’re both upstairs, listenin in on dis if it comes down to it. Everyt’ing’s okay. So question is: Wha’s going on wiv you?”

            “This is not ’bout me.”

            “I’n’t it? Den why you castin blame? Why you lookin  for someone to blame when what you should be doing is being relieved Joel ’n Toby got back here wivout trouble.”

            “You call five hours of wand’ring round London like two lost mongrels ‘without trouble’? Shit. What’re you thinking?”

            “I di’n’t know . . . Oh hell, I already said.” He waved her off. He headed in the direction of the stairs.

            She said, “Where you going?”

            “Takin a shower. Which, by th’ way, I di’n’t do at the end of the competition cos I meant to get home quick an’ see how Toby was doing, Ken.”

            “An’ that was your bow to being a dad? Not taking a bloody shower at the end of a competition you refuse to leave when your boy gets sick down the front of him? You want you and me to get married so we c’n keep the kids safe from Social Services, but this is what I c’n expect in the way of fathering?”

            He raised a hand. “You vex just now. We talk ’bout this later.”

            “We talk about it bloody  now,” she said. “Don’t you climb those stairs. Don’t you walk out of this room.”

            “An’ if I do?”

            “Then pack up and get out.”

            He cocked his head. He hesitated, not from indecision but from surprise. He did not see how they’d come to this point, let alone why they had come to this point. All he knew was that for a moment Kendra was playing a game whose rules he did not understand. He said, “I’m takin a shower, Ken. We c’n talk ’bout this when you ain’t so vex.”

            “I want you out ’f here, then,” she said. “I got no time for selfi sh bastards in my life. I been there before and I’m not going there again. If your bloody shower is more important to you than—”

            “You comparin me? To which one of dem?”

            “I ’spect you know which one.”

            “So? Dat it?” He shook his head. He looked around. He made his move but this time it was towards the front door and not towards the stairs. He said regretfully, “Got your wish, Ken. I give you ’sactly what you want.”

Chapter

      15 Dix’s absence from Edenham Estate affected everyone differently. Ness began to swagger around the house as if she had successfully brought about a change that she had long desired. Kendra threw herself into work and didn’t mention the fact that Dix was gone. Toby explained Dix’s absence to someone unseen whom he began openly and daily referring to as Maydarc. And for the first time, Joel experienced a creative outpouring of poetry.

He couldn’t have told anyone what any of his poems were actually about. Nor could he have traced his surge of artistic energy to their source: Dix’s leaving them. All he could have said about his verse was that it was what it was, and that it came from a place he could not identify.

He showed none of these poems to anyone, save a single piece that he carefully selected after much thought—and an equal amount of screwing up his courage—to pass along to Adam Whitburn one night at Wield Words Not Weapons. He lingered near the basement door to do this, waiting till the young Rasta was heading out on his way home. He handed it over and then stood there mutely, in an agony of anticipation, while the Rasta read it. When he’d done so, Adam looked at Joel curiously, then returned his gaze to the page and reread. After that he handed the paper back to Joel, saying, “You show dis to Ivan?,” to which Joel shook his head. Adam said, “Mon, you got to show dis shit to Ivan, y’unnerstan? And why’n’t you readin at the mike? You got  summick, blood. Ever’one want to see it.”

            But that was unthinkable to Joel. He felt the pleasure of Adam Whitburn’s approval, which was enough. Only Ivan’s approval would have meant more to him, and as for the rest—the public reading, the analysing and critiquing, the opportunity to win money or certificates or acknowledgement in some form during Walk the Word—it had become less important as his pleasure in the process grew.

Something about all of the scribbling, the scratching out and staring upward without seeing what he was looking at, followed by further scribbling, took him to an altered state. It wasn’t one that he could have described, but he grew to look forward to being in it. It offered him a sanctuary, but more than that, it offered him a sense of completion that he’d never felt before. He reckoned how he felt was something akin to how Toby felt when he faded into Sose or when he watched his lava lamp or even carried it around in his arms. It just made things different, less important that their father was gone and their mother was locked up within padded walls.