What Came Before He Shot Her

            “Well, he’s damn well succeeding.”

            “Don’t have to be dat way. He’s a limp dick, innit. ’F he’s talkin

            ’bout seeing to Toby, it means he just dat—all talk and nuffink else.”

            Kendra looked away from him as she realised what the outcome of this conversation was going to be. She said, “You aren’t willing to help.”

            “Not what I’m saying.”

            “Then what?”

            “Kids got to learn survival round here. Kids got to learn how to get along or get away.”

            “What you’re saying . . . That’s not a whole lot different to saying you won’t help me out.”

            “I am  helpin you out. I’m tellin you how it is and how it has to be.” He took another drink of the water and he handed the bottle back. His voice was not unkind. “Ken, you got to think . . .” He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment. He made a study of her till she stirred uncomfortably beneath it. He finally sighed and said, “Maybe you got more ’n you can handle. You ever t’ink dat?”

            Her backbone stiffened. She said, “So I should get rid of ’em? That what you’re saying? I should ring up Miss Fabulous Bender and tell her to come fetch ’em?”

            “Dat’s not what I meant.”

            “And I’m supposed to live with myself afterwards? Maybe by telling myself they’re safe  now? Away from this place an’ all its troubles?”

            “Ken. Ken. I said it wrong.”

            “Then what?”

            “I just meant maybe you got too much to handle alone.”

            “Like what?”

            “Why’re you asking dat? What d’you mean ‘Like what?’ You know what I’m talkin about. Like Toby ’n’ whatever’s wrong wiv him dat no one ever like to talk about. Like Ness an’—”

            “Ness is doing fine.”

            “Fine? Ken, she came on to me. More ’n once while I was livin wiv you. Last time, she presented herself wivout no clothes on, and I’m telling you somet’ing’s wrong  wiv her.”

            “She’s oversexed, like three-quarters of the girls her age.”

            “Yeah. Sure. Dat I unnerstan. But she knew I was your man, and dat makes a diff’rence, or at least it should. But nuffink makes a difference to Ness, and you got to see that makes somet’ing wrong.”

            Kendra couldn’t go to the subject of Ness, while staying with the subject of Joel, Toby, and the street thugs seemed to give her the moral high ground. She said, “If you don’t want to help, jus’ say it. Don’t make this a judgement on me, all right?”

            “I ain’t  judgin . . .”

            She got to her feet.

            He said, “God damn it, Kendra. I’m willing to make it so you don’t have to handle dis shit alone. Those kids got needs an’ you don’t have to be the only one tryin to meet ’em.”

            “Seems to me that I am  the only one meeting a need here,” she said. She headed for the doorway, leaving him sitting at the table with her bottle of water.

            WHEN THE AUTUMN term began, Joel knew that dodging the occasion of a run-in with Neal and his crew was not going to be enough, especially since Neal and his crew knew exactly where to find him. He tried to vary the route he and Toby took to Middle Row School in the morning, but there was no way to vary the fact  of Middle Row School or of Holland Park School either. He knew that he still needed to deal with the issue of Neal Wyatt, not only for himself but for Toby.

For himself, he came up with the knife.

            In the long aftermath of the visit paid by the Blade to Edenham Way, everyone but Joel had forgotten about the flick knife that had been sent flying during the melee. Too many things had happened all at once for the household to remember that knife: Toby’s hysterics, Ness bleeding from the head, the Blade being thrown out on his arse, Kendra coping with Ness’s injury . . . In the midst of all this, the flick knife had gone the way of bad dreams.

            Even Joel didn’t remember the knife at first. It was only when he was rescuing a piece of cutlery from beneath the cooker, where he’d accidentally dropped and kicked it while laying the table, that he saw the glint of silver against the wall. He knew at once what it was. He said nothing about it, but when the coast was clear, he went back and, using a long-handled wooden spoon, he scooped it forward. When he had his hands on it, he saw a thin line of his sister’s blood along the blade. So he washed it carefully and when it was dry, he put it under his mattress—right in the middle—where no one was likely to find it.

            He had no thought of using it for anything until he overheard his aunt in conversation with Cordie, telling her about her visit with Dix, her umbrage high and her English going to hell accordingly. “He say let ’em sort t’ings out ’ emselves,” she was saying, her voice low but the hiss of it unmistakable. “Like I’m s’posed to wait till one of ’em gets beat bad enough to go into hospital wiv a broken skull.”

            Joel understood this to mean he and Toby were on their own. He, too, had considered going to Dix for help—as unwise as he knew that would have been—but hearing Kendra and making the correct interpretation, he realised he would need a different plan.

So for himself, the plan was the knife. He fetched it from beneath his mattress and he put it in the rucksack that he carried to school. He’d get into serious trouble if he was caught with at school, but he had no intention of showing it around like someone in need of impressing his schoolmates. He only intended to bring it out if an emergency called for it, and this would be a Neal Wyatt emergency, one in which Neal needed to know what was in store for him if he crossed Joel another time.

            That left Joel with the problem of what to do for Toby. He meant to keep a sharp eye on his brother, and he especially meant never again to be late to the Westminster Learning Centre when it was time to fetch him. He meant to hand Toby over to Ness at the child dropin centre—begging and bargaining for her help if necessary— should there be any occasion when he needed to leave Toby unsupervised. But on the chance that anything wreaked havoc with these carefully laid plans, he needed to have a carefully laid additional plan for Toby as well, one that would kick in automatically should Neal Wyatt appear anywhere near his horizon if he inadvertently found himself alone.

Joel knew Toby would not be able to remember anything complicated. He understood also that, in a moment of fear, Toby might well freeze up altogether, curling into a ball and hoping he might go unnoticed. So he tried to make the plan sound like a game and the game involved hiding like an explorer in a jungle the moment he saw . . . What? The dinosaurs coming after him? The lions getting ready to pounce on him? Gorillas? Rhinos? Pygmies with poisoned spears? Cannibals?

            Joel finally settled on headhunters, which seemed gruesome enough for Toby to remember. He made a shrunken head from a dismembered and unsellable troll doll that he got from the charity shop. He plaited its bright orange hair and drew stitches on its face. He said in reference to it, “This’s what they do, Tobe, and you got to remember,” and he put the severed doll head into his brother’s school rucksack. There were headhunters out there, he told him, and he had to find places to hide from them.

            After school, after the learning centre, at the weekends, whenever there was time, Joel took Toby out into the streets and together they found useful shelters. These would be the places Toby would run to if he saw anyone  approaching him. The thing about headhunters, Joel told him, was that they looked just like everyone else. They wore disguises. Like those blokes who broke his lava lamp. Did Toby understand that? Yes? Truly?

            On Edenham Estate, they practised dashing for the rubbish area where there was just enough space behind two wheelie bins for Toby to squeeze himself till he heard Joel call out that the coast was clear. Depending upon where he was in Meanwhile Gardens, he could slip down to the pond and hide in the reeds or—which was better—he could run for the abandoned barge beneath the canal bridge and there he could hole up under a crisscrossed pile of rotting timbers.

            On the Harrow Road, he could dash to the charity shop and hide in the back room where their aunt kept bins for the clothing that was still to be sorted.

            Joel took his brother to each location time and time again. He said,