What Came Before He Shot Her

young men who, like bats, habitually emerged after dark to see what sort of action they could rustle up.

            Ultimately, Kendra stopped at the police station in the Harrow Road, an impressive Victorian edifice of brick whose size in comparison with what stands around it telegraphs its intention of being in that spot for a long time to come. She made her enquiry of a special constable, a selfimportant white female who took her time about looking up from her paperwork. No, was the answer she received. No fifteen-year-old girls had been brought into the station for any reason . . . Madam. At another time, Kendra might have felt the bristling under her skin that would have been her reaction to that pause between reason  and Madam. But she had greater worries than being on the receiving end of someone’s disrespect that night, so she let the incident go, and she took one last circuit of the immediate area. But there was no Ness anywhere. Nor did Ness appear that night. It wasn’t until nine on the following morning that she knocked on Kendra’s door.

            The conversation they had was brief, and Kendra decided to allow it to be satisfactory. To her questions of where in God’s name Vanessa had been all night, because she’d been goddamn worried to death about her, Ness said she’d got lost, and after wandering a bit, she’d found an unlocked community hall over in Wornington Estate. There she’d hunkered and fallen asleep. Sorry, she said and went to the coffeemaker where last night’s brew had not yet been refreshed with the morning’s. She poured herself a cup and spied her aunt’s Benson & Hedges on the table, where Joel and Toby were dipping into bowls of breakfast cereal that Kendra had hastily borrowed from one of her neighbours. Could she have a fag, then, Aunt Ken? Ness wanted to know and What’re you gawping at? to Joel. When Joel ducked his head and went back to his cereal, Kendra tried to take the temperature of the kitchen to sort out what was actually going on. She knew there was more here than met the eye, but she didn’t know how to get to what it was.

            “Why’d you run off?” Kendra asked her. “Why’d you not wait for me to get home, like your brothers?”

            Ness shrugged—she was to do that so often that Kendra would grow to desire nailing her shoulders into place—and she picked up the packet of cigarettes.

            “I didn’t tell you to help yourself, Vanessa.”

            Ness took her hand off the packet and replied, “Whatever.” And then she said, “Sorry.”

            The apology prompted Kendra to ask her if she’d run off because of her gran. “Her leaving you here. Jamaica. All that. You’ve a right to be—”

            “Jamaica?” Ness said with a snort. “Di’n’t want to go to no bloody Jamaica, did I. Gettin a job an’ my own place, innit. I was tired of dat old cow anyways. C’n I get a smoke off you or wha’?”

            Having spent her formative years with Glory and Glory’s English, Kendra wasn’t about to listen to this version of their language. She said, “Don’t talk like that, Vanessa. You know how to speak properly. Do so.”

            Ness rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said. “Can. I. Have. A. Cigarette. Then?” She enunciated each letter precisely. Kendra nodded. She let go any further questions about Ness’s whereabouts and the reasons behind them as the girl lit up in the same manner Kendra had done on the previous night: on a burner of the stove. She inspected Ness as Ness inspected her. Each of them saw an opportunity on offer. For Kendra it was a fl eeting moment of invitation to a form of motherhood previously denied her. For Ness it was an equally fleeting glimpse of a model of who she could become. The two of them dangled there for an instant in a limbo of possibility. Then Kendra remembered everything she was attempting to balance on the tray of her life, and Ness remembered everything she wanted so much to forget. They turned from each other. Kendra told the boys to hurry their breakfast. Ness took a hit from her cigarette and moved to the window to look at the grey winter day outside.

            What followed was, first of all, disabusing Ness of the idea that she would be finding a job and a place of her own. At her age, no one was going to employ her, and the law required her to be in school. Ness took this news better than Kendra expected although in a manner that she also anticipated. The signature shrug. The signature statement:

            “Whatever, Ken.”

            “Aunt Kendra, Vanessa.”

            “Whatever.”

            Then began the tedious process of getting all three of the children into school, a jumping through hoops made even more difficult by the fact that Kendra’s place of employment—the charity shop in the Harrow Road—would give her only an hour off at the end of each day to tend to this problem and the myriad other problems that went with the advent of three children into her life. She had the choice of quitting the charity shop, which she could not afford to do, or coping with the restriction placed upon her, so she chose the latter. That she also had a third choice was a thought she dwelt on more than once as she struggled with everything from finding inexpensive but appropriate furniture for the spare bedroom to heaving four people’s clothes to the launderette instead of having just her own to deal with. Care was the other choice she had. Making the phone call. Declaring herself wildly out of her depth. Gavin was the reason Kendra couldn’t do this. Gavin her brother, father to the children, and everything Gavin had put himself through. Not only that, but everything that life  had put Gavin through, even to his untimely and unnecessary death. Settling the kids into her home and seeing to their placement in school ate up ten days. During this time, they remained at home while she went to work, with Ness in charge and only the television for entertainment. Ness was under strict instructions to stay on the premises and, as far as Kendra knew, the girl cooperated, since she was always there in the morning when Kendra left and there in the late afternoon when Kendra returned. The fact that Ness was not present in Edenham Way during the intervening hours escaped Kendra’s notice, and the two boys made no mention of this. Joel said nothing because he knew what the outcome would be for him if he passed this information to his aunt. Toby said nothing because he did not notice. As long as the television was on, he could retreat into Sose.

            Thus, Ness had ten days in which to meld into life in North Kensington, and she had no difficulty in doing so. Six and Natasha being unrepentant truants from their own school, they made a threesome with Ness and they were only too happy to show her what was what in the area: from the quickest route down to Queensway where they could loiter in Whiteley’s till they were run off, to the best spot where they could chat up boys. When the two girls weren’t initiating her into those sorts of delights, they were passing along to her the various substances that would make her life more blissful. With this, however, Ness was careful. She knew the wisdom of being in possession of all of her faculties when her aunt returned from her day’s work. Joel watched all this and longed to say something. But he was caught between warring loyalties: to his sister whom he no longer quite recognised let alone understood and to his aunt who had taken them into her home instead of delivering them elsewhere. So he said nothing. He just watched Ness leave and return—careful to wash herself, her hair, and if necessary her clothing prior to Kendra’s arrival—and he waited for what was surely to come.

            What came first was Holland Park School, the third of the comprehensives that Kendra contacted hoping for Joel and Ness to be admitted. If she couldn’t get them into a school that was relatively local, they would be forced to return to East Acton each day, which wasn’t what she wanted for them, nor for herself. She’d tried an RC comprehensive first, thinking that a quasireligious and, one hoped, disciplined environment might be just the ticket to set Ness on the straight and narrow that she needed.

There were no places available, so she’d gone on to an Anglican comprehensive next, with the same result. She moved on to Holland Park School third, and there she finally had success. There were several places, and all that would be necessary—aside from taking the admissions test—was purchasing the necessary uniforms. Joel was easy to fit into the grey-upon-unrelieved-even-darker-grey of the required school kit. Ness was not so accommodating. She declared that she wasn’t about to “wear dat shit nowheres.” Kendra corrected her grammar, established a fine of fifty pence henceforth for linguistic crudities, and told her she most certainly was.

They could have embarked upon a battle of wills at that point, but Ness gave in. Kendra allowed herself to be pleased and foolishly thought she had won a round with the girl, little knowing that Ness’s plans for herself didn’t include going to Holland Park School for love or money, so—reflecting on this fact—she’d quickly realised that it didn’t matter whether her aunt purchased the uniform for her to wear or not. With Joel and Ness taken care of, there remained the matter of Toby. Wherever he went to school, it had to be somewhere along the route Joel and Ness would follow to get to the number 52 bus, which would ferry them to Holland Park.

Although none of them spoke of the subject openly, all of them knew that Toby could not be allowed to wander to school on his own, and Kendra could not hope to get back to her massage salon plans—which had been lying fallow since the night she’d arrived home to find the boys on her doorstep—while simultaneously keeping up her employment at the charity shop and either driving or walking Toby to and from school.