What Came Before He Shot Her

            “How’m I s’posed  to view it?” Ness asked.

            “As something terrible that happened but was not your fault. As something that was part of a larger plan that you do not yet see. I have learned in this life not to question or fight the ways of Allah—of God, Vanessa. I have learned to wait in quiet to see what will come next.”

            “Nuffink,” Ness said. “Tha’s what comes next.”

            “This is hardly the truth. That very terrible thing that was done to you led to this moment, to this conversation, to you sitting in my kitchen having a lesson on how to drink tea like a lady.”

            Ness rolled her eyes. But she also smiled. Just a curve of her lips, but that was the last thing she would have expected, having just told Majidah part of her darkest secret. Still, the smile meant her armour had been pierced, which she didn’t want. So she said roughly, “Look. C’n I go now?”

            Majidah didn’t correct her this time. Instead she said, “Not until you taste my pappadums. And my chutney, which is far superior, you will find, to anything a supermarket will sell you.” She broke a piece off of her large pappadum and passed it to Ness with a scoop of chutney.

            “Eat,” she instructed.

            Which was what Ness did.

            JOEL’S OPPORTUNITY TO have a talk with Neal Wyatt came sooner than he expected, on a day when Toby required Joel’s guidance to complete a small assignment for school. London had wildlife—in the form of urban foxes, feral cats, squirrels, pigeons, and other assorted birds—and the children in Toby’s new year at Middle Row School were asked to document the close sighting of one of them. They were to make a sketch, create a report, and, to prevent their fanciful manufacture of either, they were to do this in the company of a parent or guardian. Kendra’s schedule precluded her doing this duty, and Ness wasn’t around to be asked. So it fell to Joel.

            Toby was all afire for foxes. It took some work for Joel to talk him out of that. Foxes, he explained, weren’t going to be just swanning around Edenham Estate in convenient packs. They’d probably be solo and they’d be skulking around at night. Toby needed to choose something else.

Joel’s brother wasn’t willing to take the easy way out and document the sighting of a pigeon, so he switched to waiting for a swan to appear on the pond in Meanwhile Gardens. Joel knew that seeing a swan on the pond was about as likely as seeing a pack of foxes goose-stepping in an orderly formation along Edenham Way, so he suggested a squirrel instead. It was no infrequent sight to see one climbing the concrete face of Trellick Tower in search of food on the balconies. It shouldn’t be the least bit difficult to come across one elsewhere. Squirrels and birds being the tamest of London’s wild creatures—likely to alight on one’s shoulder in the hope of finding food on offer—this seemed a decent plan. What a fine report it would turn out to be, Joel enthused, if they had a close encounter with a squirrel. They could go into the nature walk just above and beyond the pond. They could make themselves a spot off the boardwalk that wound beneath the trees and through the shrubbery. If they sat quite still, there was every chance a squirrel would come right up to them.

            The time of year was propitious. Autumn and instinct demanded that squirrels begin foraging and storing food for the winter. When Joel and Toby settled themselves in a clump of blue bean not quite ready to produce its distinctive and eponymous pods, they had to wait less than ten minutes before they were joined by an inquisitive and hopeful squirrel. Seeing the animal was the easy part for Toby. Sketching both him and where he saw him—snuffling on the ground right next to Joel’s foot—was rather more difficult. Toby got through it by means of plenty of encouragement, but he was nearly defeated by having to fashion a report about the sighting. Just write how it hap-pened  was not a direction that Toby found even moderately helpful, so it took forty-five minutes of laborious printing and rubbing out before he had something that resembled a report. By that time, both of the boys needed a break and the skate bowl seemed the perfect diversion.

There was generally action in one of three bowls, and on this day, seven riders and two cyclists were doing their stuff when Joel and Toby came up the slope from the duck pond and out onto the towpath just above the gardens. Spectators sat on a couple of the hillocks watching the action, while a few others gathered on the benches nearby. Toby, of course, wanted to get as close as possible, and he was set upon doing so when Joel saw that among the spectators were Hibah and Neal Wyatt.

He said to Toby, “Headhunters, Tobe! You ’member what to do?”

            To his credit and because of the many times they’d practised for just this moment, Toby stopped in his tracks. But he was overly used to rehearsals by now, so he said, “For reals? Cos I want to watch—”

            “Dis is for real,” Joel said. “We’ll watch ’em later. Meantime, what’re you going to—”

            Toby was, gratifyingly, on his way before Joel could finish the question. He trotted along the towpath and made for the abandoned barge beneath the bridge. In a moment he had hopped upon it. It bobbed in the water, then he was gone from sight. He was gone specifically from Neal Wyatt’s sight. Hibah there or not, Joel didn’t want Neal to get close to his brother until they had a satisfactory truce.

Joel took in a breath. It was a public place. There were others present. It was daylight. All of this should have reassured him, but when it came to dealing with Neal, nothing was a certainty. He approached the bench on which the boy and Hibah were sitting. He saw they were holding hands, and from this he understood that they’d somehow— and unwisely on Hibah’s part as far as Joel was concerned—arrived at a rapprochement after their previous altercation in the gardens. He was wise enough to realise he wasn’t going to be welcome—especially from Neal’s point of view—but he couldn’t see any help for the matter. Besides, he had the flick knife with him if things became dicey, and he doubted even Neal would take on a flick knife.

            Hibah was saying, “But it i’n’t as easy as you think,” when Joel came upon them from the rear. “Mum keeps me pract’cally locked up ’n tha’ place. ’S not like your situation, innit. I make a wrong move and I’m gated f’rever.”

            Joel said, “Neal, c’n I have a word?”

            Neal whirled around. Hibah jumped to her feet. Joel said quickly, “S’okay. I don’t mean no harm. I ain’t rampin you.”

            Neal stood, but unlike Hibah, he did it slowly. He made the movement very much like a 1930s fi lm gangster, which was indeed where he got most of his moves: from ancient Hollywood character actors with beaten-up faces. He said, “Piss off.”

            “I got to talk to you.”

            “You deaf or summick? I say piss off ’fore I take care of you good.”

            “Down to you if we fight, bred,” Joel said calmly, although he didn’t feel calm. What he felt like was grabbing on to the flick knife as a form of security. “All’s I want is a word, but you c’n have more off me, dat how you want it.”

            “Neal,” Hibah said. “You can talk to him, innit.” And to Joel with a smile, “How’s it goin, Joel? Where you been at lunchtimes, cos I look for you by the guard shack a bunch.”

            Neal scowled at this. He said to Joel, “I ain’t your bred. Go suck yuh muddah’s pussy.”

            It was a deliberate provocation, a begging of Joel to fling himself at the other boy. But he didn’t do it. He didn’t even need to reply. Hibah did it for him.

            “Tha’s just the most disgustin thing I ever heard,” she said to Neal.

            “He’s asking to talk to you, nuffink else. Wha’s the matter wiv you? I swear, Neal, sometimes I wonder ’f your head’s on right. You talk to him or I’m out ’f here. Why’d I want to take a risk like this—meetin out here which is expressly  what my mum tol’ me I wasn’t to do— for someone wiv no brains to speak of?”

            “Take five minutes,” Joel said, “maybe less, if we get down to it.”

            “I ain’t gettin down to nuffink wiv you,” Neal said. “’F you t’ink I’m about—”

            “Neal.” Hibah spoke again. But it sounded like a warning this time. For a moment Joel thought the Muslim girl had lost her mind and was going to take his side in the matter even more overtly—such as with a threat—but then he saw she was looking over at the bridge. Two uniformed constables stood there, and they were looking down at the gardens, mostly looking at the three adolescents themselves. One of the constables spoke into the radio fixed to his shoulder. The other merely waited.

            It didn’t take a long leap to know what they were doing. Two mixedrace boys in conversation with a Muslim girl. They were waiting for trouble.

            Neal said, “Fuck it.”

            Hibah said, “I got to go. ’F they come down here . . . ’F they ask our names . . . Las’ thing I c’n cope