Portobello

and his collarbone weren't strong enough to hold it up. He would have liked to let it sink him, to lie down on the pavement and give himself up to his grief.

But he plodded on his way, hunched inside his hoodie. Why had he punched Gemma? It all came back to that, that was what set it going. He wasn't the sort of bloke to smack a girl around or he thought he wasn't. But that time… She had told him he ought to get a job, any job, it didn't matter much what, so long as he could stop being a Jobseeker. Not all those employers he had interviews with could have rejected him, he must be setting out to make himself unemployable on purpose. As for her, once the baby was at school she'd get work, she'd be along at the Job Centre the first day she'd dropped him off at primary school. As things were, she didn't want Lance under her feet all day and every day. It wasn't as if he'd babysit for her while she went to the gym or had a coffee with one of her girlfriends. All he'd do, she said, was sit about with the telly on like the lazy layabout he was. It was when she said those words that he saw red and punched her.

At first he thought he'd broken her jaw but it wasn't as bad as that. Her eye went dark red and, when she'd sworn at him, she put her hand up to her mouth, then held it out to him to show the bloody tooth he'd knocked out. He was sorry at once, he said he didn't know what came over him and he'd never do it again.

'Too right you won't,' she said. 'You won't get the bloody chance. If you're not out of my house in fifteen fucking minutes I'm getting Dwayne round here to put you out.'

Dwayne was her brother, an amateur heavyweight boxer and rumoured to be a bare-knuckle fighter as well. Lance had got out, though not before Dwayne had roughed him up a bit, and eventually he had ended up with Uncle Gib. But the regrets never ended. The funny thing was he hadn't lost his temper a single time, not once, since then. He'd been a different man.

In the evenings they sat in front of Auntie Ivy's black-and-white television set. Lance found the telly soothing, it didn't much matter to him what was on, though he drew the line – when he was in a position to draw the line – at documentaries. They reminded him of school. The great drawback to watching was Uncle Gib. He chain-smoked. He talked through every programme, especially the sexy ones, and they were mostly sexy or violent or both. Uncle Gib called everything disgusting or ungodly and, puffing away, said it was liable to bring fire from heaven down on Channel Four and he was particularly incensed by what Lance liked best, girls with not many clothes on. The two of them sat on Auntie Ivy's sagging mock-leather sofa, its seat cushions cracked and wrinkled like Uncle Gib's face, while Lance stared in silence and Uncle Gib fidgeted about, sometimes shaking his fist at the screen and shouting, 'Harlot!' or, 'You wait till the Day of Judgement.'

Lance's favourite sitcom had just begun when the letter box rattled. Uncle Gib went off to answer it. It was his house, as he often said, and he wasn't having Lance answering his door. Lance was watching the female lead, a beautiful girl mysteriously wearing a bikini in the living room in the depths of winter, trying to persuade her dad to let her boyfriend stay the night, when Uncle Gib came back with two men, one of whom Lance recognised at once as the guy with the moustache he had seen on Gemma's balcony. The other man had a red face and quite a belly on him, though he was young, no more than twenty-something. 'Ian,' he said. 'Ian Pollitt. This here's Feisal Smith but you can call him Fize.'

Lance got up. 'What d'you want?'

'My mate and me, we've come here to tell you,' said Ian Pollitt, staring at Lance the way a policeman might.

This seemed to be the signal for Uncle Gib to switch off the telly. He turned back to Lance, said, 'I don't know what this is about but don't think I'm going. This is my house and I'm staying to hear what he's got to say.'

'Suit yourself,' said Fize. 'I'm not bothered.' It was the first time he had spoken. He had a funny accent, not like the Indians but not English either.

'Sit down,' said Uncle Gib with the nearest to graciousness he ever got. 'Make yourselves at home.' His cloudy old eyes were glittering with malice. 'Any friends of my nephew's are friends of mine.' He poked two cigarettes out of the packet. 'Want a ciggie?'

Ian Pollitt took no notice. Fize shook his head. From his jeans pocket he fetched something in a small plastic bag. 'You know what this is?'

Lance did. He had seen it before, though in a bloodstained condition. It was Gemma's tooth. Dry-mouthed, he nodded. Uncle Gib looked at the tooth, did a double take and jumped to his feet, throwing up his hands. Fize watched him, apparently with sympathy, and at last he sat down, patting the seat beside him and smiling quite pleasantly.

'It's like this,' he said when Uncle Gib had joined him, looking up at Lance, 'Gemma's a very good-looking girl, as you know. Now she's got a horrendous great gap in her mouth, thanks to you. You'd agree with that, wouldn't you?'

'Don't matter whether he does or not,' said Pollitt.

Again Lance nodded. It was Uncle Gib who spoke. 'He'll agree all right. He knows what he's done.'

'Now Gemma's been to the dentist and he says she needs an implant, that's what he called it, an implant, and that don't come cheap. Now Gemma's a single parent and she don't have that kind of money.'

'What kind of money?' Uncle Gib was relishing this. Lance could see he had difficulty in suppressing his laughter.

It was Pollitt's turn to speak. 'The dentist said he'd do it as economical as what he could but it'll still be a grand. One K, if you get my meaning.'

Lance found his voice with difficulty. 'A thousand pounds?'

'Right. You got it.'

'But I haven't got it,' Lance said. 'Where am I to get a thousand pounds? I'm signing on.'

'You should have thought of that before you smacked a young lady in the mouth.'

'Me and Gemma,' said Fize, 'we're not unreasonable, we'll give you till Saturday.'

Pollitt intervened again. 'Next Saturday, that's May twenty-six. By midnight, mind. That's the deadline.You can bring it round to her place, you know where it is.'

Lance nodded, dry-mouthed.

'Don't think her and Fize haven't seen you stalking her, hanging about outside at all hours.'

'I haven't got no money,' said Lance.

'Get it off this gentleman then,' said Fize politely. 'He's a property owner, isn't he? He's got to be loaded.'

'He knows better than that,' said Uncle Gib. 'What, me lend a thousand quid to a fellow who's only my dear late wife's greatnephew? I should coco.'

But all this talk of money stayed in Uncle Gib's mind. He was a property owner but he wasn't making prudent use of his property. As a religious man dedicated to God's work, he attributed this to his innocence and lack of wordliness. But next day, when Lance was out, he went up to the top of the first flight and untied the rope that cut off access to the second floor. That faculty which, in most people, detects dirt and disorder had been left out of Uncle Gib's make-up. Up in the three rooms on the attic floor he noticed nothing of the cobwebs and the grime, nor did the lack of bathroom facilities or even running water strike him. There was no furniture, of course, and some idea retained from one of the short periods in his middle years when he hadn't been inside told him that the law wouldn't let you evict a tenant from unfurnished accommodation. Still, that was easily solved. Take that good table from Lance's room, a couple of chairs from the dining room and pick up a mattress from somewhere. A bed wasn't needed, a mattress on the floor would do perfectly well.

No need to think twice. Uncle Gib sat down at the table in the kitchen to compose his advertisement. Lately he'd seen quite a bit on the TV about young people not being able to get on to the property ladder and, seeing the prices of those places he studied in estate agents' brochures, he wasn't surprised. He'd be doing a service to humanity, showing love for his neighbour by offering accommodation to rent. So how much to ask? Rented property advertised by some of those agents was fetching four and five hundred pounds a week. Uncle Gib was a realist and, though he had an inflated idea of the value and desirability of his home, he understood three rooms in it weren't in this league.

Using the reverse side of the No Entry card (waste not, want not) he wrote: To let: self-contained furnished flat in fashionable movie-featured Notting Hill. ?150 per week. He added the address and phone number. When it was done to his satisfaction he took it down to the newsagent in Powis Terrace and paid – through the nose, in his opinion – to have it put in the window.

Every other shop these days had been turned into an estate agent. He passed five on his way to the Portobello