Portobello was our family's shopping street. There were lots of kosher butchers… eight or nine quite close, and Jewish delicatessens where you could get lovely bagels and Jewish bread.
– Whetlor and Bartlett,
from Portobello
She sat on the stoop, idly swishing her skirt between her knees, listening to the faint sound of the new Cliff Richard song drifting from the open window across the street. This was not how she had imagined spending her twelfth birthday, but her parents did not believe in making a big fuss of such occasions. Nor did they think she needed her own record player, which was the one gift she desperately wanted. 'A frivolous expense,' her father had called it, and none of her arguments had swayed him.
Sighing gustily, she hugged her knees and traced her name on the dusty step with her finger. She was bored, bored, bored, and hot, filled with a new and strange sort of discontent.
Perhaps when her mother came home from visiting friends, she could wheedle permission to see a new film at the cinema, as a special birthday treat. At least it would be cooler in the dark, and she could spend her pocket money on sweets from the concessionaire.
She was wondering if Radio Luxembourg would play the new Elvis record tonight when an engine sputtered nearby. A lorry pulled up to the curb in front of the house next door. The lorry's open back held mattresses, an orange sofa, a chair covered with a bright flower print, all jumbled together, all blistering in the hot August sun.
The driver's door opened and a man climbed out and stood gazing up at the house. He wore a white shirt and a dark tie, and his skin was the deep color of the bittersweet chocolate her mother used for baking.
A woman slid from the passenger side, her pumps clicking against the pavement as she touched the ground. Like her husband, she was smartly dressed, her shirtwaist dress crisply pressed, and as she stood beside him she looked up at the house with an expression of dismay. He smiled and touched her arm, then turned towards the bed of the lorry and called out something.
From amid the boxes and bundles emerged a girl of about her own age with thin, bare, brown legs and a pink ruffled dress. Next came a boy, a year or two older, tall and gangly. It seemed to her that the family had blown in on the hot wind from somewhere infinitely more exotic than this dingy London neighborhood of terraced houses with peeling plasterwork; somewhere filled with colors and fragrances she had only imagined. They trooped up the steps together and into the house, and the street seemed suddenly lifeless without them.
When it became apparent that they were not going to reappear right away, she hugged herself in frustration. She would tell someone, then, but who? Her mother wouldn't be back for an hour or two, but her father would be at the cafe, his usual custom after a good morning's trading at his jewelry stall.
Leaping from the steps, she ran. Down Westbourne Park into Portobello, nimbly dodging the fruit-and-veg stalls, then round the corner into Elgin Crescent. She came to a halt in front of the cafe, pressing her nose against the glass as she caught her breath. Yes, there he was, just visible at his favorite table in the back. Smoothing her dress, she slipped through the open door into the cafe's dim interior. The patrons sat in shirtsleeves, men reading Polish newspapers and filling the hot, still air with a heavy cloud of smoke from their pipes and cigarettes.
She coughed involuntarily and her father looked up, frowning. 'What are you doing here, little one? Is something wrong?'
He always thought something was wrong. She supposed he worried so because of his time in the war, although he never talked about that. In 1946, newly demobbed, her father had arrived in England with her mother, determined to put the war behind him and make a life for himself as a jeweler and silversmith.
In spite of her precipitous arrival nine months later, he had done well. Better than some of the other men in the cafe, she knew, but still he clung to the things that reminded him of the old country: the smell of borscht and pierogi, the dark paneling hung with Polish folk art, and the company of buxom waitresses with hennaed hair.
'No, nothing's wrong,' she answered, sliding onto the banquette beside him. 'And I'm not little. I wish you wouldn't call me that, Poppy.'
'So, why does my very grown-up daughter come rushing through the door like a dervish?'
'We have new neighbors in the house next door.'
'And what's so special about that?' he asked, still teasing.
'They're West Indian,' she whispered, aware of the turning of heads. 'A father and mother and two children, a boy and a girl, about my age.'
Her father considered her news for a moment in his deliberate way, then shook his head. 'Trouble. It will mean trouble.'
'But they look very nice-'
'It doesn't matter. Now you go home and wait for your mother, and stay away from these people. I don't want you getting hurt. Promise me.'
Hanging her head, she muttered, 'Yes, Poppy,' but she did not meet his eyes.
She walked home slowly, her excitement punctured by her father's response. Surely he was wrong: nothing would happen. She knew there had been trouble when West Indian families had moved into other parts of the neighborhood, rioting even, on Blenheim Crescent, just round the corner from the cafe. But she'd known most of their neighbors since she was a baby; she couldn't imagine them doing the sort of things she'd heard the grown-ups whispering about.
But when she reached Westbourne Park, she saw a crowd gathered in front of the house next door. Silent and watchful, they stood round the lorry, and there was no sign of the new family.
For a moment she hesitated, remembering her father's instructions; then a dark face appeared at an upstairs window and the crowd shifted with a rumble of menace.
Without another thought for her promise, she pushed her way through to the back of the lorry, scooped up the biggest box she could carry, and marched up the steps. With a defiant glance back at the crowd, she turned and rapped on the door.
*** As they descended the stairs from the top floor of the house, Kincaid heard the faint but insistent ringing of a telephone. The sound seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the coat rack, and Gemma swore under her breath as she crossed the room and plunged her hand into the pocket of her jacket, retrieving her phone.
From the stillness of her face as she listened, Kincaid guessed that they would not be spending a romantic evening celebrating the beginning of a new era in their relationship.
'What is it?' he asked when she disconnected.
'A murder. Just up the road, near the church.'
'You're in charge?'
