What Came Before He Shot Her (13 page)

It had been Cordie’s turn to choose their outing, and she’d selected clubbing. They began their night with dinner, and they pref-aced the dinner with drinks. They went for Portuguese in Golborne Road, and they washed down their starters with a Bombay Sapphire martini each and their main courses with several glasses of wine. Neither of the women drank much on a regular basis, so they were more than a little inebriated when they staggered back across Portobello Bridge where, beyond Trellick Tower, No Sorrow was coming to life for the evening.

They’d pull a couple of men, Cordie said. She needed an extramarital snogging diversion, and as for Kendra: It was high time for Kendra to get a length.

No Sorrow announced itself in neon script across translucent front windows, just those two green words done in a classy Art Deco style. The club was a complete anomaly in the neighbourhood, with owners who were banking on this part of North Kensington lurching towards gentri-fication. Five years earlier, no one in his right mind would have invested ten pounds in the property. But that was the nature of London in a nut-shell: One might call a neighbourhood or even an entire borough down for the count at any time, but only a fool would ever label it out.

The club was the last of a strip of disreputable-looking shops: from launderette to library to locksmith. Its door was angled away from these establishments, as if it couldn’t bear to see the company it was forced to keep. Beyond that door, No Sorrow existed on two floors of the building. The ground level offered a crescent-shaped bar, tables for chatting at, dim lighting, and walls and ceiling made grubby by the cigarette smoke that perpetually thickened the air. The first floor offered music and drinks, a DJ spinning disks at head-splitting volume, and strobe lights making the entire environment look like something out of a bad acid trip.

Kendra and Cordie started out on the ground floor. This would constitute their reconnaissance of the place. They secured drinks and took a few minutes to “scope out the man flesh,” as Cordie put it.

To Kendra, it looked like a case of the odds being good but the goods being odd: Men—most of whom were advanced middle-aged and showing it—outnumbered women on the ground floor, but when she looked them over, Kendra told herself that not a single one of them interested her. This was the safest conclusion for her to draw since it was fairly obvious that she interested none of them either. The handful of young women in the place had captured all the attention. Kendra felt every one of her forty years.

She would have insisted upon leaving had Cordie not already determined that Kendra needed some fun. To her suggestion that they depart, Cordie said, “In a bit, but le’s go above first,” and she headed in the direction of the stairs. To her way of thinking, if there were no men available up there, at least she and Kendra could get in a few dances, by themselves or with each other.

On the first floor, they found that the noise was deafening, and the light came from only three sources—a small anglepoise lamp shining on the DJ’s equipment, two dim bulbs above the bar, and the strobe.

Because of this, at the top of the stairs, Kendra and Cordie paused to get used to the murk. They also had to get used to the temperature, which was very nearly tropical. London in early spring meant no one would dare think to open a window, even to be rid of some of the cigarette smoke which—lit by the strobe—made the room look like a tableau demonstrating the perils of yellow fog.

There were no tables up here, just a chest-high shelf running round the room, on which a dancer could place a glass for safekeeping while experiencing the joys of the music. This was currently rap, all lyrics, all beat and no tune, but no one was finding that a problem. It seemed as if two hundred people were mashed together in the dancing area. It seemed as if another hundred or so were vying for the attention of the three bartenders, who were mixing drinks and pouring pints as fast as they could.

With a whoop, Cordie plunged directly into the action, handing over her drink to Kendra and shimmying between two young men who appeared happy to have her company. Watching them, Kendra began to feel worse than she’d felt below—her age and more—which illustrated how different life was for her now. Prior to the Campbells’ arrival, she’d been living primarily with the knowledge—fueled by both of her brothers’

deaths—that life was fleeting. She’d been experiencing things rather than reacting to them. She
made
things; they did not make her. But in the months since her mother had foisted an unexpected form of parenthood upon her, she’d managed to do very little that even resembled her old life.

It seemed to her that she’d ceased being who she was, in fact, and what was worse, she’d ceased being who she’d long ago intended to be.

Time and experience—and especially two marriages—had taught Kendra that she had only herself to blame if she didn’t like the way her bed was made. If she was feeling her age and feeling burdened by responsibilities that she did not want, it was up to her to do something about it. It was for this reason and because at that precise moment the
something
appeared to be dancing in a crowd of perspiring twenty-year-olds that Kendra decided to join them. But fuelled by that chemical de-pressant—the alcohol she’d consumed that evening—she found that the activity did not uplift her. It did not bring about the desired secondary result, either, which was finding someone to shag at the end of the evening.

Cordie was all apologies for this as they walked home later. She herself had managed a very nice fifteen minutes of snogging with a nineteen-year-old boy in the corridor leading to the toilets, and she couldn’t believe that Kendra—whom she declared to be “dead-on-any-bloke’s-feet
gorgeous
, girl”—had not managed at least as much.

Kendra tried to be philosophical about this. Her life was too complicated to accommodate a man, even temporarily, she said.

“Jus’ don’ start t’inking you ain’t got it no more, Ken,” Cordie warned her. “’Sides, men being wha’ dey are, you c’n always get one, you lower your standards enough.”

Kendra chuckled. It
didn’t
matter, she told her friend. Stepping out for the evening had been enough. In fact, they needed to do this more often, and she intended to turn over a new leaf in the matter, if Cordie was in agreement.

Cordie said, “Jus’ tell me where t’sign up,” and Kendra was about to reply when they emerged from the gloom of the path that passed in front of Trellick Tower into Edenham Way. There she caught a glimpse of the front of her house. A car was parked to block her garage door, a car she couldn’t identify.

She said, “_Shit_,” and quickened her pace, determined to see what Ness had got up to in the hours they’d been gone.

She had her answer before she reached either the car or her front door. For it soon became apparent that the car was occupied, and one of the two people inside it was unmistakably her niece. Kendra could tell this from the shape of Ness’s head and the texture of her hair, from the curve of her neck as the man she was with lifted his head from the region of her breasts.

He reached across her to open her door, much like a kerb crawler dismissing a common whore. When Ness didn’t remove herself, he gave her a little push, and when that didn’t work, he got out of the vehicle himself and walked around to her door. He pulled her out, and her head lolled back. She was either drugged or exceedingly drunk.

Kendra needed no further invitation. She shouted, “You bloody well hang on right there!” and she charged forward to accost the man. “You take your hands off that girl!”

He blinked at her. He was much younger than she’d thought, despite being entirely bald. He was black, bulky, and pleasant featured.

He wore odd harem trousers like an exotic dancer, white trainers, and a black leather jacket zipped to his throat. He had Ness’s bag slung across his back and Ness herself under one arm.

“You hear me? Let her
go
.”

“I do that, she crack her head on the steps,” he said reasonably. “She bleedin drunk. I found her up in—”

“You found her, you found her,” Kendra scoffed. “I don’ fucking
care
where you found her. Get your bloody hands off her, and do it now. You know how old she is? Fifteen,
fi fteen
.”

The man looked at Ness. “Lemme tell you, she don’ act—”

“Give her here.” Kendra reached the car and grabbed Ness by the arm. The girl stumbled against her and raised her head. She looked like a ruin; she smelled like an illegal distillery. She said to the man, “You wan’ t’ stick it in me or wha? I
tol’
you I ain’t doin no free shots, innit.”

Kendra glared at him. “Get out of here,” she said. “Give me that bag and just get out. I get your number plates. I phone the cops.” And to Cordie, “You take down his number plates, girl.”

He said in protest, “Hey. I jus’ bringin her home. She up at the pub.

It clear she goin to get herself into a bad situation ’f she stays there, so I get her out of th’ place.”

“Like Sir Bloody Lancelot, eh? Get those numbers, Cordie.”

As Cordie began to go through her shoulder bag for something to write on, the young man said, “Fuck it, den.” He shook Ness’s bag from his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. He bent to look her in the face, and he told her to tell the truth.

Ness said cooperatively, “You wanted me to suck is the truth, innit.

You wanted it
bad.
”

He said, “Shit,” and slammed the passenger door. He went back to the driver’s side and said over the roof of the car to Kendra, “You better deal with her ’fore someone else does,” which resulted in Kendra taking note that the term
seeing red
was an accurate description of what happened to one’s vision when anger’s heat reached a certain degree. He drove off before she could reply: a stranger standing in judgement of her.

She felt utterly exposed. She felt enraged. She felt used and foolish.

So when Ness giggled and said, “Tell you, Ken, dat one got a prong like a fuckin
mule
,” Kendra slapped her so hard that her palm sent pain up the length of her arm.

Ness toppled. She fell against the house. She dropped to her knees.

Kendra surged forward to hit her again and drew her arm back. Cordie caught it. She said, “Hey, Ken. Don’t,” and that was enough.

It was also enough to sober Ness up, at least partially. So when Kendra finally spoke to her, she was more than ready to make a reply.

“You want the world to know you as a slag?” Kendra cried. “’S that what you want for yourself, Vanessa?”

Ness struggled to her feet and backed away from her aunt. “Like I bloody fuckin care,” she said.

SHE STUMBLED TOWARDS the path between the terraces of houses and from there into Meanwhile Gardens. Behind her, she heard Kendra call out her name, she heard her shout You get back home, and she felt a harsh bubble of laughter force its way up into her throat. For Ness, there was no home any longer. There was just a place where she shared a bed with her aunt while her little brothers slept on hastily purchased camp beds in the room next door. Under those beds, Joel and Toby had persisted in keeping their suitcases neatly packed for more than two months. No matter the time that had passed since her departure, the boys still believed what they wanted to believe about their grandmother and her promise of a life of eternal sunshine in the land of her birth.

Ness hadn’t once tried to make them see the truth of the matter. She hadn’t once pointed out the significance of the fact that they hadn’t heard a word from Glory Campbell since the day she’d left them on Kendra’s doorstep. As far as Ness was concerned, Glory Campbell’s disappearance from their lives was a case of good riddance. If Glory didn’t need or want her grandchildren, then her grandchildren certainly didn’t need or want her. But telling herself that week after week hadn’t done much to ease Ness’s feelings in the matter.

When she left her aunt in front of number 84 Edenham Way, Ness gave no real thought to where she was going. She just knew that she didn’t want to be in her aunt’s presence a moment longer. She was so-bering up more quickly than she would have thought possible, and with that sobriety came the nausea she otherwise would have felt the next morning. This propelled her towards water in which she might bathe her sweating face, depositing her on the footpath that ran along the canal at the top of the garden.

Despite her condition, she knew the danger of falling into the canal, so she took some care. She lowered herself to the footpath and lay on her stomach. She bathed her face in the greasy water, felt its oiliness cling to her cheeks, caught the scent of it—not unlike that of a stagnant pool—and promptly vomited. Afterwards, she lay there weakly and listened to the sound of her aunt searching for her in Meanwhile Gardens.

Kendra’s voice told Ness that her aunt was working her way past the child drop-in centre and into the heart of the gardens, a direction that would take her along the path winding between the hillocks and ultimately to the foot of the spiral staircase. She staggered to her feet, then, and knew the way she herself had to go: She headed for the duck pond at the east border of the gardens and then beyond it and through the wildlife garden with its boardwalk path that curved into a darkness that was at once sinister and welcoming. She was beyond the point of caring about danger, so she didn’t flinch at the sudden movement of a cat dodging across her path, nor was she bothered by the crack and crunch of twigs that suggested she was being followed. She just kept going, plunging into the darkness till she came upon the last of Meanwhile Gardens, which was the scent garden, and she registered the looming shape of its potting shed that marked the end of the path she’d taken.

She came to her senses there and saw she’d come around the back side of Trellick Tower, which rose to her left like the neighbourhood sentry and told her she was close to Golborne Road. She didn’t so much make a decision about where to go as she accepted the simple logic of where she would go. Her feet took her to Mozart Estate.

She knew Six was at home, having rung her earlier upon Kendra’s departure. She’d learned her friend had been entertaining Natasha along with two boys from the neighbourhood. That meant being a fifth wheel on a vehicle trundling to nowhere, so Ness had set out into the night alone. But now, Six was necessary to her.