What Came Before He Shot Her (56 page)

Dix wasn’t there. One of his two flatmates was, though. He directed Kendra to the Rainbow Café. Dix was working there, helping out his mum. Had been for the last three weeks, she was told. Had to give the bodybuilding a rest.

Kendra thought in terms of Dix’s doing damage to himself from which he had to recover. But when she got to the Rainbow Café, she discovered that this was not the case. His dad had suffered a heart attack on the premises, one serious enough to frighten his wife and his children into insisting that he follow doctor’s orders: five months of rest and no messing about with those instructions, Mr. D’Court. The man—only fifty-two years old—was himself frightened enough to obey.

But that meant someone had to step up to the cooktop and take his place.

The Rainbow Café comprised an L of tables that ran across the front window and along the wall, as well as a counter with old swivel stools in front of it. When Kendra entered, she went to that counter.

It wasn’t a mealtime, so behind the counter Dix was engaged in cleaning the cooking surface with a metal scraper while his mother put paper napkins into dispensers, which she had removed from the tables.

She had the salt and pepper cellars ranked in front of her on a tray as well.

The only customer present at the time was an elderly woman with grey hairs sprouting from her chin. Despite the warmth of the café, she hadn’t removed her tweed coat. Her stockings bunched around her ankles and she wore thick-soled brogues on her feet. She was nodding over a cup of tea and a plate of beans on toast. To Kendra, she seemed the complete embodiment of the What Could Be’s, a chilling enough sight.

When Dix’s mother saw Kendra, she remembered her, despite having met her only once. She assessed the situation as any shrewd mother might have done in similar circumstances, and what she saw she didn’t like.

She said, “Dix,” and when he looked up, she nodded in the direction of Kendra. Dix thought he was meant to take an order from someone, and he turned to do that but let out a breath when he saw who’d come calling.

The estrangement from Kendra hadn’t been easy for him. She was in his blood. He hated this, but he’d come to accept it. He didn’t know what to call it: love, lust, or something in between. She was just there.

As for Kendra, Dix still looked good. She’d known that she missed him but not how much.

Dix wasn’t a man to lie. He said, “Still lookin good, Ken.”

“You,” Kendra said, returning the compliment. She glanced at his mother and nodded hello. The woman nodded back. Her acknowledgement was pro forma. A tightening of the rest of Mariama D’Court’s face spoke much more.

Dix looked to his mother and they communicated wordlessly. She disappeared into a storeroom, taking the tray of salt and pepper cellars with her, leaving the napkin dispensers behind.

When Kendra asked when Dix had started working at the café, he brought her into the picture about his dad. When she asked what about his weight training, he said some things had to wait. He got in two hours a day just now. That had to be enough until his dad was well.

Kendra wanted to know how was he coping, what with competitions coming and not having enough time to prepare for them. He said there were more important things than competitions. Besides, his sister came around to help out every day as well.

Kendra felt a rush of embarrassment. She hadn’t even known Dix D’Court had a sister. She was too awkward in that moment to ask a single thing about her: older, younger, married, single, etc. She just nodded and waited for him to ask in turn about life on Edenham Estate.

He did, and just the way she’d hoped because that was his good-hearted nature. He wanted to know about the kids. How were they doing? he asked her. He turned to continue cleaning the stove. He seemed to give his complete attention to the task.

She said good, the kids were good. Ness was doing her community service without complaint and Toby was still topping up his education at the learning centre. She’d decided no further testing was going to be necessary for Toby, by the way, she added. He was doing that well.

And Joel? Dix asked.

Kendra didn’t answer until Dix turned back to her. She asked him if he minded if she smoked, adding that she remembered how he didn’t like it much.

He told her to suit herself, so she did. She lit a cigarette and said,

“Missing you.”

“Joel?”

She smiled. “S’pose. But I’m talking about me. I see you here and it all goes away, you know?”

“Wha’s ’at?”

“Whatever made us split apart. I can’t remember what it was, just what we had. Who’re you seein now?”

Dix breathed out a laugh. “You t’ink I got time to see anyone?”

“What about wanting to see someone? You know what I mean.”

“Don’t work like dat for me, Ken.”

“You’re a good man.”

“Dat’s right.”

“Okay. So I say it straight out: I was wrong and I want you back. I need you back. I don’t like life without you.”

“T’ings’re different now.”

“Cos you’re working here? Cos of your dad? What? You said there’s no one—”

“You di’n’t answer me ’bout Joel.”

And she wasn’t about to. Not just yet. She said, “We’re the same, you and me. We got dreams and we fight to keep the dreams alive.

People c’n fight better together than alone. There’s that and everything we feel for each other. Or am I wrong? You not feeling wiv me what I’m feeling wiv you? You not wanting to leave this caff straightaway and be wiv me the way we c’n be together?”

“I di’n’t say dat, Ken.”

“Then let’s talk about it. Let’s see. Let’s try. I was in the wrong about everything, Dix.”

“Yeah. Well. I can’t give you what you want.”

“You gave me what I wanted before.”

“Now,” he said. “I can’t give you what you want now. I ain’t a security service, Kendra. I know what you want, and I can’t give it.”

“What I . . . ?”

“You ain’t mentionin Joel. The cops. The barge burning. You t’ink I don’t know wha’s going on in your life? Wha’ I’m saying’s t’ings no different’n the last time we talked except you got more reason to be worried now you got two kids under the eye of the cops instead of just one. An’ I can’t make a diff ’rence in all dat. I can’t make it go away the way you want. I can’t make the
reason
for it go away. Like I said, I ain’t a security service.”

Kendra wanted to tell herself that he was being deliberately cruel to her instead of merely honest. She also wanted to lie to him, telling him that her request had nothing to do with Joel and everything to do with love and the future they might have together. But she was, at the moment, too stricken by his knowledge of her that was far supe-rior to her knowledge of him. She was additionally stricken by the fact that his mother had heard their conversation, as the satisfi ed expression on her face indicated when she emerged from the storage room with her salt and pepper cellars filled and ready to be replaced on the tables.

Kendra said to Dix, “I was thinking family. What we could be.”

“More to family ’n dat,” was his reply.

Kendra told herself that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Since there were parts of Joel’s story that she knew were true and supported by the statement of one Ubayy Mochi, there was also a slim chance that the burning of the barge was a one-off situation having nothing to do with the boys who’d been tormenting both Joel and Toby. In order to believe this, however, there were other parts of the tale that she had to ignore—such as Joel’s having a confabulation scheduled with a boy who’d earlier been in several nasty fights with him—but she was willing to do that. She largely had no choice in the matter. Joel was saying nothing else.

Kendra thought life might smooth out a bit. Fabia Bender’s return to the charity shop disabused her of that notion. She came on foot, accompanied as always by her two monstrous dogs. As always, they dropped to the ground upon hearing her command of “Down, dogs.”

They remained there like sentinels on either side of the doorway, a position that Kendra found intensely irritating.

“They’re going to scare away customers,” she said to Fabia as the social worker closed the door behind her. Rain was falling, and she wore a bright yellow slicker and a matching rain hat, of the sort one might see on a fisherman facing a raging southwester. It was an odd getup for London, but not, somehow, for Fabia Bender. She took off the hat but not the slicker. She brought a brochure out of its pocket.

“I won’t be a moment,” she said to Kendra. “Are you expecting a throng? For a sale or something?”

She said it without irony as she looked around the shop for an indication that at any moment Kendra was going to be fighting off two dozen customers vying for broken-down shoes and thirdhand blue jeans. She didn’t wait for a reply as she came to the counter where Kendra had been standing at the till, flipping through an old copy of
Vogue
from the magazine rack. She said she had been thinking of Joel.

Of Ness as well, but mostly of Joel.

Kendra grabbed onto the subject of her niece. “Ness’s not missed the drop-in centre, has she?”

“No, no,” Fabia hastened to reassure her. “She actually appears to be doing quite well there.” She didn’t tell Kendra about the effort she was making on Ness’s behalf with regard to her recently revealed and somewhat surprising desire for a millinery certificate. That wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped: so many young people in need and so few financial resources to meet that need. She placed the brochure on the counter. She said, “There’s something . . . Mrs. Osborne, there may be something more we can do for Joel. I’ve come across this . . . Well, not quite come
across
it . . . I’ve had it for a while but I’ve been reluctant because of the distance. But as there’s nothing like it on this side of the river . . . It’s an outreach programme for adolescents. Here, you can see for yourself . . .”

It turned out she’d come to tell Kendra about a special programme for adolescents who’d shown the potential for getting into trouble. It was called Colossus, she explained, and it was run by a privately funded group in South London. South London was, of course, an enormous commuting stretch for a troubled child living this far north of the river, but as there was no programme like it in North Kensington, it might be worthwhile to introduce Joel to it. They evidently had a high quo-tient of success with boys like him.

Kendra jumped on to the final part of Fabia Bender’s statement.

“‘Boys like him’? What’s that mean?”

Fabia didn’t want to give offence. She knew the woman standing on the other side of the counter was doing her best with the three children she’d taken into her home, but it was a diffi cult situation to begin with: She had no experience with children and the children themselves had needs appearing far greater than those which one busy and inexperienced adult could meet. That, and not some bad seed planted deeply within them and lying dormant until an appropriate moment arose in which to germinate, was why many children ended up in trouble. If Fabia saw a way to head off trouble, she liked to pursue it.

“I have a feeling that there’s more going on with Joel than what we’re seeing, Mrs. Osborne. This group”—she tapped her finger on the brochure, which Kendra had left on the counter—“provides outlets, counseling, job training, activities . . . I’d like you to consider it.

I’m willing to go over there with you—with Joel as well—to speak to them.”

Kendra looked at the brochure more closely. She read the location.

She said, “Elephant and Castle? He can’t be trekking over there every day. He’s got school. He’s got helping me out with Toby. He’s got . . .”

She shook her head and slid the brochure back to the social worker.

Fabia had thought Joel’s aunt would respond in this fashion, so she went on to her second suggestion. This was that Joel should have a male role model, a mentor, a friend, someone older and steady who could involve the boy in an interest beyond what could be found in the streets. Dix immediately sprang into Kendra’s mind at this: Dix, lifting weights, the gym, and bodybuilding. But she couldn’t go back to Dix with this suggestion after she’d already humiliated herself with an indirect and less than honest approach to getting him back into their lives.

That left the only other male that Kendra knew about, the man who’d been flitting on the periphery of Joel’s life since he’d started attending Holland Park School.

She said, “He used to see a white man over Holland Park School.”

“Ah. Yes. Through their mentoring programme? I know about the setup. Who was this man?”

“He’s called Ivan—” Kendra struggled to remember the surname.

“Mr. Weatherall? Joel knows him?”

“He was going to his poetry nights for a time. He was writing poetry himself. Seemed like he was always putting something in a notebook.

Poems for Ivan, he’d say. I think he liked it.”

Fabia thought this might be just the ticket. She knew Ivan Weatherall by reputation: an eccentric white man in his fifties with an advanced sense of social responsibility rare in people of his background. He came from a landed family in Shropshire whose landed condition could have developed within him the sort of sense of entitlement one frequently found in wealthy people whose wealth allowed them to lead marginally

—or entirely—meaningless lives. But perhaps because the family’s wealth had grown out of a nineteenth-century glove-making business, they had a different attitude towards their money and what was meant to be done with it.

If Joel could be encouraged to strengthen ties to Ivan Weatherall . . .

Fabia said, “I’ll phone the school and see if they still have Mr. Weatherall mentoring Joel. In the meantime, will you encourage him with his poetry from your end? I’ll be frank with you. It’s little enough—this writing of poetry—but it might be something. And he needs something, Mrs. Osborne. All children do.”

Kendra was raw on the subject of what children needed. She wanted Fabia Bender to be gone, so she said she’d do what she could to get Joel back into Ivan Weatherall’s poetry nights. But when the social worker left the charity shop, squashing her fisherman’s hat on her head and saying, “Come, dogs,” as she stepped out onto the pavement, Kendra was faced with an additional reality about Joel’s attending Wield Words Not Weapons. If he went back to that poetry event, he’d be out in the streets at night once again. Out in the streets at night put him in danger. Something had to be done to head that danger off. It seemed to Kendra that there remained only one way to do this. If Dix would not help her sort out the boys who were after Joel and Toby, she would have to do so herself.