Joel nodded. He was concentrating hard. He had the distinct feeling that Luce Chinaka was leading up to something important and dreadful, so he felt wary.
She continued. “Essentially, Toby has trouble both processing and retrieving information, Joel. He has a language disability complicated by what we call a cognitive dysfunction. But that,” Luce fl uttered her fingers as if to wave the words away and make what she had to say sensible to a twelve-year-old boy for whom every word sounded like another step on the familial trail of tears he and his siblings had been treading for ages, “is just how we label things. The real issue is that a language disability is serious because everything we’re taught in school depends first and foremost upon our capacity for taking it in in the form of language: words and sentences.”
Joel could tell that the woman was making her explanation simple for him to understand because he was Toby’s brother and not Toby’s dad. He wasn’t offended by this. Rather it felt oddly comforting, despite the trepidation he was feeling about the entire discussion. He expected that Luce Chinaka was a very good mother. He pictured her tucking her three children into their beds at night and not leaving the room till she made sure they’d said their prayers and received her kiss.
“Good,” she said. “But now we come to the crux of the matter. You see, there are limits to what we can do for Toby here in the learning centre. When we reach those limits, we have to consider what we’re going to do next.”
Alarms went off in Joel’s head. He said, “You sayin you can’t help Toby or summick? You want him to leave?”
“No, no,” she said hastily. “But I do want to develop a plan for him, which we can’t do without a broader assessment. Call it . . . well, call it a study of him. Now, everyone needs to be involved in this. Toby’s teacher at Middle Row School, the learning centre staff, a doctor, and your parents. I see from the records that your father is deceased, but we’d definitely like the opportunity to have a meeting with your mum. We’ll need to begin by having you give her these documents to read and after that—”
“Can’t.” It was the only word Joel could manage. The thought of having his mother here, in this offi ce, facing this woman, was too much for him, even though he knew it would never happen. She wouldn’t ever be allowed out on her own, and even if Joel could fetch her from the hospital, Carole Campbell would have lasted less than five minutes in the presence of Luce Chinaka before she crumbled to bits. Luce looked up from the paperwork she’d been removing from Toby’s file. She seemed to dwell on the word can’t, and she seemed to compare it to everything she knew about the family so far, which was very little and had been deliberately kept that way by the family itself. She made an interpretation. “Your mum doesn’t read?” she asked. “I’m sorry. I did assume because her name’s on the paperwork . . .” Luce brought it closer to her face and examined what Joel knew had to be his aunt’s hasty scrawl.
He said, “Dat’s . . . That’s Aunt Ken’s writing.”
“Oh, I see. Kendra Osborne is your aunt, then, not your mum? She’s your legal guardian?”
Joel nodded although he had no knowledge of what made someone legal or not.
“Is your mum deceased as well, then, Joel?” Luce Chinaka asked. “Is that what you meant when you said she couldn’t read this?”
He shook his head. But he couldn’t and wouldn’t tell her about his mother. The truth was that Carole Campbell could read as well as any person alive. The additional truth was that it didn’t make any difference if she could read or not. He reached for the papers that Luce Chinaka held, and he said the only words that he could manage, which were the only words that told the truth of the matter as Joel saw it. “I c’n read it,” he told her. “I c’n take care of Toby.”
“But this isn’t about . . .” Luce sought another way to explain. “Oh, my dear, there needs to be a study done and only a responsible adult can give approval for it. You see, we must have quite a . . . well, let’s call it quite a thorough examination of Toby, and it must be done by—”
“I said I c’n do it!” Joel cried. He grabbed the papers and crumpled them to his chest.
“But, Joel—”
“I can!”
He left her watching him in a mixture of confusion and wonder as he went to fetch his little brother. He also left her reaching for the phone.
Chapter
13 When Ness deserted her brothers on that day in Paddington, she didn’t leave the railway station at once. Instead, she paused behind a sandwich kiosk, using the excuse of lighting up a cigarette that she’d nicked from Kendra. As she dug in her bag for matches, though, she also eased her way around the kiosk so that she had a view of the WH Smith. Although it was crowded within the shop, she had no trouble picking out Joel. He was dutifully heading for the magazines, his shoulders slumped as they generally were and Toby in his wake as he always was.
Ness waited until Joel was in the queue at the till, his purchases in hand, before she went on her way. She couldn’t see what his choice was from among the various magazines on offer, but she knew he’d get something appropriate for their mother because she also knew that was just who Joel was: dependable and dutiful to a fault. He was also capable of pretending whatever he needed to pretend in order to get through the day. But as for herself, she was through with pretending. Pretending had got her exactly where she was at that moment, which was nowhere. Pretending changed nothing, and it especially did not change how she felt inside, which was full to bursting, as if her blood might seep through her skin.
Had she been asked to do so, Ness couldn’t have put another name to that feeling of being full. She couldn’t have named it simply as a child might: full of mad, bad, sad, or glad. She couldn’t have named it more complexly: full of the milk of human kindness, full of compassion, full of the love one might have for a helpless baby or an innocent kitten, full of righteous anger at an injustice, full of rage at life’s inequities. All she knew was that she felt so full that she had to do something to relieve the pressure building up within her. This pressure was a constant in her life, but it was one that had been increasing dangerously since the moment she’d sat in the audience of that ballet with the environment assaulting her and no way of explaining why she could not remain and watch those dancers bourrée across the stage.
She needed to do something. That was all she knew. She needed to run, she needed to push over a rubbish bin, she needed to snatch an infant out of its pram and trip its mother, she needed to push an old lady into the Grand Union Canal and watch her sink, she needed a way to get rid of the full. She began by leaving the environs of the sandwich kiosk and making her way to the ladies’ toilet.
Twenty pence was required to get inside. This fact made Ness so unaccountably angry that she kicked the turnstile and then crawled beneath it, not because she didn’t have the money but because the railway station’s demanding it of someone wanting to have a simple wee, for God’s sake, seemed suddenly outrageous to her, a final straw and she the camel. She didn’t even look around to make sure no one was watching her on hands and knees effecting her marginally illegal entry. She wanted to be seen doing it, in fact, so that she could allow her indignation a physical manifestation. But no one was there to see her, so she went inside and used the toilet.
An inspection of herself in the mirror came next, and this told her adjustments in her appearance were called for. She attended first to the top she was wearing, pulling it down and tucking it more deeply into her jeans so as to reveal the swell of her breasts dangerously close to the nipple. She scrutinised her makeup and decided that her skin was dark enough but more lipstick was called for. From her bag she brought out a tube long ago pinched from Boots, and this action—just the tube of lipstick coming to rest in her hand—reminded her of Six and Natasha. But the thought of her erstwhile friends produced a renewed surge of that damnable fullness. This time, the pressure was such that her hands shook. When she tried to apply the lipstick, she broke it and then felt the horror
of certain tears.
Tears meant a release of pressure and an end to the fullness, but Ness didn’t know that. Instead, she knew tears only as a sign of defeat, as the last resort and potentially the last gasp of the terminally weak and the decidedly conquered. So instead of weeping, she flung the ruined lipstick into the bin, and she left the ladies’ toilet.
Outside the station, she made her way to the bus stop, where the vicissitudes of London Transport forced her into fifteen minutes of waiting for a number 23 bus. When one finally came along, she elbowed past two women with pushchairs who were struggling to get onto the vehicle and she told them to fuck themselves when they asked her to stand aside and let them on first. It was crowded within and overly hot, but she didn’t climb to the upper deck as she would have done with Joel and Toby. Instead, she moved towards the back of the lower deck and placed herself near the exit doors, from which position she would at least get a breath of fresh air when the doors swung open at each stop. She clung on to a pole as the bus lurched back into the traffic and found herself eye to eye with an old-age pensioner, hairs bursting from his nose and his ears like minuscule antennae.
He had a seat on the aisle. He smiled at her, what appeared to be a grandfatherly smile until he dropped his gaze to her chest. He kept it there long enough to telegraph what he was looking at, and then raised his glance once again to capture hers. His tongue came out and made the circuit of his lips: the first, white with some kind of unappealing coating, and the second, colourless and cracked. He winked.
“Fuck off. ” Ness made no attempt to keep her voice down. She wanted to turn away from him, but she didn’t dare, as that would have left her unprotected. No, she needed her eyes on him, so she kept them there. If he made a move, she would be ready.
But nothing more happened. The old man gave her breasts one more look, said, “My goodness,” and shook out a folded tabloid. He adjusted it in such a way that the Page Three girl was well on view. Ness thought, Fucking bugger, and as soon as the bus lumbered to the stop nearest Queensway, she got off.
She didn’t have far to go, and she attracted a fair amount of attention on her way. Queensway was bustling with shoppers, but even so, Ness was something different. Her revealing clothing—some of it skimpy and some of it tight—demanded notice. Her expression and her gait, the first haughty and the second confident, succeeded in creating the impression of a female set on seduction. In combination, these elements allowed her to project such an air of danger that she was safe from approach, which was what she wanted. If any approaching was to be done, she would be the person to do it.
When she came to a chemist’s shop, she ducked inside. Like the pavement outside, it was crowded. The cosmetics were as far from the door as possible, but that provided a challenge that Ness had no difficulty in taking up. She went directly to the display of lipstick and made a brief study of the colours. She chose a deep burgundy, and without bothering to glance around to make certain she was not being watched, she slid the lipstick into her bag at the same moment as she reached to inspect another colour. She spent a few more minutes in the shop with her heart pounding loudly in her ears before she made her way to the door. In a moment, she was outside on the pavement and moving down the street in the direction of Whiteley’s, her mission accomplished.
It was a simple thing, really: the pinching of a lipstick on a day when the rest of the world was shopping and creating a diversion by their sheer numbers. By all rights, Ness shouldn’t have felt particularly triumphant. But she did feel that way. She felt like singing. She felt like stamping her feet and crowing. She felt, in short, completely different from the way she’d felt when she’d entered the shop. The rush of delight that washed through her seemed to alter her very substance, as if she’d taken a drug instead of merely breaking the law. Finally, she felt released from the pressure that had been filling her.
She strutted. She giggled. She laughed aloud. She would, she decided, do it again. She’d head towards Whiteley’s, where the pickings were better. She had hours before Joel and Toby would return to Paddington station.
That was when she saw Six and Natasha, just as she crossed over the road. They were tripping along with their heads together and their arms entwined. There was a little stumble to their gait that suggested they’d been drinking or drugging.
High with the success of her venture, Ness decided the time had come to bury whatever hatchet the past few weeks had produced among them. She called out to them good-naturedly, “Six! Tash!
Where you been?”
The two girls stopped. Their faces altered from expectant to wary when they saw who’d hailed them. They gave each other a look, but they maintained their ground as Ness approached.
“Happenin?” Six said with a nod at Ness. “You ain’t been round f ’r a while, Moonbeam.”
Ness read this slight rewriting of their mutual history as a peace offering. She made no attempt to correct it. She accepted it instead as given and sought her cigarettes. Custom suggested she offer one to each of the girls, but she hadn’t taken enough of her aunt’s Benson & Hedges to make this possible, so instead of lighting up and offending them when it seemed she had an opening with them, she brought out her newly pinched lipstick instead. She took it from its packaging and twisted the base till the cylinder of colour was fully extended and looking vaguely obscene. She played with it a bit, in and out and in and out, and gave her former friends a grin before she turned to the window of the nearest shop and used it as a mirror. She applied the colour and inspected her lips. She said, “Well, shit. Dat looks like I been eating roadkill, innit,” and she tossed the new lipstick into the street. It was a more-where-that-came-from kind of gesture.
“Got dat shit off th’ chemist up near Westbourne Grove. I should’ve nicked ’bout five of ’em, it so easy, you know wha’ I mean? So. Wha’ you two doing?”
“Not pinchin shit from Boots, an’ dat’s for sure,” Six said. It was a warning sign, but it was not sufficient to deflate Ness entirely. She said with a grin, “Why? You changed your lyin and thievin ways, den, Six? Or you got a man providin for you now?”
“Don’t need a man to get wha’ I want,” Six replied, and to demonstrate her point, she brought out a mobile phone and examined it, as if a pressing text message had just come in.
Ness knew she was meant to admire the mobile. It was part of the ritual. Cooperatively, she said, “Nice, dat. Where’d you get it, den?”
Six cocked her head and looked smug. Tash was less cool. She said with evident pride, “Got dat off a white girl over Kensington Square. Six go up to her, says, ‘Hand dat over, cunt,’ an’ I get behind her case she t’ink ’bout runnin off. She start to cry, an’ she say, ‘Oh please. My mummy going to be so cheesed off I got her phone nicked,’ and Six jus’ grab it and we push her down. Time she get up, we halfway to the high street. Easy as anyt’ing, wa’n’t it, Six?”
Six punched in a few numbers. She said to Tash, “Got a fag?” Tash obediently fished around in her bag and handed over a packet of Dunhills. Six took one, lit up, and handed the cigarettes back. When Tash began to extend them to Ness, Six said, “Tash,” in a way that told her what she was meant to do. Tash looked from Six to Ness, then back to Six. Knowing on which side her metaphorical bread was buttered, she stowed the Dunhills.
Six said into the mobile, “Hey, baby. Wha’s happenin, den? You got summick for your mummy or wha’? . . . Hell no. I ain’t going dat far. Wha’ you ’spectin to get off me I come all dat way? . . . In Queensway wiv Tash . . . Yeah, me and Tash c’n do dat, you got substance to make it worthwhile for us, y’unnerstan. Otherwise . . .” Six listened for a longer moment. She shifted her weight to one hip and tapped her foot. She finally said, “No way, mon. Me and Tash come all dat way, we too damn knackered to . . . Hey, don’t talk nasty or I sort you, baby. Me and Tash both set on you, and den you be sorry, innit.” She laughed and gave Nastasha a wink. For her part, Natasha merely looked confused. Six listened a moment longer an
d said, “Okay, but you be ready for us, mon,” before she punched the mobile off and looked at Ness with a satisfi ed smiled.
The smile was unnecessary as Ness, unlike Natasha, was far from dim. The constant me and Tash of the conversation had had its desired effect. Lines had been drawn. There was no crossing over. There was also no way of going back to how things had been before. For a hundred and one female adolescent reasons, Ness was anathema and she would remain that way.
She could have demanded an explanation for this. She could have accused or analysed. She was able to do none of this in the pressure of the moment, though. She was only able to make a stab at saving face for having crossed over the road to talk to the two girls in the first place. Saving face meant not caring. It meant not dignifying a slight by acknowledging it. It meant ignoring the fullness inside. Ness locked eyes with Six and gave her a curt nod. She said, “Whatever.”
Six said, “Yeah.”
Tash looked as confused as she’d looked during all the me and Tash of Six’s mobile conversation, with their implications of an equality that clearly did not exist between her and the other girl. Six said to Tash, “Le’s go, den. We got someone waiting.” And to Ness as she stepped aside to let the other girl pass, “You watch yourself, gash,” which put a full stop to the interaction.
Ness watched them go. She told herself they were two bloody stupid bitches and she didn’t want their friendship, let alone did she need it. But even as she assured herself of this fact—which was true enough— she felt driven once again. As a result, she moved towards Whiteley’s. There was lipstick waiting to be pinched by someone. Ness knew she was just the girl to do it.
KENDRA WAS LOADING her massage table into the Punto when Fabia Bender arrived on Edenham Estate in the company of two enormous and well-cared-for dogs: a gleaming Doberman and a giant schnauzer. Although Kendra, with a limited knowledge of canine breeds, would have been hard-pressed to identify the latter animal, she was impressed and intimidated by his size since his head reached above Fabia Bender’s waist. Kendra stopped what she was doing. Any move—precipitate or otherwise—didn’t seem wise.
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