The Fall (21 page)

Charlotte shook her head to chase away the ghost of the laughing polished girl, encircled with love. That girl was gone now, and she wasn’t coming back.

As she went home she remembered the kids outside her house, and tensed up with fear. But Keisha was there. She’d see them off. Walking on, she felt a deep relief in the knotted ball of her stomach that this strange girl had come to help her.

The kids streaming out of school didn’t notice much. It was three o’clock and they were done for the day, time to visit the sweetshop or watch telly. They definitely didn’t see Keisha standing there, sliding back against some bushes on the other side of the road. She tried not to be nervous. She’d a right to be there, hadn’t she? Her eyes were swivelling round. He wouldn’t come here. Of course he wouldn’t. He probably didn’t even know what school the kid went to. No, he wouldn’t come for her here.

Most of the kids were out now, a whole stream of them in their red jerseys, the noise of them like birds when you wake up really early and everything else is quiet. Keisha used to hear that noise as she walked back from the nursing home, that high chattering sound, no meaning in it. Every time a girl with black hair walked by, Keisha’s heart jumped up in her like a frog. No, that wasn’t her either, too tall. Christ, there were a lot of little black girls at this school. Not that she was really black. That was the trouble.

Then, just as she was drumming her foot up and down in impatience, there was Ruby, her glasses slanting on her nose. They’d been fixed up with tape – what had happened? Why didn’t they take her down bloody Specsavers? Her hair was corn-rowed, something Keisha had never done, since she didn’t know how. Ruby was holding hands with a bigger girl, a black kid with bunches in her hair, and they crossed the road further down from Keisha. A woman was waiting for them, young, skinny, a pretty sparkly scarf round her hair. Black, of course. Was this the foster-mother? No, she was too young. Who were these people taking Ruby home?

Keisha pressed herself further into the bushes as they crossed. As crap as it was to be this close to Ruby and not talk to her, it would be even crapper if the kid knew she was there. Not fair on her, was it? At their closest they were just metres away, and she saw the woman reach around to close up Ruby’s huge schoolbag. Ruby toddled off, the bag nearly as big as she was. Keisha wondered did the kid smell different already, of some strange person’s house. Not like hers anymore.

As the girls and woman walked away, Keisha peeled herself out of the damp bushes, looked all around her two or three times, and went the other way.

It was weird how things turned out. Her mum would have said it was God moving in mysterious ways, or some such crap. When Keisha went to Charlotte’s that first time, it was one of those things you just do without thinking. Even though she didn’t know her, and what she did know made her think Charlotte was a posh bitch, she went. To help her, to warn her. To find out what she’d seen. Fucked if she knew why.

She’d never expected to end up staying there, and if someone had told her she’d be living there she’d have said, yeah right, stop fucking about. Even though, let’s be honest, she’d nowhere else to go. But when she’d spilled her story out, all mixed-up and breathless, sounding like a loony, and Charlotte finally got what she was trying to say, that maybe, probably, her fella
hadn’t
been the one to whack off old Anthony Johnson after all, she’d gone all white like her face was being wiped over, and then she went, bam, whacking her head off the table. After that it didn’t seem right to go and leave her, all confused and crying, and anyway, where was Keisha going? She’d no money left for the hostel and couldn’t face those showers full of pubes again. Plus, and she didn’t like to think about this too much, there was definitely some reason Chris was after this girl. She’d seen something – but she obviously didn’t know what yet. So now, somehow, Keisha was living with the blonde bitch. It was mad. But there was nothing else for either of them to do.

After she’d hung round Ruby’s school for a bit like a nutter, Keisha set off back down to Gospel Oak. It was raining again, and she hunched her shoulders up against it. Getting a bus would have been quicker, but this way took her past the Church of Holy Hope, and freaky-ass as that place was, she was going there for the third time.

It was all bloody Charlotte’s fault. The day they’d got that crappy envelope off the nursing home was the same day Keisha realised they’d never pay all the bills, working in homes and hostels for strung-out druggies. No, they’d have to get better jobs if Charlotte had her heart set on keeping that overpriced flat.

But Charlotte wasn’t ready, a blind man could see that. Christ, it was a good day if she only cried two or three times, watching the news (story about prisons came on), doing the washing (Dan’s sock in the basket), or getting an email (some snooty mate of hers didn’t invite her to a cheese and wine night or whatever). It was like being around a leaky tap, her tears never all the way off.

So it was down to Keisha to help her, the poor little rich girl. But the daft thing was, even though Keisha had been dumped and punched and lost her mum and her kid and had to think about maybe putting that kid’s father in the nick, she really did feel sorry for Charlotte. She was like a kid whose puppy got run over by the ice-cream van. Like she didn’t fucking know, like no one had ever
told
her life could be shit. So Keisha was helping. She was going to see Pastor bloody Samuel.

She stood in the porch again trying not to feel nervous. It was just a church, wasn’t it? She could go in if she wanted. They weren’t going to make her be a bloody Christian just like them. In the porch were posters for normal things like cake sales and fair trade, as well as stuff like talks on witches and meetings about how not to get shagged before marriage (that’s what it meant, anyway). This was what her mum had believed in. This was the place Mercy had come every week for ten years. Keisha went in. It was quiet inside, the noise of traffic muffled. Her feet made a squelching noise on the rubber floor.

‘Welcome!’

Christ! She jumped, luckily not swearing out loud in church. Pastor Samuel was there in his tank top, carrying a mug in his good hand.

‘Yes?’ He peered at her through the dark of the church.

‘It’s Keisha, Mercy’s daughter. Mercy Collins.’

‘Of course, welcome, child. My old eyes.’ He came padding across the quiet floor, no hand free to shake hers, but grasping her round the shoulder with his arm. She tried not to look at the
nothing
coming out of his cuff. He smelled like a charity shop, of old clothes, but his eyes were kind. ‘What brings you back to us, Keisha? Are you troubled?’

Bloody hell, he didn’t know the half of it. She hadn’t stopped being troubled since that Friday night. ‘Wanted to say thanks for sorting the funeral and all. I wasn’t, like, I didn’t know what to do.’

‘That’s our job, here, and our blessing. We miss her greatly, but God has taken her to Him.’

Keisha dipped her head so he couldn’t see how much she didn’t believe this. It felt to her like Mercy was behind some kind of brick wall where she couldn’t hear or see or feel her.

He was looking at Keisha. ‘Your mother used to speak of her worries for you.’

‘I left him,’ Keisha said suddenly. ‘She didn’t get time to tell you, but I left him, Ruby’s dad. Mum never liked him, not even when we was at school.’ Crap, she was close to crying again. She screwed up her face.

‘You miss her very much, I think.’

‘Who? Me mum or Ruby? I miss them both.’ Stupid churchman.

‘You have difficult choices ahead, Keisha.’ He smiled at her again. It was annoying, what did he know about her choices?

‘Thing is, Pastor, I wanted to see that Mrs Johnson. She was kind, at Mum’s funeral. She made all them sandwiches, didn’t she? And she lost her boy.’ She spoke quickly, sure that God and Pastor Samuel would see through her.

‘Oh, well, her son is here now.’

Keisha must have looked shocked, because he explained, ‘Her other son, my child. I will call him. Ronald! Are you here, brother?’

He called and the door opened into the back part of the church, and a man came in. And in. He was fucking huge, muscles up and down his arms. There was a gym bag over his shoulder, and his black T-shirt was darker in patches with sweat. ‘Finishing up now, Pastor. Sent the boys to change.’ He looked at Keisha, and she looked at him, the muscles tight under his T-shirt. He had an earring in one ear.

‘Ronald, this young lady would like to see your good mother. Sister Collins’s child, do you remember? Mercy who helped with the flowers?’

‘Yeah.’ His accent was hard to pin down, London by way of Jamaica, and he was still looking at her. ‘Sorry for your loss.’

She blushed, her stupid light skin turning red. ‘You, too. I was here – I mean, I came to your brother’s funeral.’

His face was blank, smooth like polished wood. ‘S’good of you. You want to see Mum?’

She stared at her feet. ‘Yeah, er, just wanted to say thanks, like. She was dead kind when my mum . . . you know.’

Pastor Samuel was smiling away between them as if he was Cilla Black on
Blind Date
or something. Ronald – crap name for such a hot guy – shifted his bag. From outside in the yard behind the church, Keisha started to hear a noise like twenty boys shouting and running and slurping down Fanta.

Then she saw the first ones come streaming through, tall and short and pudgy boys, chins dribbling with soft drinks. They were all black, the boys. The noise was mad as they crowded round Ronald and the Pastor, almost swamping the smaller man, who held up his bad arm laughing. ‘Boys, boys, this is the House of our Lord, hush now.’

Ronald cleared his throat. Growled, ‘Oi, shut it.’ Instantly the kids shut up, some giggling a bit. ‘Now, get on home,’ he said, like a teacher at school, strict but with a bit of a smile that said he was nice, really, he watched
EastEnders
in the evening like you did. ‘Don’t be getting in no trouble on the way, you hear?’

‘Yeah, Ronald,’ they all shouted, and streamed out to the street like a bunch of balloons let go, giving Keisha a good old look on the way.

‘Ronald takes our class, Football for Life,’ said the Pastor, when he could be heard. ‘It teaches them to avoid crime. So much violence here, now.’

And Ronald had lost his own brother to it, stabbed in the neck. Keisha couldn’t look at him, thinking about it, thinking what she knew. It was the same as when she thought about Dan sitting in that prison up the road. ‘Er – you done it long, helping?’

He gave her another look. ‘A while. Go back home a lot, Jamaica.’

‘Ronald has many businesses.’ The pastor patted him with his bad arm. ‘He’s the rich man going through the eye of the needle, ha ha!’

Ronald hauled his bag up again. ‘Ain’t rich. Off to me mum’s now, if you wanna see her. S’round the corner.’

‘Now?’ Shit.

He shrugged. ‘She’ll be there now.’

‘Yes, yes, do go, child.’ The pastor waved them off with his stump, smiling like a retard. ‘Come again – this is your home too, as it was your mother’s.’

Something about the way he said
home
brought that feeling back to her, that she might cry. She swallowed it down. ‘Maybe. Thanks.’

Outside on the street in the noise and dust of traffic, Ronald walked so fast she had to half-run after him. ‘What sort of business?’

‘Eh?’

‘He said you had businesses . . . Is it the same as your brother?’ She’d no idea why she said that. Maybe she wanted him to know she’d seen his brother, she knew something about him.

But Ronald turned round, stopped. ‘My brother’s dead, yeah?’

‘I know! Sorry, I just – he owned a bar, didn’t he? Thought maybe you did too.’

He sighed. ‘Come on.’ They started walking again. ‘Anthony ran the club. I got a few out in Jamaica, beach bars, restaurants. But now I gotta sort out all his shit, since he died.’

‘Sure, sure.’ She was such a dumb-ass.

They’d reached a small terraced house a few streets away. From the open window was the sound of music and voices. It was just like her mum’s house, even the same smell of spices and oil.

‘Hang about.’ Ronald stopped her gently with his arm; it was like a beam. ‘You knew him – Anthony?’

She stared down. ‘Nah, just went to the club, one time.’ She didn’t say it was
that
night, the night he’d died.

Ronald looked at her hard, like her mum used to when she bunked off school. ‘Me mum, he’s her angel boy now, yeah? Like he never done a thing wrong. She needs to think that now, right?’

‘I didn’t even know him, honest.’

‘OK.’ He let his arm down. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Eh?’

‘You never said your name.’

‘Oh.’ Shit, she was dumb. ‘Keisha. Keisha Collins.’

He nodded and led her into the house.

The Johnson house was full of noise, and really hot, as if the oven had been going for hours. Over the noise of the TV and shouting in the back kitchen, Ronald yelled, ‘Ma! Someone to see you.’

More shouting. A thundering on the stairs and two little kids came running down, grabbing Ronald’s neck and legs. ‘Lift us! Lift us!’

‘Throw me over your shoulder! Uncle Ronald, throw me!’

‘All right, all right, keep it down, yeah? There’s a lady here.’

They stared at Keisha, the ‘lady’, with their round dark eyes. She was backing away to the door without realising; God, they were so like Ruby to look at. But Ruby was so quiet, creeping about like a little mouse. Not like these kids.

Ronald picked up one under each arm as if they weighed less than cushions, and jerked his head at Keisha to follow him into the sitting room and through to the back kitchen. An old man, old as the ones in the nursing home, sat watching telly, and out the back smelled of chicken and ginger.

‘Put those children down, Ronald,’ said Mrs Johnson. ‘Where have you been? All this time I am waiting for you to lift my rice cooker down.’

‘I’m here now, yeah? This here girl wants to see you.’ Now she was a ‘girl’. They all looked at her, fat wobbly Mrs Johnson, and a woman she’d seen at Anthony Johnson’s funeral, who seemed to be the mum of the kids, and there was the skinny sister too, with the afro. Her hair was tied under a patterned scarf now, and she was leaning up against the cooker in tight jeans.