The Fall (22 page)

She gave Keisha a dirty look. ‘Ma, it’s getting late. Do I have to go, like?’

Mrs Johnson gave her daughter a look that Keisha knew. It was the same one her own mum used to do. ‘I don’t want to hear another argument! Now put on some decent clothes – the world can see your bottom in those trousers, shameful!’

Rachel went out in a huff and Keisha backed away a bit more. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. Just wanted to say thanks, like, for your help with me mum.’

‘Oh my darling, such a small thing to do.’ Mrs Johnson came close, taking Keisha’s hands in her floury ones. She smelled like milk. ‘Starved you are, look at you. Tanika will make extra.’

‘Er, no, sorry, don’t want to put you out.’ But wait, they were asking her to dinner. Was this not what she wanted?

‘Come now, no arguments. Your poor mummy will see I take good care of you.’ She touched Keisha lightly on the cheek, leaving flour dust that Keisha didn’t wipe away. ‘Tanika, make more of those.’

Tanika, the kids’ mother, was forming a huge line of little patties and crimping them with a fork. She gave Keisha a little smile, sad and tired. She was darker than the Johnsons – Rachel was nearly as pale as Keisha, a gorgeous caramel colour, the bitch – but you could see the red rims and dark circles round her eyes. Under all the noise and talking, this house was sad, you could feel it. And the reason they were sad, well, Keisha wasn’t going to think about that now.

When Keisha and Mercy used to eat in the evenings it was usually on their knees, in front on the telly, and they hadn’t even done that for years. The Johnsons ate round the table, pulled out as far as it would go in the sitting room. There was the mum and daughter, Ronald, the daughter-in-law Tanika and her two kids – Anthony’s kids – and the gummy old man who, it turned out, was called Pappy. He was the father of the Johnsons’ dad, who’d died four years before. Keisha found out a lot about the Johnsons during this meal.

‘All those gangs, it was, coming round the club. Mr Johnson, he just dropped down dead with a heart attack.’ Mrs Johnson banged on her own chest.

‘Ma-a,’ said Ronald, irritated. ‘The doctor said it was his cholesterol. You’re obsessed with the bloody gangs.’

‘Cholestr’ol,’ huffed Mrs Johnson. ‘We never had this in my day.’ The same as Mercy, and like her mum’s house the table here was about to bust under all the stews, patties, bread, dumplings. Trying to control herself, Keisha ate more than she had since she could remember. Every mouthful of juicy meat and crispy plantain was just like being with her mum. It was as if Mercy was right there with her.

‘Pappy, wipe your chin,’ said Mrs Johnson. Her name was Asanta, Keisha would later find out, but everyone called her Mum or Granny. Pappy smiled all the time but didn’t talk at all. You didn’t know if he knew what you said or not. Rachel reached over and wiped the gravy off his face for him, making Keisha think about her nursing home and how he could almost fit in there, with his shuffling slippers and old tank top. But he was here, with his family.

‘Keisha, darling, have more rice. Thin as a shadow, you are – what would dear Mercy say? God bless her.’ Mrs Johnson raised her eyes to heaven.

‘Who is that lady?’ The little girl had been staring at Keisha, and her mother scolded her, holding up a spoonful of patty to the little boy, who was younger. ‘Tia, shush now. Come on, Ricky, eat up.’ Ricky – named after his dead grandad – was quieter than his sister, peeping out from behind his Sponge Bob Square Pants bib.

‘Who is she, eh?’ Mrs Johnson pushed more bread towards Keisha. She barely seemed to eat at all herself, between loading her family up with treats. ‘She is our friend. Her mummy is gone to Jesus, so she needs to eat her dinner with us.’

Tia stared. ‘Does she have a baby?’

They all stared at Keisha then, and she swallowed down her food. ‘Er . . . yeah, Tia. I’ve a baby girl, she’s five. What age are you?’

Tia stuck her nose up. ‘Five and a half.’ Everyone smiled. Pappy patted the little girl on her braided hair. ‘Where is your baby?’ Tia was still curious, liking the attention.

Crap. Keisha put down her fork. ‘She’s, well, some people are looking after her, now.’ She heard herself say, ‘She’ll be home with me soon.’ When she looked up, Ronald was watching her. Why did these nice people have to find out she’d lost her kid?

The kids’ mum was quiet, gentle. ‘What’s her name, your girl?’

‘Ruby.’

‘Pretty.’ She smiled.

Tia wanted attention. ‘Uncle Ronald, look what I can do.’ She flicked rice off her spoon and it spattered onto the table.

‘Oh, Tia,’ said her mum, tired. ‘You have to behave at the table.’

Ronald put down his fork. ‘Come on, up.’

‘Nooo!’

‘Come on.’ He picked Tia up over his shoulder, kicking and shouting, ‘No, no! I’ll be good!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tanika said quietly. ‘Her daddy died, you see. She misses him.’ She looked at the huge photo of Anthony Johnson that was on the dresser. ‘I don’t know how to tell her he’s not coming back.’

‘Oh,
Mum
,’ Rachel sighed, because Mrs Johnson was crying, dabbing her eyes with a tea towel that had a picture of the Queen on it. Rachel rolled her own eyes as she patted her mum’s hand. ‘You’d think we could go one dinner without crying, yeah?’

Keisha stared hard at her plate. What right had she to be here, with all her problems? They were good people. The only thing wrong with the Johnsons was that Anthony was dead. And here she was, in it up to her skinny neck, sitting at their table. ‘I should go, sorry.’ She tried to get up, banging her knees on the leg of the table.

‘No, no, you must have cake first.’ Mrs Johnson sniffed back her tears. ‘Rachel, get the cake.’

‘Aw, I have to go now! Since you’re making me work there, I should be on time, at least.’ Rachel was also what Mrs Suntharalingam would call a
cheeky miss
.

‘Your brother will take you. Ronald! Ronald! You will take Rachel to the club?’

Ronald reappeared, Tia trotting happily in front of him. ‘What? Say sorry, Tia.’

‘Sowee!’ The little girl was beaming. ‘Cake for me?’ Her little brother already had sticky crumbs over his face and hands, and Keisha fought the urge to wipe them off. Just then Tanika leaned over and did it. It was the same, Keisha thought, for mums. Somehow you were the same.

‘I’m going down the gym first,’ Ronald was saying. ‘She can get the tube like all the other staff.’

‘Always in the gym, what about your family?’

Rachel shouted, ‘Oh, so I’m staff, and you can run the place? How’s that fair? I don’t even wanna work there. I’m at university, duh!’

‘Technical college.’ Ronald crammed cake in his mouth.

‘Muuum!’

‘Oh my goodness, worse than the children, you two, fighting. Keisha, are you working now?’

All eyes on her again. ‘I was. Looking for some waitressing now, maybe.’

Then, as if it had been planned out, Mrs Johnson said, ‘You should give Keisha a job in the club.’

‘For God’s sake, Ma!’ Ronald exploded. ‘Can’t give a job to everyone just ’cos you met their mum down Tesco’s or something, can I?’

‘The Lord’s name in vain, oh!’

‘Sorry, Ma.’

‘And her poor mother passed on! And Rachel has her studies, and she fights with your customers, you said.’

‘They piss me off!’

Keisha looked between them, Ronald and his sister and his mum. If she worked in the club she’d be able to look everywhere, go into the office where someone had stuck a bottle into Anthony Johnson’s neck. But they were nice people. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ve enough staff, though. Better go.’

‘Ronald will give you a lift home.’ Mrs Johnson never gave up.

‘S’OK, I’ll get the tube.’ She grabbed her denim jacket. ‘Thanks, thanks for dinner, thanks, see you soon.’ Christ, it was hard to be polite. Easier when everyone was pissed off at you all the time.

‘Will we see you at church?’ Mrs Johnson called, but Keisha was out the door.

Ronald was standing on the doorstep with his car keys and gym bag. ‘Going now. Rachel’s not ready.’

‘Oh.’ She misunderstood him. ‘See you then.’

He pointed to his car. ‘Come on. I’ll drop you.’

‘But—’

‘It’s dark now, look.’

Getting into his little car, Keisha actually felt shocked. Imagine a man caring that she had to walk to the tube in the dark. And he hardly even knew her. She remembered Chris on That Night, leaving her to walk all the way from Camden in her stupid high heels.

‘Put your belt on.’ Ronald had his hand over her seat back, reversing.

‘Oh, sorry.’ She hadn’t been in a car for so long. Nervous, she babbled at him. ‘You don’t have to drop me, you know. My mum, she was the same, always saying, Oh, yeah, Keisha’ll babysit your kid or walk your dog or something. Like, without even asking me. She sent me to your brother’s funeral, ’cos she was sick then. Don’t know if you saw me there.’ He said nothing. They’d arrived at the station so she undid her belt. ‘Right, eh, say thanks to your mum for me.’ She got out onto the pavement, again looking round her swiftly. Just in case.

He leaned over and wound the window down. ‘Listen, if you want a job, come in next week sometime. No promises.’

‘No shit?’

He shrugged. ‘Just a trial. Rachel, she’s crap at it. You worked in a bar before?’

‘Done catering near ten years, and silver service, event bars.’ What hadn’t she done? As long as the pay was shit and the hours crap, there she was.

‘Give us a bell at the club then.’ He rolled the window up again.

‘Oh, thanks—’

He was gone.

So it was easy, this spying lark – if your mum happened to have had interfering Caribbean ladies as friends, who’d make their sons do anything they wanted. Keisha had gone home with a pound of ginger cake in Mercy’s embroidered bag, wrapped up in tinfoil. She put it on the table as she went into Charlotte’s. ‘Cake there, s’nice,’ she called. Then she saw something else on the table, a cheque. Looking at the amount, her eyebrows went up. ‘Char? Where you at?’

Muffled, from the bedroom. ‘In here.’

Keisha went in. She’d not seen inside Charlotte’s room before, but was fairly sure it didn’t always look like this. There were clothes all over the bed and floor. ‘Jesus, you moving out?’

Charlotte blew hair off her red face. ‘Selling stuff, like you said.’

That was Charlotte’s wedding dress there, in the long white wrapper. ‘How’d you get that cheque?’

Charlotte turned, a skirt draped over her arm, and she held out her hands. They were totally bare, the nails clipped short.

‘Fuck! Your ring! Are you OK?’

‘Yeah, sure. Like you said, it’s only jewellery.’ Charlotte rummaged in the cupboard, flinging things out behind her, jeans and jumpers and T-shirts.

‘Char?’

‘I’m fine!’ From inside the wardrobe came a little choked sound.

‘Come on, leave it out.’

She came out. Her face was shiny all over, wet and slick with tears. ‘It’s OK. I just can’t stop crying.’

‘Listen, I got a job. In the club, like you said. I can go there for a trial, they said.’

‘You did?’ That worked, and she was smiling through her tears. ‘That’s amazing!’

‘I met the brother, Anthony Johnson’s brother. He’s running it now. He’s . . . well, seems like a nice guy.’ She thought about how his muscles rippled, how he’d turned on her when she mentioned his brother.

‘He had a brother? No, don’t tell me, I can’t bear it. I have to focus on Dan.’

‘Yeah, well, I had it all today, didn’t I. His mum, sister, brother, grandpa . . .’

‘Stop.’ Charlotte wiped her face on a T-shirt. ‘I can’t think about it. So you’ll go and see what you can find out?’ A wavering smile was on her face. ‘This could be it, then. We might be able to show Dan didn’t do it?’

Keisha remembered the look on Ronald’s face, the anger and pain at whoever had killed his brother, but hadn’t the heart to crush Charlotte. ‘Could be, could be. Come on, let’s get the kettle on. There’s enough cake there to bust your guts.’

Things were moving on. It was summer already, and Dan had been in prison for nearly a month. Ruby had been away from Keisha, properly away, for a month. Her mum was dead and buried, so was Anthony Johnson. In just a few weeks everything had changed so much, it was like a picture turned upside down and shaken.

Ruby would be off school soon for the summer holidays, so Keisha wouldn’t have her sly little trips to hang out by the school gate. Maybe Ruby’d look back and this would be the first summer she really remembered, the summer when she was five-nearly-six, and her mum had left her with strange people. Sometimes, though Keisha tried not to, she thought about what Sandra had said. Adoption. Was it true? If she stayed away from Ruby to keep the kid safe, could she lose her for good?

If you only knew your mum until you were five, would you remember her? Ruby wouldn’t remember her granny much, despite all the hours of love and TV and sweets and kisses. There were times Keisha lay and thought all these things, waking up in Charlotte’s little room, all her stuff cramped up in one corner around Charlotte’s ironing board and box-files and a set of weights that must be Dan’s. Charlotte had so much stuff, it must feel like lugging round a massive suitcase all day long. Like you could never just walk away and leave it all, the Laura Ashley sofa and the machine that cut pasta for you, for fuck’s sake. For people like Charlotte and Dan and their friends, Keisha thought it must be like they literally got to a point where they couldn’t think what to spend their money on any more, so on came the pasta-machines and coffee-makers and what have you.

Those friends, they weren’t around much. When she wasn’t writing to Dan and getting the letters sent back, or arguing with her mum on the phone, Charlotte kept trying to call her mates and they just blew her off, seemed like. One time she’d gone to a party and she came home early and went in her room and cried for like three hours.

‘They all think he did it,’ she’d said, red and puffy. Charlotte was practically keeping Boots in business with all her tissues and eye-masks and Rescue Remedy. ‘They think he’s, you know, racist. And they don’t think I should stick by him, because of what he did. This guy asked me tonight how I could live with myself!’ She fiddled with her hands all the time too, drove you mad, it did. The white strip where the ring had been stuck out a mile. ‘But then I don’t know what to say.
Am
I even sticking by him? I sold my ring, I haven’t seen him in ages now. Am I even engaged?’ And the tears, then, the sobbing and snuffling and gulping in big gasps of air, blowing her nose on Kleenex Ultra-Balm tissues, not cheap at all.