Nkata had spotted a children’s play area across the lane, shaded in part by two London planes. He led the woman there, entering through the chain-link gate and taking her to what looked like an overturned wine barrel. There were four of these and they did service as benches. He sat her upon one and squatted in front of her. He saw that she’d begun to weep. He dug for his handkerchief—embroidered by his mum, who liked to keep her hands busy when she watched telly—and he handed it to her. She gazed at it and then at him. She began to thrust it back at him but he said, “You go ’head and use it. Tha’s wha’ it’s for.”
He waited while she took off her specs and pressed the handkerchief beneath each of her eyes. He tilted his head towards Bronte House and said, “Not a very nice bloke, tha’ one.”
She said, “He is crazy sometimes. But not always. More now, yes, but when I was young no.”
“He hurt you much?”
She glanced at him quickly and then away. She didn’t answer.
“Yeah. Wager he does. There’s places you an’ your kids c’n—”
“No!”
Nkata held up his hands, palms out. “Right, right. But b’fore I leave, I’m giving you my card. An’ if you decide to leave that bloke, you ring me. I know people who’ll help.”
She turned his handkerchief in her hands. She traced the initial on it: J. Seeing this, he smiled and said, “Jewel. Tha’s what she calls me, my mum. I got others with my reg’lar initials but tha’ one’s special, like a joke between her and me. I’m not much ’f a jewel, ’specially not with this scar on my face, but I let her call me that cos she got a lot of grief from my brother and I don’t ’ntend to give her more.”
She raised her head and gazed at him. Nkata found himself considering how afflicted she seemed, like someone bearing life rather than living it.
He said, “You were at that clinic when the cops came, eh? That clinic over Kingsland High Street. What’s that meant to be, that clinic?”
“I gave her some money,” she replied. “Abeo didn’t know. He wanted me to fetch it back.”
“You mean tha’s why you were there? To get money returned to you? From who?”
“Easter, she is called. Abeo wasn’t to know I took it, but before I could replace it he went into the family money for Lark. She needed to get the children school uniforms. That’s how he saw some was missing.”
Nkata jotted down the name Lark and asked for a surname, which Monifa didn’t have. Nor did she have any other details on the woman save that she was Abeo’s lover and that Lark and Abeo had children together.
“Where’d the money come from?” he asked. “This money you took, I mean.”
“From all of us. We all put money into the box.”
“Your kids ’s well?”
“All of us. The children keep a portion for their own use, I keep a portion for doing the weekly shop, the rest goes into the family money.”
“Lark’s meant to be part of the family, then?”
Monifa looked away, to one of the two basketball hoops in the playing area. “She bears more children for Abeo. I cannot. But with Lark, Abeo has two. Another is on the way.”
“An’ you lot here? You’re meant to support them?”
“The children—my children—they did not know. They thought the money was for our family.”
“You went along with that, did you?”
She returned her gaze to him. “There was not a choice.”
Nkata wanted to tell her that there was always a choice, but he saw little good in doing that, and for her there probably hadn’t been one anyway. Instead, he said, “So you took the money and gave it to this woman Easter? She need it like Lark?”
She looked back to the doorway of her family’s flat, across the playing area. He followed her gaze, but no one stood there. Still, she looked threatened, a woman who knew she faced displeasure, danger, and disrepute no matter what she said.
He told her what Barb had told him. “Tha’ clinic, Mrs. Bankole . . . ?” and when she looked back at him, “It’s closed down, it is. I got the word from my guv ’bout half an hour back. He and ’nother officer went there and met the removals men hauling everything away.”
She turned back to him, saying, “That must not . . . that cannot happen.”
“？’Fraid it did. Someone made a decision about it, I expect,” Nkata said. That Easter person, p’rhaps.”