“You know me too well,” he replied with a smile.
“Oh, Tommy. What have you done?”
“Ardent to a fault. That was always my weakness.”
“How can that be a weakness? Ardency leads to honesty, doesn’t it? What I mean is: It’s difficult to be ardent without making ardency known.”
“As I said,” he replied.
“Oh. I see. Ardency has prompted too much honesty? Hmmm. Still, having ardency as a weakness is far better than a weakness for . . . I don’t know . . . chocolate sponge?”
“Not if one’s true love is a baker, I daresay. However, having revealed what plagues my relationship with Daidre, I must say that I appear to have smoothed things over. For now. I’m sure I shall once again bollix things up in another few days.”
Footsteps came along the corridor in their direction. They heard Cotter’s voice, saying, “Mind she doesn’t get in your way, luv. She will do, when there’s food involved.”
Deborah glanced at Lynley as she rose from her chair, saying, “We have a guest . . . ,” and fell silent as Cotter appeared in the doorway. He was accompanied, Lynley saw, by a small Black girl who was holding a tray of cups and saucers. Cotter himself had a tray that bore the various accoutrements of afternoon tea.
Lynley looked at the girl, then at Cotter, then at Deborah. For the second time that afternoon and this time unaccountably, he felt hairs stirring on the back of his neck.
Deborah said, “Tommy, this is Simi Bankole.”
“Bankole,” he repeated.
“Yes. She’s only just arrived today. She’s stopping with us for a bit.”
12 AUGUST
BRIXTON
SOUTH LONDON
Monifa had slept only fitfully. Indeed, it could hardly be called a night’s sleep at all. Anxiety had pursued her. Pain had done the same: from her ribs to her bruises, she was a body that throbbed with hurt. As to the anxiety she was experiencing, her children were its centre.
She had more concern for Tani than she had for Simi. She knew very well that Tani would never return to the flat with Simi as long as the situation they were in went unresolved. But Monifa was afraid he would return there alone, either to see to her own well-being or to bring another protection order for her to fill out. If he did this and if Abeo was there, another fight would occur.
There was no way for her to reach Tani, either. He’d long ago programmed her mobile phone with his own mobile’s number, but that number was unknown to her. She rang him merely by touching his name on her phone screen, the same phone that was in the flat, left behind when she fled to Hamilah after slamming the iron into Abeo’s head.
Monifa sat up slowly, each movement describing a cry for help. It was time for her to be out of bed—on her way to find her children as well—but when she looked at the chair where she’d left her clothing, it wasn’t there. Next to the bed, however, was a cup of tea. It wasn’t even warm, telling her several hours must have passed since someone—most likely Alice Nkata—had placed it there. She wondered what she was meant to do: remain in the room till someone came for her or call out for assistance?
She saw, then, that a summery yellow dressing gown had been draped over the foot of the bed, a partner to the nightgown that Alice Nkata had lent her. Like the nightgown, Monifa found the dressing gown overly long, but she slowly struggled into it.
There was a built-in clothes cupboard next to the room’s door, and she opened this. Inside, there was little enough: one suit, one pair of highly polished shoes, a rack of seven ties, four white dress shirts, two pairs of neatly ironed jeans. Everything was spotlessly clean. Everything could have been hanging in a department store.
She closed the cupboard and went to the door, hearing Alice Nkata’s voice as she opened it. Alice was saying, “You ask me, caff’s the best alternative, Benj.”
“Win says main thing is we’re to keep her safe.”
“She’d be safe. She’d be with me.”
“No doubt she would do,” he replied. “But di’ you have a word with our Win? Bes’ do that before you make any decision. He knows more ’bout this than we do, luv.”
It was Benjamin Nkata speaking, whom Monifa had met last night upon his return from his shift driving one of London’s double-decker buses. He did the Number 11 route, he told her in an affable fashion. Gen’rally he loved it, he said, but not this summer. This summer it’d been like sitting at the gates of Hades, so hot had it been inside and so foul the humour of even his long-suffering regular passengers. As for the tourists . . . They were worse. And there were crowds of them because the Number 11 bus passed nearly every famous monument and tourist attraction in Central London. He’d heard it all from them, he had. Everything from “This is England! It’s supposed to rain every day!” to “Haven’t you people ever heard of air-conditioning?”