“No way I can do that.”
“Why not? You never told them, did you? Your parents? About us, I mean.”
“No, but we’ve been in the market together, Soph. Someone would’ve seen us and you c’n bet on that. Market’s the first place they’d look for her. And when Simi’s not there, Mum’s going to know I’m behind it cos Simi’s been dead chuffed with everything she’s been told about her ‘initiation,’ so she bloody well isn’t going to run off on her own. All it’ll take is jus’ one person in Ridley Road saying, ‘What about that girl been seen with your Tani?’ And then tha’s that. A few more questions and they have your name and off they go. No, I need to find a place for her where she can’t be got to.”
“Care might be the answer.”
“I can’t do that to Simi.”
“What other answer is there?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t have her going into Care cos what happens next? When does she come out? Does she ever come out?”
“She comes out when your parents agree not to find a husband for her.”
“They won’t agree to anything. Ever. My dad won’t agree and my mum ends up doing whatever he tells her. So Simi goes into Care and gets punished for something they want to do.”
“Care isn’t a punishment, Tani.”
“Bloody hell it isn’t. And how’s she supposed to see things? How’s she goin’ to feel other than scared out of her mind?”
“But you’ll have to get her out of their control, your mum and dad, at least till someone can talk to them about whatever plan they have in mind for selling Simisola.”
“Yeah? Who’s going to talk to them?”
They were silent again, considering this. Sophie scratched her head, found a pencil she’d stowed behind her ear, brought it out, played with it between her fingers. She tilted her head with a sudden thought, saying, “Tani, do you think . . .”
He waited. When she didn’t go on he said, “What?”
“Well, it’s this and could be it’s too dumb. But is there anything you can hold over them? Either one of them? Both of them? To keep Simisola safe from being sold for a bride price?”
“Hold over them how?”
“Like blackmail. P’rhaps something they’re doing that they don’t want anyone to know they’re doing? Only you do know and you tell them you’ll not say a word to anyone about it long ’s Simisola’s kept safe.”
“What would they be doing? Selling drugs out ’f the butcher shop? Running a sex ring? Tha’s not on. And Mum hardly ever leaves the flat.”
“Could there be something your dad’s doing on his own, then? Something he doesn’t want your mum to know?”
Tani considered this. There was the fact that his dad left many nights, returning only in the early hours of the morning. He’d always reckoned his father had gone down the pub or to his men’s club, but could be he was up to something. Gambling, betting on horses, bringing immigrants illegally into the country, smuggling something heavily taxed.
“Could be,” he said. “He’s gone at night. A lot, this is. Gen’rally he comes back in the morning, though.”
“What if you followed him?”
“I could do that. But what if what he’s doing in’t secret or illegal? Then what?”
“Then you and I think what to do next. Meantime and just in case, you must get Simi’s things together so you can get her out of there fast if you need to.”
MAYVILLE ESTATE
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
As things turned out, Tani had the opportunity for discovery that very night. Abeo was a brooding presence at the evening meal. Even the egg rice went no distance to alter his mood. Nor did the asun Monifa had plopped onto the table as a starter, despite the ram meat she had managed to find and the ewedu soup she’d also prepared. She had everything ready for the moment Abeo came into the flat, his shirt heavily bloodied from a day in the butcher shop. Whatever he’d been cutting up had given him the unappetising appearance of a forensic pathologist after an autopsy. It would have been more pleasant for the rest of them to dip into the meal had he changed his shirt, but no one was about to recommend he do that. Or ask him. It seemed that—without consulting one another—the three other members of the family had decided that averting their eyes was a better course of action. So aside from the moment when Abeo pushed back from the table for the stomach-turning ritual of blowing his nose and tossing his paper napkin onto the floor, there was no other noise save chewing, swallowing, and whatever voices reached them from beyond the windows and open door of the flat.