Kwame shifted beside her on the washing machine and when she glanced at him again, he was looking at her. His intensity was magnified ten times being up that close.
‘I’d been coasting, yeah?’ he said. ‘Then, like, April last year my cousin gets in a car accident with some dickhead boyfriend. Now she … she can’t walk and that. My grandad and my dog both die in summer. Just before Christmas, my mum loses the job she had while she’s been retraining to be a physiotherapist, yeah?’ Anika raised her eyebrows in sympathy. ‘Then I got suspended for not minding my own damn business, trying to break up a fight between Zay and some random jackboot prick. Can imagine how wellthatwent down with my olds.’ She watched Kwame’s lips as they pressed into a taut line. ‘But the arsehole ended up getting what was coming to him, anyway …’ He stopped, his expression halfway between amusement and anger as he looked at Anika’s face. ‘Don’t worry, baby girl,Ididn’t send him to his maker, none of my peoples did.’ He shook his head wryly.
‘That wasn’t what I was thinking,’ she said honestly.
‘Yeah?’
‘It wasn’t. That’s a lot of bad shit to happen to one person, that’sall.’
Kwame’s body relaxed a bit more against her, slow-bopping subconsciously to the music beyond the door. It had switched down in tempo to Amy’s ‘You Know I’m No Good’, an all-time favourite of Anika’s – music that felt like it was inside her bones.
‘Facts,’ Kwame replied simply. He drew in a breath. ‘What’s the worst shit that’s happened to you, d’you reckon?’
Anika took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Seventeen years isn’t long enough to have had too many shit things happen to me …’ she began quietly, hedging. Should she open up to him, of all people? A sorrowful pain was starting to force its way up the centre of her chest and she was grateful when Kwame interrupted her.
‘Seventeen?’ He arched an eyebrow again. ‘Hang on, how does that work … ?’
Anika shrugged. ‘My mum did some weird shit when she first enrolled me in school, timings were a bit off. I think it was around when … when my dad ended things with her for good.’
‘OK, so Dad left, that’s a step in a shitty direction,’ Kwame said with a dry chuckle.
Anika hesitated, but he wasn’t completely wrong. ‘True,’ she said, echoing his laugh. ‘He was never reallywithus, to be fair. He had some other family. He’d been in and out of my life, and …’ She sighed. ‘I’d only really see him occasionally.’ After that, Anika was quiet for what felt like an age, but Kwame seemed to know to remain silent. Patience radiated off him and she sensed his concerned gaze on her even as she avoided his eyes. Clearing her throat again, she could tell that Kwame was waiting for her to look at him. When she finally did, she saw a frown crumple the smooth skin between his brows.
‘For some reason I feel like you might have me beat on the bad shit, still.’ His lips pressed together into a smile that was a complex mix of compassion, curiosity and humour.
‘Maybe,’ she murmured.
Kwame gestured with his fingers like a magician, fanning air towards them and inhaling deeply as if to refresh the conversation. It sort of worked. ‘So how did you find yourself down in East … ?’
‘Sussex?’ Anika scrunched her mouth up, disapproving of the memory. ‘Like I say, Dad wasn’t in the picture. It was fine just me and Mum all through primary school and stuff, but then she meets some white man and he’s alleager. Clive.’ Anika grimaces and Kwame snorts out a laugh. ‘He asks her to marry him after like two months together; she gets all giddy and says yes. Next thing I know we’re in some small town with people eyeing us suspiciously at every turn. It was all right, though. Like, nothingmajorlyshit. Mum just got tired of him after a few years and I reckon he’d been cheating on her even though she never talked about that with me. She got a bit of money in the divorce and I think she wanted me to be a bit closer to my dad …’ Anika chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘So here we are.’ She had been fiddling with her bag as she spoke, pulling on a rogue thread that began to unravel, separating one of the seams. She stopped, looking over at Kwame, who was watching her hands and then looked back at her face. ‘And here I am.’
‘Yeah,’ he said softly. Anika felt sweat prickle across her forehead. ‘OK, OK.’ He sounded as though he was warming to a theme – or aiming to distract her. He sat up a bit straighter. ‘What’s, like, the thing that you’d change about your life right now if you could just click your fingers?’
Anika gave a cautious laugh and finally lifted her bag off her shoulder to put it to one side. ‘Wow. Not into the small talk, then, are you?’
Kwame shook his head earnestly.
‘OK, hmm … Well, I mean, there’s a pretty obvious one.’ She gestured around the small, dark room. ‘I’d like to have somemore … connection, you know? Mates? Not feel like I need to hide on my ones in a closet at parties?’ Itwasobvious, but she was surprised she’d articulated it to him.
Kwame laughed, his shoulder juddering against hers. ‘Yeah, OK, I hear that. Well, now you’ve got a mate.’ She looked at him and he burst into a few bars of ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ fromToy Story. His voice was good. He finished singing, then said, ‘If I could change something, it would be … like, to have a bit morecalm.’ His face was serious. ‘Look, I know I’m lucky to have both my parents about, us all together.’ He held up his hands, conciliatory. ‘But they’re like …’ Air puffed out of his cheeks and his brows knitted like he was arguing with himself. ‘Notstrictstrict. Like, I get it. But they’re always on us. Like hawks. And Zay, she doesn’t know how to just keep it mellow, do you know what I mean? Lately it’s always snip, snip, snip, pushing back all the time with Mum. She’s aggro, then Dad’s on at her, but then more so on atme, and … I dunno, man. It feels like a – what’s the word? Powder … ?’
‘Powder keg,’ Anika said softly.
‘That’s it. And the way they act like it’s my responsibility to be her keeper? It’s long. When I look at my sister … She’s my sis, yeah? But she’s my bredrin, too. We’re equal. And not in a bullshit way. Same way she’d protect me is how I’d protect her. No more, no less. They don’t get it, and she doesn’t get how much her behaviour blows back onto me.’ He blew out a frustrated sigh and Anika noticed tension making his jaw muscle tick before dissipating again. She tried to imagine having a family dynamic, even a turbulent one like that. All she’d really got from what he’d said was the love it must take to feel so strongly. ‘I just try to keep my head down, man,’ Kwame continued. ‘These ends are volatile enough, you know?’ He nodded towards the door.
Vaguely, Anika wondered if they even needed to be in the utilityroom any more, but it felt like they were in their own world.
And she didn’t want it to end.
Chapter Eight
Wednesday 4th July
The gurney below Anika judders. She’s being wheeled out of somewhere. She’s cold. Very cold. It’s like she’s regaining control of her body after a long time without any. The shivering starts slow, but suddenly accelerates, like she’s reclining on a set of springs. Bodies lean over her, their mouths covered with masks, their clothing the mint green of hospital scrubs.
‘OK, good, she’s awake …’ she hears a man’s voice say and then she’s moving again, protesting that she’s cold, her entire body trembling uncontrollably. Her consciousness seems focused on that one sensation, on wanting it to stop – and then it does, as abruptly as it started. The change feels like the flip of a switch, the contrasting stillness making the calm feel even more pronounced – a blanket of serenity.
Nextis the word. It begins to emanate from deep inside Anika like a satisfied mantra.
