Peace Page 4

  I started to walk around the small group even though it meant stepping into the road. But Eva, who was completely unaware of the potential threat, didn’t alter her course and would have walked between the two men if I hadn’t caught hold of her arm and steered her away with me into the road.

  “Why are we walking in the road? You trying to get us run over?”

  “Didn’t you see the knife in his hand?”

  “Knife?”

  “Look!”

  She turned, saw the knife in the boy’s hand and immediately fell silent, her steps slowing until she eventually stopped to stare anxiously at the commotion.

  “You take your job too seriously,” the young boy could be heard saying to the bus driver as if he were a school teacher explaining a difficult concept to a group of primary school children. The rest of what he was saying couldn’t be heard from where we stood. He walked off moments later with a swagger, making his way swiftly through the small crowd like a shark cutting through choppy water, his jerky confident gait making me wonder why it had to take a brutal encounter before a boy could start to feel like a man. The bus driver stayed where he was, still unable to move, it seemed, as he no doubt thought about just how close he had been to becoming one of the nightmares we constantly read about in newspapers or saw on the news.

  We were able to gather from the other people milling around that the commotion had started because the young man didn’t have his fare and had pulled out a knife on the bus driver when he dragged him off the bus in a misguided attempt to enforce fare payment. By the time we had moved away from the crowd and the pitifully, bewildered figure of the bus driver, our previously happy banter had been completely silenced.

  “Can you believe someone could have been stabbed over bus fare?” Eva remarked quietly after a while, one of her masks slipping to reveal her fear.

  “I know. Scary ain’t it?”

  “It’s hard living here. It’s so hard to stay positive when stuff like that happens. I hate all this.”

  She gestured to our bleak surroundings and I followed the sweep of her hand along the decaying brown of the large rambling estate we were walking past and a tatty-looking patch of littered green which was being visited by a dog relieving itself.

  “I know.”

  I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better so I didn’t say anything. She spoke again after a few moments of silence.

  “Thanks for pulling me away just now. I didn’t even notice that something was about to kick off,” she said, the mask slipping back into place. “First you get me looking all ghetto fabulous with these plaits.” She flicked the single plaits I had braided for her a week ago for emphasis. “Then you go and save my life on top.”

  I laughed at the phrase ‘ghetto fabulous’ which I had heard her use before.

  “You love that ‘ghetto fabulous’ phrase, don’t you?”

  “Trust me; the only good thing about living in the ghetto is that damn phrase!”

  We laughed, choosing to forget the incident that had just occurred and take our easy laughter into my new flat on the second floor of a red-brick, four-storey block.

  The flat was a tired-looking one-bedroom flat with fading magnolia walls that met tattered black plastic floor tiles. It consisted of a tiny kitchen that was directly opposite the bathroom. Straight ahead were two doors. The door on the left led to the living room, the other to the bedroom. It wasn’t much, but from the excitement Eva displayed when I brought her here a few days ago, it could have been a luxurious penthouse overlooking the river. To me it was simply a place; an empty shell that would soon house another empty shell. But the more excited she got, the more I found myself sharing her enthusiasm and I was reluctantly beginning to see the potential for an inviting home, even though no house could ever really be called a home now that he was no longer with me.

  Eva took my handbag and the carrier bag I had in my hand and went into the living room. I entered the kitchen with our takeaway. As I pulled out some plates, the same plates that had sat ignored outside her bedroom door what seemed like years ago, I heard the jingle of my mobile phone echo around the empty flat.

  “It’s someone called Daniel,” Eva shouted from the living room and the hand that was reaching up towards the cupboard froze in mid-air. It took a moment to realise she hadn’t answered the call yet and was only reading out his name from the caller identification displayed on the screen.

  “Don’t answer please,” I shouted quickly.

  “All right. Who is he anyway?”

  “Just some idiot,” I grunted when the phone finally fell silent and my hand was able to continue its journey toward the cupboard.

  A week had passed since our talk in the kitchen, but the memory of what I had let Daniel do to me was still burning fiercely in my mind. A lot had changed during that short space of time, especially Eva, and it was hard to believe that she was the same person I had lived beside for all those months. I was now starting to see that the haughtiness that had previously irritated me was one of many masks she wore to hide her shyness. Most of the time she came across as self-assured, but her masks would sometimes slip, revealing a girl who was always fearful and who often struggled to exert control over the world around her.

  Most of my time over the past two years had been spent alone as I didn’t like mixing with other users, but didn’t want to live a double life around people who weren’t like me. Being around her was a refreshing change after a long time locked in a dark room with only my grim thoughts for company. It was as if a window had unexpectedly appeared in the gloom so that I could look out on the outside world.

  But I kept a lot from Eva.

  She knew about the heroin, but it appeared as if she had chosen to ignore that aspect of my life and pretend it didn’t exist. But I sometimes found her staring at me with a perplexed expression and I assumed that something I had said or done had reminded her of what I was. And I could never tell her about Daniel or some of the other things I did to get money.

  Things were the best that they had been for a long, long time. But it wasn’t easy, and every day spent venturing into this new ‘normal’ world filled me with fear. Fear that it would all be taken away like so much else had been stolen from me.

  Chapter 5

  I started to see that Nicola wasn’t the friend I thought she was one bright wintry day after my chance meeting with Mohamed. It was lunchtime and we left the college grounds accompanied by two boys we had secretly started to call ‘the fan club’ as they were both besotted with Nicola and had taken to following her everywhere. I had stayed a few paces behind them as we walked down the road that was heaving with assorted groups of other college students, watching the ‘fan club’ as they clamoured for Nicola’s attention.

  “Are you comin’ to muh cousin’s birthday party, Nicola?” one of her fans asked. He was a scrawny light-skinned boy with a head full of unruly twists.

  “Maybe,” Nicola said, sneaking a look back at me to roll her eyes.

  “You said you’d come, Nicola.” His angst at the thought that Nicola wouldn’t go to his cousin’s party made his voice a pitch higher.

  “Den stop asking me!” she snapped.

  Seeing an opportunity to get her attention, the other fan, a chubby guy who reminded me of a teddy bear, spoke next.

  “If you ain’t going, me an’ you should go pictures instead,” he offered, his attention momentarily caught by a group of girls walking towards us.

  Nicola’s eyes narrowed as they flicked jealously in the direction his attention had been drawn and then back at him.

  “Please! Like I’d go anywhere wid you! I don’t want people thinking you’re my man!”

  She laughed cruelly.

  “Don’t be like dat, Nicola,” the teddy bear guy replied, looking genuinely hurt. She ignored him.

  “Yeah, I’ll try and come,” she said addressing the skinny one.

  “Wicked!” He beamed at her. “We’ll catch up in da canteen later.�
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  They walked away, the chubby guy throwing a few morose glances back at Nicola, obviously still hurt by her slight.

  “Thank God! Dey’re so annoying!” Nicola cried as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “They’re not that bad,” I said laughing. “Anyway, guess what happened to me yesterday.”

  I was about to tell her about my conversation with Mohamed when we heard someone calling out to us from across the road, shouting to be heard above the noisy traffic. It was Mohamed. He waved at me and started to make his way across the busy road.

  “Look. Look!” Nicola exclaimed. “It’s dat fit guy I always see in da canteen... Look he’s coming over! Do I look all right? Why is it dat guys always come an’ check me when I look rubbish?”

  It was then that I realised my mistake. Mohamed hadn’t been waving to me, he had been waving to Nicola.

  And it wasn’t surprising. Nicola was the stunning one whilst I was the one men usually knocked out of the way in their haste to reach her. She had recently had her hair cropped into a precision haircut which had a long sweeping fringe, her make-up had been artfully applied to make the most of her small, cute features and she looked like she had just stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine in her long, leather coat and knee-length black boots. I was dressed in my usual attire of a tracksuit under my duffle coat and always appeared dowdy, especially next to Nicola.

  As I watched Mohamed cross over to us, the hopeless dreams I had entertained about him crumbled and my heart began to plummet to the bottom of its rollercoaster. He soon reached us and I watched Nicola look up at him with a coy smile, awaiting the usual chat-up lines she heard a million times a day.

  But her smile quickly changed to a look of disbelief when Mohamed walked straight past her and up to me.

  “Y’all right?”

  “Hi,” I said nervously after a few seconds of stunned silence.

  Nicola had recovered by then and took a step closer to us, half stepping in front of me.

  “Hi, I’m Nicola,” she said smiling.

  But all she got in return was a dismissive “Hi” before he turned his attention back to me.

  “Where are you off to?”

  “We’re on our way to the fish and chip shop,” I said, nervously noting that we were now drawing the attention of most of the other college kids walking by.

  I was almost relieved when a male voice called out his name from the other side of the road.

  “I was gonna show you something but I’ve got to go,” he said as he waved at the person who had called him. “What’s your name anyway?” he asked as he was starting to back away from us.

  “Peace.”

  “Peace?” he echoed thoughtfully. “That’s a really nice name. Later, Peace.”

  He smiled and walked away, leaving me to face a bewildered Nicola.

  Explaining what had happened the day before, I expected her to be as excited as I was, but the more I spoke, the cloudier her expression became.

  “So why didn’t you tell me dis before?” she asked petulantly, her high-heeled boots making sharp, angry tapping sounds as we walked into the warm, sweet smelling chip shop.

  “I called you yesterday but your phone just kept going to voicemail. I wish I could show you that picture he drew of me, it was—”

  “Huh, I don’t even know why you’re feelin’ so sweet,” she said sharply.

  “W-what do you mean?”

  “It was jus’ a drawin’, man. Dat guy wouldn’t even go for someone like you anyway, so shut up about it.”

  Her words and tone had cut through me like a hot knife gliding easily into soft flesh. Nicola had never spoken to me like that before.

  She quickly changed the subject but the dark cloud that had descended on her remained. She only brought up the topic of Mohamed after lunch when we walked back to college.

  “Look, Peace, I didn’t mean to sound harsh before.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “What I meant to say before was dat he seems like a player. You’re too sweet an’ decent for someone like dat,” she added with a smile.

  I returned the smile, not wanting any tension between us. But her earlier words were still gnawing at me. We hugged awkwardly and parted to go to our different classes.

  Her words stayed with me for the rest of that day and they were still ringing through my head when I got to the underground station and saw Mohamed sitting on the platform. I stopped and stared at him sadly, wanting desperately to hold on to the little dreams I had spun around the brief conversation we’d had on the train. This was another opportunity to speak with him, but Nicola’s words were still there and the blunt truth of them couldn’t be ignored. I decided that the best thing to do would be to make my way to the other end of the platform and hope he wouldn’t see me amongst the other passengers waiting for the train.

  But I took too long to move away, and before I knew it, he had looked up and seen me staring at him, jumped up from his seat and come bounding over to me.

  “I’ve been waiting ages for you,” he said as soon as he reached me. He seemed nervous for some reason. “I was just about to give up and go home when you came.”

  “Y-you were waiting for me?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I wanted to give you this.”

  He held out what looked like an A3 sheet of paper that had been rolled up into a tube. I took it carefully from him and tried to search his face, but he kept his head down.

  When I unrolled it, I could only stare in silence at a charcoal drawing of me against snow-white paper. He had used heavy, sweeping strokes to draw my face and neck, skilfully smudging some of the sweeping lines that made up the eyes to create an ethereal sadness that leapt out from the page.

  Do you like it?”

  I gazed up at him, expecting to see the amused smile he always seemed to wear around me, but instead saw two dark eyes staring down at me with hopeful apprehension. He looked adorable, like a schoolboy who was expecting to be told he had done something wrong.

  “Do I like it? Oh my God, I can’t believe how good this is.”

  He relaxed and let out a deep breath before a wide, happy smile evicted the apprehension I had seen in his eyes only a moment ago.

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course, especially the hair.” The smile widened.

  “Yeah, well your face was still in my head yesterday and I was trying to picture what you’d look like with your hair out so...well... I’m glad you like it.”

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled warmly at me before he turned toward the sound of the train as it swept into the station.

  “Looks like your train’s here,” he stated.

  “Aren’t you getting this train?”

  “Nah, I’m kinda hungry so I’m gonna head back to get something to eat.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, barely able to conceal my disappointment and I stared glumly at the train as if it were another woman on her way to steal the love of my life away.

  “Why don’t you come?” He smiled again at the look of astonishment on my face. “Come on,” he added, pulling me by the arm and we left the tube station.

  The rest of that night had seemed magical to me then, but looking back on it now I can see that it had been anything but magical. We had found a grotty takeaway shop and sat down to greasy chicken and chips, and I was so nervous at being alone with him, that I only managed a few mouthfuls of food whilst he wolfed down his meal. He talked as if he had known me for years and the thing that had struck me at the time was that he seemed to be a totally different person from the cocky, confident young man I used to watch from a distance. He had talked about his relationship with his parents, about how much pressure they put on him as the oldest boy to excel, meet their expectations and set a good example for his younger siblings. He had also talked about how much he loved art and that it hurt him to not be able to pursue it.

  What I remember most about that night was how vulnerable and lonely he appeared to
be even though he was one of the most popular people at college. He also appeared to need something from me, although all I did was listen to him talk.

  After we left the chicken place, we had walked around for a while talking, finally taking refuge from the blustery December cold in a coffee shop. We stayed there for the next few hours, talking about any and everything from music, to art and even television programmes we both liked, arguing light-heartedly about the merits of shows we had differing opinions on. When the coffee shop closed for the night, we were forced to make our way back to the train station and make the journey we should have made hours earlier.

  “About the drawing, thank you. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever given me,” I said to him when we were on the train.

  He had stared at me, looking slightly amused for a few seconds and I had automatically turned my head away as I usually did whenever he held my gaze.

  Catching my chin in his fingers, he turned my face gently round to his and kissed me softly on the lips.

  I remember clearly the mixed feelings of nervousness, amazement and finally pleasure, especially when he had leaned over and kissed me again properly.

  He left a short while later, leaving me wearing a goofy grin all the way home.

  I wince now as I remember how happy I had been as I drifted home on a cloud of dreams, having no idea of what was to come. But before all of that were six months of what I saw as the happiest of my life, a time when it seemed as if spring had entered my world and was there to stay. I had felt like Cinderella, having shed the rags I wore in those days in the form of excess weight, and transformed myself from a size eighteen to a size fourteen. I felt pretty, and although I was getting a lot more male attention, it often passed unnoticed as I had everything I would ever want in the form of Mohamed.