What Came Before He Shot Her Read Online Free PDF Page B

directed not at her nephew but at herself as she abruptly realised she should have known right then, right on Christmas Day, what Glory Campbell intended. The moment Glory had made her airy an-nouncement about following her no-good boyfriend back to the land of their births as if she were Dorothy setting off to see the wizard and things were going to be as simple as tripping down some yellow brick road . . . Kendra wanted to slap herself for wearing blinkers that day.
    “Kids’ll
love
Jamaica,” Glory had said. “An’ George’ll rest easier there ’n here. Wiv dem, I mean. ’S been hard on him, y’ know. T’ree kids an’ us in dis tiny li’l place. We been living in each other knickers.”
    Kendra had said, “You can’t take them off to Jamaica. What about their mum?”
    To which Glory had replied, “I ’spect Carole won’t even know dey gone.”
    No doubt, Kendra thought as she hauled the massage table from the back of the car, Glory would now use that as an excuse in the letter that was surely to follow her departure at some point when she could no longer avoid writing it.
I’ve had a decent think about it
, she would declare, for Kendra knew her mother would use her erstwhile appropriate English and not the faux Jamaican she’d taken up in anticipation of her coming new life,
and I remember what you said about
poor Carole. You’re right, Ken. I can’t take the kids so far away from
her, can I?
That would be an end to the matter. Her mother wasn’t evil, but she’d always been someone who firmly believed in putting first things first. Since the first thing in Glory’s mind had always been Glory, she was unlikely ever to do something that might be to her disadvantage. Three grandchildren in Jamaica living in a household with a useless, unemployed, card-playing, television-watching specimen of overweight and malodorous male whom Glory was determined to hang on to because she’d never once been able to cope for even a week without a man and she was at the age where men are hard to come by . . . That scenario would spell out
disadvantage
even to the base illiterate.
    Kendra slammed home the lid of the boot. She grunted as she hoisted up the heavy folding table by its handle. Joel hurried to assist her. He said, “Lemme take dat, Aunt Ken,” quite as if he believed he could handle its size and its weight. Because of this and although she didn’t want to, Kendra softened a bit. She said to Joel, “I’ve got it, but you can pull down that door. And you can fetch that trolley inside the house, along with everything else you’ve got with you.”
    As Joel complied, Kendra looked at Toby. The brief moment of experiencing softness deserted her. What she saw was the puzzle everyone saw and the responsibility that no one wanted because the only answer that anyone had ever managed—or been willing—to glean about what was wrong with Toby was the useless label “lacking an appropriate social filter,” and in the family chaos that had become the norm shortly before his fourth birthday, no one had had the nerve to investigate further. Now Kendra—who knew no more about this child than what she could see before her—was faced with coping with him until she could come up with a plan to divest herself of the responsibility.
    Looking at him standing there—that ridiculous life ring, his head a chopped-up mess, his jeans too long, his trainers duct-taped closed because he’d never learned to tie his shoes properly—Kendra wanted to run in the opposite direction.
    She said shortly to Toby, “So. What d’you have to say for yourself?”
    Toby halted in his dance and looked to Joel, seeking a sign of what he was meant to do. When Joel didn’t give him one, he said to his aunt, “I got to pee. S’this Jamaica?”
    “Tobe. You
know
it ain’t,” Joel said.
    “Isn’t,” Kendra told him. “Speak proper English when you’re with me. You’re perfectly capable of it.”
    “Isn’t,” Joel said