Free What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabeth George Page A

wha’ I’m doin.”
    “So when I get to meet ’em? You hidin dem or summick?”
    “Hiding? Why’d I want to do that?”
    “Don’t know, innit. Maybe one ’f ’em got two heads.”
    “Yeah. Tha’s it all right.” Kendra chuckled, but the fact was that she
was
hiding the Campbells from her friend. Keeping them under wraps obviated the necessity of having to explain anything about them to anyone. And an explanation would be needed, of course. Not only for their appearance—Ness being the only one who looked remotely as if she might be a relation of Kendra’s, and she was doing most of that with makeup—but also for the oddities in their behaviour, particularly the boys’. While Kendra might have made an excuse for Joel’s persistent introversion, she knew she would be hard-pressed to come up with a reason why Toby was as he was. To try to do so ran the risk of getting into the subject of his mother, anyway. Cordie already knew about the fate of the children’s father, but the whereabouts of Carole Campbell comprised a topic of conversation they’d never embarked upon. Kendra wanted to keep it that way.
    Circumstances made part of this impossible. Not a minute after she’d spoken, the shop door opened once again. Joel and Toby scuttled in out of the rain, Joel with his school uniform soaked on the shoulders, Toby with his life ring inflated as if he expected a flood of biblical proportions.
    There was nothing for it but to introduce them to Cordie, which Kendra accomplished quickly by saying, “Here’s two of ’em anyways.
    This’s Joel. This’s Toby. How ’bout a pepperoni slice from Tops, you two? You needin a snack?”
    Her style of language was nearly as confusing to the boys as was the unexpected offer of pizza. Joel didn’t know what to say, and since Toby always followed Joel’s lead, neither of the boys offered a word in reply.
    Joel merely ducked his head, while Toby rose to his toes and danced to the counter where he scooped up several beaded necklaces and decked himself out like a time traveller from the summer of love.
    “Cat gotcher tongue, den?” Cordie said in a friendly fashion. “You lot feelin shy? Hell, I wish my girls take a page out of dis book for ’n hour or so. Where’s dat sister of yours? I got to meet her, too.”
    Joel looked up. Anyone adept at reading faces would have known he was searching for an excuse for Ness. Rarely did someone ask after her directly, so he had nothing prepared in reply. “Wiv ’er mates,” he fi-
    nally said, but he spoke to his aunt and not to Cordie. “They workinon a project f’r school.”
    “Real scholar, is she?” Cordie asked. “Wha’ ’bout you lot? You scholars, too?”
    Toby chose this moment to speak. “I got a Twix for not weein or pooin in my trousers today. I wanted to, but I d’in’t, Aunt Ken. So I got a Twix cos I asked could I use the toilet.” At the conclusion of this, he executed a little pirouette.
    Cordie looked at Kendra. She started to speak. Kendra said expan-sively to Joel, “How ’bout that pepperoni slice?”
    Joel accepted with an alacrity that declared he wanted to be gone as much as Kendra wanted him and his brother to vanish. He took the three pounds she handed to him. He ushered Toby out of the shop and in the direction of Great Western Road.
    They left behind them one of those moments in which things get glossed over, things get addressed, or things get altogether ignored.
    Exactly how it was going to be was something that rested in Cordie’s hands, and Kendra decided not to help her out in the matter.
    Social courtesy dictated a polite change of subject. Friendship demanded an honest appraisal of the situation. There was also middle ground between these two extremes, and that was where Cordie found a safe footing. She said, “You been having a time of it,” as she crushed out her cigarette in a secondhand ashtray which she found on one of the display shelves. “Di’n’t ’spect