by Rashad Salim
“But you liked it.”
I turned to face her and felt like I was about to lose my temper. “It’s too late!”
That stunned her but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let her trap me with her charms.
“It’s too late, Seema!”
She was too stunned to respond.
“You’re a married woman now.”
She was still silent. I doubted I was going to get any sign from her that she understood what I was trying to tell her so I opened the door and got out. I slammed it shut but the window was still open. I looked at her a final time but couldn’t bring myself to say bye.
She hadn’t moved from her position but looked up at me. “You’re the only one I ever loved.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I stormed off towards the train station. This time I didn’t dare look back.
The last conversation I had with Seema at school all those years ago was one I’d never forget. Evidently, neither would she.
It was the day after the PE incident with the black boys.
I was sitting on my own in our English class during break time, waiting for the next period to begin and just wanted to be alone when Seema walked in. I wasn’t interested in talking to her.
She had been quick to express her concern for me but I saw it for what it was: an opportunity for us to get back together: she would use the PE incident to console me and work her way back as my girlfriend.
She had tried to approach me at lunchtime the day before, when the incident had happened, but I had avoided her. Then after school she had texted me repeatedly and called me.
I told her I was grateful for her concern but that there was no need for her to worry and that the trouble was all over now.
Or so I had thought.
I told her whatever I could come up with just to get rid of her but the more I had told her, the more she clung onto me.
When she approached me during this break time I doubted she was aware of the secret relationship between me and Chantelle.
“You alright, Ali?” she asked as she crept closer.
I could see concern in her eyes but was still pissed off about everything and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with her.
“Go away. I can’t talk to you now.”
She took the seat beside me leaned in to me as I looked down at the table waiting for her to grow tired and leave.
“I just wanted to check if you were okay. That’s all.”
She wrapped both her arms around my arm and leaned against my shoulder. I resisted the urge to push her away only because I didn’t want any more drama and the last thing I needed was her to get all overemotional again.
“I’m ok. I told you not to worry about it, didn’t I?”
I could feel her hair against my jaw and smell her perfume.
“I love you, baby,” she said. “I’ll always love you for as long as I live.”
She had always been saying overly dramatic stuff like that and it always scared me at how much she needed me. During the brief time we were together I had cared about her but I wasn’t in love with her. Love was never on my mind when we were intimate. When I was 15, I just needed a girl for fun and she was into me so it made sense to hook up with her. We had some good times but she was always too intense for me.
I shrugged her off my shoulder. She looked at me in confusion.
“We broke up, Seema. I’m not your boyfriend anymore.”
“You still could be.” Her persistence was astonishing. Annoying too.
“I don’t wanna be your boyfriend!” That seemed to hurt her but didn’t put her off.
“Don’t you miss me?” Her voice was cracking up and I braced myself or her about to cry the next second. It was as if the idea of not wanting to be with her was the most shocking thing she had been told. I couldn’t bear to look at her so I turned away from her.
“Ali,” she said and took my hand in hers. “Don’t you miss the times we had together?” She moved my hand onto her thigh and slid it up between her legs. “Don’t you miss this?”
I pulled my hand away and spun around to face her. “What is wrong with you?”
She stared at me blankly.
“I don’t want you!”
I felt like getting up and running away, not knowing where I’d go but I knew she would hound me. I felt trapped by her and I hated her so much in that moment.
That was when the tears finally began to roll. “I don’t understand you,” she wailed. “I gave you everything... I gave you my virginity.”
I felt a deep sense of shame at that.
It was true.
I was her first and she was mine. I remembered how much I had pushed for it with her and how much she had made me work for it. I remembered how much I had bullshitted her for it and how I never knew how much it would come back to bite me in the ass down the line.
“We’re meant to be together,” she said. “You’re my soul mate!”
“Seema, wake the fuck up!” That startled her into silence. “Get real for once!”
“What...?” She desperately searched my face for answers.
“Are you honestly that stupid?” I asked her. “I’m not your soul mate. There is no such thing as soul mates. It’s all bollucks! And does your brain even work? You know we could never be together.”
“Why?”
“‘Cos it would never work!”
She looked down at her lap. “...What about Chantelle?”
I froze at the mention of her name.
“...What?”
“What about Chantelle? ...How would that work?”
I wondered how to respond to that.
“Or are you just with that slag for blow jobs too?”
I felt the sting of guilt and said nothing. I thought for a moment about the best way to handle her. “...Listen, Seema,” I began to say softly, thinking I could comfort her and calm her down but as I extended my hand out to put on hers she pulled away and stood up.
“Oh, fuck off!” She spat the words out and her eyes were wide with rage. “I hope you and that black bitch drop-”
I stood up but before I could move towards her she raised her hand out to halt me.
“No! Don’t come any closer, okay?”
She spun around and stormed off, wiping her tears as she left the classroom. I remember feeling a pang of guilt for her emotional state.
She wasn’t a bad girl, she was just bad for me. Or maybe I was bad for her. We never should’ve gotten together in the first place and if I had known Chantelle was going to walk into my life six months after I had hooked up with Seema, I’d never have made any moves on the poor girl and saved us both a whole world of hassle.
After that day, Seema kept her distance from me for the remainder of the school year, which wasn’t much. We avoided each other and her best friend had confided to me that Seema was thoroughly over me, something I was too willing to believe.
Now I knew that had been a lie all along and one I’d finally suffer for.
25
When I got home I changed out of the funeral suit and tried to eat a pizza for dinner. The pizza was good but I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I’d be. I hit the sack early. It wasn’t as if I had any reason to get up early but I was dead tired.
I lay in bed and replayed the day’s events over and over in my head.
I was half asleep around midnight when I heard my phone vibrate with a text alert. I thought about ignoring it but I was always too curious to not find out who was messaging me. I thought it might have been Sajid or Bob checking up on me.
I reached for the phone on my bedside table and checked my inbox.
It was Seema and it wasn’t just a text message she had sent. It had a photo attached – a photo of her lying on her side wearing nothing but a thong.
Her face had been cropped out of the image but there was no doubt the voluptuous girl in the photo was her. I had seen plenty of her to verify that.
The text had only one word.
‘Yours’.
I switched the phone back to the main menu, tossed it back onto the bedside table and cursed her.
I had forgotten we had exchanged phone numbers that day outside Asghar’s barber shop. I had been regretting having bumped into her since returning to Binford. I felt there was no escape from her. The fact that I hadn’t deleted her photo straight away hadn’t gone unnoticed.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and thought of her naked body lying on that sofa, her gently squeezing my hands over her breasts in her car and how she had put her hands between my legs.
She knew what she was doing sending me that photo. I was fully turned on but I didn’t want to be. I was frustrated and angry. I didn’t know what else to do so I got up and started looking for a pack of cigarettes I knew I had somewhere.
I looked in my drawer but the pack wasn’t there or in my coat pocket. I thought it might be in my suit jacket pocket and when I reached into the inside jacket pocket I came across an envelope. I pulled it out.
It was the one my mother had given me earlier that day. It had totally slipped my mind because of all the other shit I had been thinking about.
The envelope felt empty and when I ripped it open I saw there was only one folded A4 sized paper inside. I pulled it out and unfolded it.
The paper only had a few handwritten words on it but they shocked me to the core.
I checked the address written on the envelope – it had my parents address but no post code. There wasn’t even a stamp attached to the envelope.
No post man had delivered this letter.
I studied the note again as my mind raced wondering who could’ve sent it. The seven words were enough to put the fear of god in me.
‘LEAVE BINFORD TODAY. DONT COME BACK. OR DIE.’
26
Who wanted me dead?
I considered the most likely suspects responsible for the death threat.
It had to have been the arsonists who targeted Bestco.
Or was it any of the Defenders of Islam members still sore and trying to give me another scare?
Maybe Tyrone or someone from the Binford Boyz didn’t like me probing them and found out where I lived?
There was also the Lion Crew I had to consider too.
There was no shortage of people I had somehow pissed off. That was for sure. Now I wondered if I was going to pay the ultimate price for it.
Despite all that had happened during the day and despite the death threat, I still managed to fall asleep eventually, I suspected purely from exhaustion. Surprisingly I slept in peace as if nothing was wrong. I could almost forget the nightmare that was my recent life. But it was short lived.
When I woke up I still hadn’t decided how I was going to handle the death threat. I had to tell Sajid about it. But first I had to inform the police. I didn’t want them to know I had spoken to anyone else before them.
I got ready and made my way there as quick as possible.
Binford had been nothing but trouble so far and every time I had gone back there, entering the town felt like dipping my hand into a vat of acid. I had been burnt so many times and yet I couldn’t stay away.
There were so many dangers for me now that going back unnecessarily was just plain stupid and I couldn’t justify the logic anymore. Police were closing in on Mark’s murderers – especially if the death threat was an indication of them worried by my movements.
It wasn’t until I was within walking distance of the police station that I had really begun to consider the outcomes of reporting the death threat. I didn’t think I could handle being grilled by the police about who would want to threaten me like that. They’d probably think I had done something dodgy myself and instead of focusing on this anonymous threat, I’d end up being the one to feel their wrath.
Then there was the fact that they would most definitely question my parents and they were the last people I wanted to know about this. I couldn’t alert the police without absolutely terrifying my mother so reporting the threat was no longer an option.
27
After abandoning the idea of reporting the death threat I changed direction and headed to Sajid’s store instead.
We went for a short drive out to Binford Lane, keeping our distance from the Bestco store. We were parked up there in Sajid’s car when I pulled out the death threat and dropped it in his lap as he smoked a cigarette.
He opened it and read it aloud.
“Someone sent it to my parents’ house. I went to collect it yesterday.”
“They seen it?”
“No,” I said. “It was in an envelope. No stamp or postcode written on it.”
“Hmm,” he said, still inspecting the note. “Hand delivered then, eh?”
I nodded.
“Who do you think sent it? The Binford Snatcher?”
I shook my head. “That shit ain’t funny.”
“Sorry, bre. Was just lightening the mood...”
I stared at him and wondered how the most notorious serial killer in Binford’s history was meant to cheer me up.
“...Could be anyone right?” he said. “Made a lot of friends since you came back, eh?”
I let that one slide. We sat in silence for a moment.
“...I just remembered something,” he said. “I spoke to my boy about the Lion Crew and your shop.”
“And?”
“...He says they didn’t do it,” he said.
“Oh, for fuck’s-”
“Hear me out! ...You might not believe it but this came straight from their leader, a guy named Joe. Joe says he never ordered a petrol bombing for your shop. Said he had no beef with the company.”
“But what about the CCTV shit? They got two of his boys on camera!”
“That’s what I said. That the cops had proof it was Carl and Marcus.”
“What did he say to that?” I asked.
“That’s the thing.” Sajid raised a finger to emphasise what came next. “Joe says he hasn’t heard shit from either Carl or Marcus since the arson.”
“Right...so they’ve fled. The boys are long gone now.”
“Maybe, but Joe’s sure Carl wouldn’t do that without telling him first.”
“Why’s he so sure about that?”
“Because Carl is his little brother.”
I let that sink in.
“...Trust me, Joe’s keen on finding out answers too,” Sajid said. “According to him, the arson was the dumbest shit ever. Made no sense to him.”
“If he didn’t give the order then they acted alone because CCTV shows they definitely did it.”
“But the question is why?” he asked. “Why defy their leader, Big Brother?”
I leaned back and sighed. I pulled out a little spiral bound notebook from my pocket. I had been writing down everything I had discovered since the Bestco arson. Everything I had seen and heard myself had been noted down in case I forgot and got the details muddled later. I had written down everything I thought was important from my interactions with everyone regarding the arson attacks, especially those with Defenders of Islam and the Binford Boyz too.
I had once read an article about bereavement where journaling your thoughts and feelings had been recommended and I suppose that was what I was doing. Except there had been no relief from the kind of stuff I had put down on paper. I had flicked through the pages regularly, going over all these details whenever I felt I was losing all sense of comprehension, reading them while I lay in bed and even when I was on the toilet.
Sajid had left the car to visit one of the nearby shopkeepers while I scribbled down what Sajid had told me about the Lion Crew and their leader.
Despite everything I had discovered nothing made sense.
I watched the clouds in the sky through the car window and recalled how life had been before Mark’s death.
It hadn’t been as good in years. I had lived through a troubled past which I believed I had left behind. I was the happiest I had been my whole life. Because I had a new
one.
I had a sensible best friend and a great job.
The menace in Binford had robbed me of both.
I’d sacrifice anything if it meant I could get Mark back. He was gone forever and so was the life I had when he was alive.
There was no going back, no matter how the arson case turned out. It would never be the same again and I was only just realising it.
Strangely, I now had my old life back. The one I had left behind. And I was back in the dark period with no signs of it ending.
I must’ve spent half an hour feeling sorry for myself, dwelling on everything when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID.
It was Chantelle.
“Hey,” I said, getting out of Sajid’s car for privacy. It was the first time Chantelle had called me since we had last met. “What’s up?”
“Have you spoken to Thom recently?” she asked. I tried to get a reading on her tone but got nothing.
“No. Why?”
“Oh...”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Probably nothing.”
I got the feeling she regretted phoning me and that bothered me. I wanted us to spend more time together but there was so much shit going on for that to happen.
“What’s wrong?”
“Thom didn’t come home last night. I just thought you might know where he is.”
“Didn’t you call him?”
“I did. Loads of times. But his phone is switched off and I’ve called up all his friends. No one knows where he is. They’re probably covering for him and he’s probably with one of them but there’s no way of telling.”
“Ah, well, I’ll let you know straight away if I hear from him, okay?”
“Thanks.”
“Babe?” I asked.
“Yeah...?”
“Are you free after work?”
“...Why?”
I took a deep breath. “I was wondering if we could go out.”
“Hmm.”
“Or I could come around if you want.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so desperate.
“...I’ll see. Look, I’ve gotta go now. Talk to you later.” She said bye and hung up.
