‘You lot were good,’ said Sam, ‘you stood your ground.’
‘I don’t trust them,’ said Ray. ‘The only thing those reporters know about hip-hop and Tupac is what they read by other reporters who lied in the first place anyway.’
‘And none of them bought any tunes,’ said Marga Man. ‘In me shop so long and spend no money.’
‘But I liked the way you ended it,’ Ray said to Tyrone. ‘That stuff about your baby, and that stuff about the record deal, was nice, guy.’
Ray turned to Sam. ‘Listen to this, Sam, you’ll never believe it. Tyrone is going to be a dad right, the guy done a thing and is actually starting a family, and he won’t tell us who the mother is. Look how long we’ve been friends, look how close we are, and he still won’t tell us who the lucky lady is.’
Sam sipped her juice, put down the glass and said, ‘That’s because he wanted me to tell you myself.’
Everyone except Tyrone and Sam seemed to freeze. In unison they looked at Sam and then Tyrone. Tyrone and Sam were looking at each other and transmitting happiness between themselves.
‘No,’ said Ray.
‘Yes,’ said Sam.
‘You joking,’ said Prem.
‘I’m not,’ said Sam.
‘You playing,’ said Ray.
‘I’m not,’ said Sam, patting her belly. ‘I’m two months gone.’
Marga Man raised his eyebrows high and took a deep breath in and a deep breath out. ‘Wow.’
‘That must be unethical, illegal or something like that,’ said Ray.
‘It’s ethical and legal,’ said Tyrone. ‘I’m over sixteen. I checked it out.’
‘Is it like some kind of extra-curricular activity thing?’ asked Bunny.
Sam took a fork and lightly tapped the table. ‘Just for the record, I should say that when you were attending the Positivity Centre Tyrone and I were just friends. We talked a lot on the phone and we met up sometimes, but it wasn’t serious.’
‘Yeah, I bet,’ said Ray, drawing the words out to make them sound naughty.
‘It’s true,’ Sam continued. ‘Then, well, then it did get serious.’
‘It sounds like it,’ said Prem.
Sam tapped the table again. ‘No, but the thing is, right, when it comes to the baby, I mean the conception of it . . . you know what I mean . . . you lot . . .’ She stopped, highly embarrassed, and looked to Tyrone for help.
‘What?’ said Ray, pointing a finger each at Tyrone and Sam. ‘You mean the creative process?’
There was an outburst of laughter. Tyrone held his head down and looked up shyly under his eyebrows.
‘Hear me,’ Sam went on. ‘When it comes to that stuff, right, it was legal. You weren’t attending the centre and he was the right age.’
‘The right age, are you sure?’ asked Ray.
‘Of course we are,’ said Sam. ‘We waited before we got together.’
‘You got together all right, but it must have been difficult waiting,’ Ray said, laughing aloud.
‘We’re responsible people,’ Sam continued, ‘we know what we’re doing you know, we talk to each other about stuff. All right, we didn’t actually plan to have a baby, but as soon as we knew there was one on the way we talked about everything – being together, being a family, money, music, love, and the in-laws. You name it, we went heart to heart on it.’
‘Rude boy Tyrone, I was wondering who mummy was,’ said Ray, ‘so why the big secret?’
‘Seriously man,’ replied Tyrone, ‘I didn’t want it to distract from the work.’
‘That wouldn’t have distracted me,’ said Prem, ‘that would have inspired me.’
‘Tyrone man, you’re bad,’ said Ray.
‘Yu is a dark horse,’ said Marga Man.
‘Both of you are dark horses, if you ask me,’ said Ray in disbelief. ‘Real dark.’
‘Well done, girl,’ said Pauline.
Yinka, not knowing what all the fuss was about, said the right thing. ‘Well, they don’t look like dark horses to me, and even if they are dark horses, whatever that means, I think congratulations are called for, if not celebrations.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Prem said, raising his glass. ‘Congratulations, and good luck to all three of you.’
Before all the glasses had time to settle back on the tables, Ray stood up. ‘And I have an announcement to make.’ Everyone froze, looking at Yinka, who shrugged her shoulders and looked towards Ray, confused.
‘I would like to say,’ Ray said, glass raised high, ‘that hip-hop is great because it brings people together.’
Yinka’s heart started beating again and they all celebrated until past midnight.
They kicked off the tour with the charity concert at the Pavilion in Brighton. The idea was that the concert would act as a warm-up gig, giving them a chance to identify weak points in the set which could be improved upon. Few changes were needed; they performed as if they had been on the road all their life. Bunny had done a great job of making sure that the sound mix was right, and the boys made sure that they performed each rap with the right amount of energy and emotion, based on the guidance they had been given by Marga Man when recording the tracks.
That night the boys stayed in a hotel for the first time in their lives. The first thing Ray did when he got to his room was ring Yinka.
‘Hi Yinka.’
‘Hello, how did it go?’
‘It was wack. You should have been there, the crowd loved it.’
‘Well, I knew they would. But how was it for you?’
‘Great. Everything was just right, the sound, the atmosphere, and the stage was massive, even bigger than the Rex, but we had no problem filling it. I think they said that after all the costs have been taken out we’ve raised about six thousand pounds for the cause, that’s including T-shirt sales and stuff like that. We doing the business, girl.’
‘So no after-show party?’
‘No, we got an early sound check in Southampton tomorrow, so we’re taking it easy. We gonna leave the partying until we get up to London. I don’t want to party with no one but you.’
They did more gigs in Bristol, Oxford and Ipswich before getting to London. Two gigs were lined up in London. The first would be a return to the Rex and the second would be at the Brixton Academy. From there they would make their way north. To keep the momentum and reinforce their unity, the band stayed in the East End the night before the gig. There was a great sense of anticipation.
When the band turned up at the Rex the next afternoon, fans had already started to gather. Autographs had to be signed at the stage door before and after the sound check, and just as they were getting into the tour bus a teenage girl stopped them.
‘Please, please, can I have your autographs?’ she pleaded.
‘No problem,’ said Ray. ‘A nice girl like you should have our autographs.’
She passed Ray an autograph book. ‘In there please, and can you put my name? It’s Annabel. My dad used to be your head teacher.’
‘What?’ gasped Prem. ‘Is Mr Lang your dad?’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry, he’s OK when you get to know him.’
‘He’s OK,’ said Tyrone. ‘You look a bit like him.’
‘He said you’re into punk, not rap,’ said Ray.
‘Things change,’ she replied, and when all there had signed her book she skipped away. Then as they turned to board the bus again they heard a friendly voice.
‘Hey X-Ray-X, Pro Justice, Prem de la Prem, look, they’ve fixed me.’
As they looked in the direction of the voice there was the flash of a camera. It was Fingers. They called him over. ‘How you going?’ asked Ray.
‘I’m feeling good. I would ask you for your autographs but I have them already. Have you guys been on the internet lately?’
‘Don’t really have much time for that,’ said Ray.
‘Well,’ said Fingers, smiling mischievously, ‘you should check out Positive Negatives dot com the next time you
’re on.’
‘Have you done it?’ asked Prem, excited.
‘I’m not completely happy with it, but it’s a start,’ said Fingers. ‘To get it good I need some more stuff from you. I’ve got photos but I need some tour information, permission to reproduce some lyrics and them kind of things.’
‘That’s coming to you,’ said Ray, ‘along with a cheque.’
‘Don’t worry about paying me.’
‘No, we must, and we will,’ said Marga Man. ‘Why are yu here so early? Yu trying to get right up front?’
‘Now, that’s where I’m not feeling so good, you see money can’t buy you everything,’ said Fingers, tilting his head towards the ground. ‘The gig’s sold out, I can’t get a ticket anywhere. They sold out so quickly and I ain’t got credit cards and shit like that so, by the time I got the cash together –’
‘Don’t worry,’ Ray said, interrupting. He turned to Marga Man. ‘Make sure my man Fingers is on the guest list.’
‘No problem,’ said Marga Man, searching his multi-pocketed coat for his notepad. ‘OK, Fingers, you’re on de guest list, you plus one, so bring a friend and I’m putting you down for de after-show party if you want to come.’
The London gig was to be the big night out. Yinka and Mallam turned up at the hotel in the late afternoon, followed by Sam. Then not long before they left for the Rex, Kori and her two friends Lizette and Thara arrived, quickly followed by Anita with Prem’s sister and three of their friends. They were all looking their best, but none of them could match the rocks, or bling bling, otherwise known as jewellery, that the boys were wearing. The colour scheme for the night was gold. They were wearing baggy gold-coloured denim suits and their wrists, fingers and necks were covered with gold. These were just casual before-gig clothes. To wear on stage they also took shiny gold suits with shiny gold buttons.
When Positive Negatives arrived at the Rex they did so like three kings surrounded by beautiful women of all shades. It looked like a rap video, with cameras flashing, fans cheering, and bodyguards guarding. They entered the building with attitude, and performed like masters. The previous gigs had been great but this was the best. They touched fists, recited their motto, and from the moment they walked out on stage the crowd went wild. They really were playing at home.
The crowd rapped along with most tunes and there were times when the band would point the microphones into the crowd to let them take the lead. Fingers was at the front of the crowd taking as many photos as he could and chanting the lyrics to the raps. He was right up against the stage making his presence felt. When a rap called ‘It’s All About Living’ was dedicated to him he shouted his happiness out loud. The band had given their all, and after three encores they had nothing else to perform, but the crowd demanded more, as did Yinka, Sam, Anita and the others who were standing at the side of the stage. Ray started thinking aloud.
‘So you want some more?’
‘Yeah,’ came back thousands of voices.
‘Well, I got this idea, and maybe my man Bunny at mission control can help me out here. If he can set it up, we can do for you, exclusively, for the first time in public, a joint from our next project. The joint I have in mind is a thing called ‘Refugee Me’, and let me tell you now this next album is full of positivity. Bunny, my man, can we do this?’
Bunny had just finished setting up the backing track tape and so gave the thumbs up.
‘OK, let’s do this,’ said Ray, looking round at Prem and Tyrone, and they rocked.
Even as they left the stage the crowd shouted for more.
‘See you in Brixton,’ shouted Ray.
Marga Man had hired a small hall near the music shop for the after-show party, but getting there wasn’t easy. The stage door area was completely blocked with fans who were waiting for autographs, so Marga Man told the boys to sign a few while he went to get the tour bus. They tried to sign as much as they could but it was impossible to sign everything – books, scraps of paper, tickets and CDs came to them from every angle. Their bodyguards watched carefully over the crowd, knowing that they were on the very spot where the fight broke out the last time the band played the Rex. But that was the last thing on the boys’ minds; they just signed as many things as they could until they were rescued by Marga Man. The band jumped into the back of the bus along with Yinka, Sam and Anita, and they drove off followed by three other cars carrying the rest of their entourage.
The vehicles stopped at a set of traffic lights at Stratford Broadway, a massive roundabout with a shopping centre in the middle of it. The tour bus was still at the front of the convoy. Inside the bus it was unusually quiet – no music was being played, nobody was talking. It was as if they were all thinking about the enormity of the night. The lights turned green and Marga Man began to move off when suddenly he was forced to hit the brakes. A motorbike had pulled up in front of them. Marga Man slapped his horn and shouted in anger.
‘Get out of de way, are yu stupid, or what?’
Marga Man looked to the side when he saw another motorbike rider who took out a gun and pointed it at the back window.
‘Get down!’ Marga Man shouted.
Two shots were fired through the windows at head level but everybody got down flat and the bullets passed over their heads, shattering the glass. One of the bodyguards managed to open the door on the opposite side and get out, but, being unarmed, there was nothing he could do except avoid getting hit. Inside the bus everyone held each other tightly and the people in the cars behind began to sound their horns. Marga Man saw the man on the motorbike in front of him struggling to get something from the pocket of his leather riding-suit, but Marga Man wasn’t going to give him a chance. As the second rider aimed to fire, Marga Man accelerated, knocking the rider off his bike, and the shot went wide. Marga Man drove right over the motorbike, just missing the rider, who limped as fast as he could over to the other rider’s bike and jumped on the back. The bikers made their getaway, leaving one bike wrecked in the road. The cars all stopped and Kori came running out from one of them.
‘Ray, are you all right?’ she shouted, pulling open the bus door. Shattered glass fell on to her.
‘Yeah, we’re all OK here. Are any of you lot hurt?’
‘No,’ Kori said, with tears in her eyes.
They all started to get out of the bus, making sure everyone was unhurt, and other people from the cars also began to get out.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Kori asked Ray.
‘I’m OK,’ he replied. ‘What about you, are you OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you been hurt?
‘No,’ said Kori, ‘I’m all right.’
Ray glanced over at Yinka who looked completely shaken. For the first time since he’d known her she looked absolutely vulnerable as she looked back at him. He went over and put his arms around her and held her tight, whispering in her ear, ‘Don’t worry, it will be all right. I love you, girl.’
Just then there was a scream from Anita, and she shouted, ‘Watch out, it’s them, they’ve come back.’
The gunmen had gone around the roundabout and were coming down the other carriageway.
‘Get down!’ the bodyguards shouted. The biker riding pillion began to shoot again. There were more screams and then Yinka slumped against Ray.
‘Oh shit, Yinka’s fainted,’ Ray shouted, unsure what to do next. As he tried to adjust his arms to give her better support, her head flopped back and her eyes rolled over. He looked down and saw blood soaking her dress and dripping on to the ground.
‘Help, somebody help! Yinka’s been hit!’ he shouted as loud as he could. There was confusion as everybody got on their phones to call for an ambulance, but Ray ignored them. ‘Yinka,’ Ray said as he held her. ‘Yinka.’
But there was no reply. Yinka’s eyes were open but she wasn’t looking anywhere, and her body was completely limp in Ray’s arms.
‘We can’t wait. Put her in the bus,’ Ray shouted to Marga Man, who w
as giving their location to the ambulance service on his phone.
Marga Man stopped the conversation and went to help Ray. With the help of the two bodyguards they began to lift her.
‘It’s too late. Put her down,’ said one of the bodyguards.
‘Put her in the bus!’ shouted Ray desperately.
‘Put her down,’ said the bodyguard. ‘She’s not with us.’
‘No,’ said Ray. ‘There’s still a chance! Hurry up, come on, let’s go.’
‘She’s not with us,’ said the bodyguard.
Ray looked into Yinka’s eyes. She was lifeless. Her eyes were fixed on him as if he were the last person she ever saw in her life. Everyone took a step back. Ray placed his body over hers and hugged her tightly, and everything else in the world faded into insignificance as he held her and wept.
Chapter 19
Question Time
A large group gathered in the waiting area of the hospital where Yinka’s body had been taken. Ray was allowed behind the scenes where he attempted to get rid of all the blood that covered him. Here he also tried to explain to the doctors and the police officers what had happened but he was so distressed that he was unable to concentrate his mind to give any useful replies. A police interview with the band was arranged for the next day. Mallam, sobbing, and with tears streaming down her face, barely managed to give the hospital staff details about how to contact Yinka’s next of kin, and when Yinka’s parents did arrive they spoke to nobody. Anita, Prem, Tyrone and the others who were in the waiting room offered condolences but Yinka’s parents did not respond. They were expressionless, although it seemed their lack of expression was not malicious, but caused by the shock of losing their daughter.
Although Ray too was in a state of shock, he managed to tell Yinka’s parents how sorry he was. He offered to help them in whatever way he could but her father just replied very solemnly, ‘Thank you, we will be able to take care of everything.’
There was great concern for Ray. He had lots of offers of accommodation or company, but he wanted to be alone, so as a compromise he allowed Kori to ride home with him. One of the bodyguards drove them and when they got to his place Kori walked him right to the door, and she squeezed his hand in a way that she had never done before and said goodnight. She went back to join her friends, and he went inside and began searching through his collection for a Tupac CD. He selected a track called ‘I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto’. He put his headphones on, set the player to repeat, and listened to it over and over again.
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