‘About time as well!’ Alisha swiftly replied as she bounced past him.
‘Indeed, my dear. The smell of chlorine and bleach makes my eyes water.’ Aziz put on a fake smile as he spoke. ‘See you, John,’ he said and waved at him.
John held up his palm in return.
‘See you at the hall, John,’ Ahmed said as he left.
Aziz turned to Alisha. ‘Bye, my dear.’
‘See ya,’ Alisha replied in a voice devoid of any friendliness. Aziz just smiled in return.
In the next instant, they were both gone, leaving husband and wife together.
‘What did they want?’ Alisha snapped as she went and sat down in the chair next to John’s bed.
‘Just sorting out a few things, that’s all,’ John told her.
‘I hope they don’t get you into any more shit, because I can’t take it, John. Nor can the baby.’
John didn’t need the aggro right then, so he put a pillow over his face. ‘They’re not,’ he replied from beneath it. ‘We’re gonna go into a new line of work, something less dangerous.’
‘Oh yeah, like what? Lion taming?’
John laughed when he heard that; it was actually quite funny for her. ‘No,’ he replied.
‘Well, what then? Something decent, I hope.’
‘I hope so, too,’ he mumbled from beneath his pillow. He removed it from his face and stared at his wife. At her bloated belly. Then up at her halo, which was shining brilliantly as if her head was some kind of light bulb. Christ, what skata have I got myself into now? And why am I seeing that crap everywhere?
It was just all too much to think about right then. Instead, he closed his eyes. Behind them, all he could see were masked hyenas standing over him, armed to the teeth.
They were all laughing. Laughing at the poor mug lying on the ground at their feet.
CHAPTER THREE
A few hours after Aziz left, John was discharged from hospital. Even though his head was still killing him, the doctors gave him the all clear, advising him not to drive. They prescribed him some painkillers, which he gratefully snatched up before getting his stuff together and leaving ASAP. He was more than happy to be out of there, just so he could drop Alisha off at home and then get to work finding the malakes who put him there in the first place. Besides that, the hallucinations were getting stronger, and seeing corridors full of patients, doctors, and nurses sporting either horns or haloes was just way too much; he just wanted to get away from all the madness.
They entered the car park and just as Aziz said, there sat his fourth-hand Ford Sierra. That was a lucky stroke; the last thing he wanted was to get cabs from south to north, ’cos that would just be throwing precious lires straight down the drain. They got in. John started the baby up, she choked into life, and soon they were on the road.
‘God, I’m glad I’m out of there,’ he told Alisha as he sped past a dawdling Mini. It was nearly 6 am and the roads were starting to fill with people driving to work.
‘I’m just glad that you’re alive,’ Alisha replied, stroking her belly. ‘When will this shit end with you?’
Oh Jesus, thought John, agitated. I don’t need this now, gamota!
‘How can I help it if people are attacking me?’ he responded. ‘Huh? Answer me. How is that my fucking fault?’
‘Well it always seems to happen to you, doesn’t it?’ Alisha snapped. ‘These things hang around you like a bad smell.’
Her voice was rising, and in John’s ears it sounded like violins played by deranged lunatics. ‘The only thing hanging around me right now is the sound of your voice ringing in my head,’ he told her. ‘And I seriously don’t need that right now.’ His blood was starting to boil; his concentration on the road dwindled. He failed to notice the old granny with horns on her head—who was halfway across a nearby zebra crossing—until the last second. Alisha’s bulging eyes and wide-awake mouth told him that something was wrong. His head flicked round and he finally clocked the granny wheeling her trolley across the white painted blocks on the road. His heart lurched.
He instantly slammed down the brakes.
The pair of them jumped forward in their seats as the car skidded to a halt, tyres screeching. It came to a stop inches from the granny, who didn’t even break stride. She just continued to plod across the road, probably not even hearing or seeing John’s car.
John and Alisha remained in shocked silence for a few seconds afterwards. John took a quick glance in his rear view to check on the cars behind them. The moment he did, his jaw dropped. Wrapped around his head was a bright glow—a halo—just like Alisha’s. He looked away from it and stared at the granny as she passed by. At her horns. He rubbed his eyes slowly, wondering what the hell was going on.
He then turned to his wife. ‘See?’ he said sharply. ‘It’s other people that bring trouble into my life. If you hadn’t been nagging, I would’ve seen her earlier.’
Alisha huffed. ‘Yeah, it’s aalllll my fault. Everything!’
John took in a deep breath. ‘Look. I know—’
An impatient car horn from behind cut him of mid-sentence.
‘All right!’ he said to his rear view in an agitated voice.
He pulled away, and then turned back to Alisha. ‘Look, I know you’re upset about what happened last night—’
‘Upset? Me?’ she interjected. ‘Nooo, I’m perfectly fine with finding my husband unconscious in a hospital bed. I mean who wouldn’t be?’
John sighed. ‘I know, I know. I got lucky. God was watching over me. But, what happened happened, there’s nothing that can be done to change that now. And it won’t happen again ’cos the delivery job’s on hold…’
‘That’s nice,’ Alisha said with a fake smile. ‘And what was it exactly you were delivering, darling?’
John huffed, his head was starting to hurt again and she wasn’t helping. ‘I was bringing money home wasn’t I?’ he replied.
‘Well, you almost didn’t come home last time…’
‘That’s not gonna happen again,’ he said, hitting the steering wheel firmly with his palm. ‘It’s gonna be different from now on…’
Alisha began nodding her head. ‘Yeah yeah yeah, I’ve heard it all before—it’ll be different, I’m gonna change, blah blah blah.’
John subconsciously put his foot down. ‘Look. You know I can’t just go and get a normal job. What exactly do what you want me to do? Go back to what I was doing before? Huh? Would you prefer that?’
‘Do you mean dealing drugs, or losing everything we own making the kind of bets even the thickest premier league footballer would shy away from?’
John rubbed his head. ‘We’ve been through this shit a million times already…’
‘I-I just can’t get my head around it,’ Alisha said, touching her temples. ‘Still, to this day, I can’t. I mean, what would make you do such a thing?’
John braked sharply at a red light and turned to face his wife. ‘I was off my nut when I was making those crazy bets,’ he said. ‘Remember? That nasty little habit I picked up inside? The one you helped me off, but never really went away? Remember now?’ he repeated, getting tetchy. ‘Throw in booze and guilt as well, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. I didn’t know what I was doing.’ He huffed. ‘Besides, gambling’s another addiction, you wouldn’t understand. And when you lose, you gotta chase that money back, and that’s when you end up even deeper in the shit. One day you’re up, the next you’re badly down, that’s the way it goes…’
John remembered it all too painfully well. He wasn’t one to go for these pussy tenner-each-way bets here and there. His idea of betting started at a grand. Five grand on a game of snooker seemed crazy in a sane person’s world, but in John’s twisted, addicted world, it seemed more than reasonable. He recalled at one point heavily backing a favourite to try and recoup some lost money, only to see it fall at the first and the 150/1 long shot come striding home. And when he subsequently backed the long shot, it did as it was suppos
ed to and came in last, while the favourite romped home. But his first few wins were always playing on his mind like a bad dream, and he found he couldn’t give it up. The habit was too tough to break. And by then, he was totally sucked in.
‘Besides, I was skint as well,’ he continued as he pulled away from the traffic lights, ‘you know that. I gave up the dealing didn’t I? That’s all I knew. Without that, I had no clue what else to do. And no jobs were turning up, no one wanted to take me on ’cos of my record, so gambling started to look like a good idea.
If I could’ve just got that one big win…’
Alisha rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve never won anything in your life, what made you think you’d suddenly start?’
John tutted. ‘Why do you always have to put me down? Huh? Why can’t you just be more supportive?’
‘Supportive?’ Alisha exclaimed. ‘Haven’t I been anything but? Most other women would’ve walked out on you a long time ago and don’t you forget that! You must be stupid if you can’t see that!’
John’s face scrunched up in anger. ‘Yeah, stupid. That’s what my gran used to call me—oi, Stupid, she used to say. Where are you, Stupid?’
‘Well, she ain’t here now. But, I am. I stick around. I don’t know why. It’s me who’s the real stupid one!’
‘Where would you go?’ John quickly countered. ‘Huh? Who would you go to? Besides, I ain’t got anything for you to take half of, have I? It’s not worth your while divorcing me!’
Alisha’s face turned grave and her eyes changed colour slightly; they became darker. ‘That’s a really shitty thing to say about me, John,’ she told him.
A prang of guilt tweaked at his innards. Yeah, it was a proper skata thing to say. But right then, everything was proper skata.
‘All right, I didn’t mean that, Leesh…’ He sighed. ‘It’s just not all my fault, okay?’
Alisha’s jaw abruptly dropped, her facial expression screaming incredulity. ‘Who told you to go and take out all those loans and credit cards in the first place?’ she asked. ‘Hmm? Me?’
‘Who told the banks to approve ’em?’
‘You were the one who lied on the forms. What was it you said your annual income was? Remind me, I need a good laugh. Was it eighty grand?’
‘Hundred…’ John said softly.
Alisha fell back in her seat. ‘Haha! What a joke!’
‘Yeah, you’re right. It was a joke that they fell for it.’
Alisha shook her head. ‘Or more likely they knew you were bullshitting, and just gave you enough rope to hang yourself with…’
John sighed, recollecting the spiralling gambling debts and the subsequent threatening letters citing fraud, courts, and a return to philaki. ‘And it worked…’ he said.
Alisha fell back in her seat, a moody face on as she stared out of the windscreen. ‘Didn’t it just…’ she quietly replied.
*****
They reached London Bridge. The previous night he crossed it heading south; now he was heading north. The murky Thames stretched away into the distance. He stared down at it, wondering what secrets were buried deep beneath its oily surface. Like the guilt that lurked in his heart. Contemplating it made his head hurt, so he stopped.
Both he and Alisha had calmed down since south London, the RnB HITS CD John put on a bit earlier helping ’cos Alisha was into all that skata. Even though he couldn’t stand that crap, he felt it would be best if he took her feelings into consideration as well.
Maybe if you’d have done that from the first day you met her, you wouldn’t be in this skata, re boy, a voice said to him. It was the voice of truth. And he agreed with it. He wished more than anything he had the power to turn back the clock and do things differently. Anytime would do; there were so many points in his life where he’d made the wrong decision…
They made it across the bridge, leaving the Thames behind them, while Shola Ama was telling them You Might Need Somebody. John was grateful he was now back in the north section of London. He didn’t like the south. Just didn’t feel like home at all. It had an alien vibe, like when first switching from terrestrial TV to satellite.
He looked across at his wife. He smiled at her as best he could through his headache in a crude attempt to ease her obvious anger. She just ignored the gesture with a turn of her glowing head and stared hardnosed out of her window. John sighed. He’d seen that look before—once he came clean about the loans and credit cards and the crazy gambling, she went mental nonstop for a whole week. And that same moody look she had on her face now in the car had been planted on her mug the whole time. He remembered with bitterness having to put Yiayia’s maisonette (which he inherited after she died, and was their home at the time) up for sale. In no time, it was gone. The credit cards and loans were paid off (which also killed the spectre of philaki), and they had spare cash (which covered the rent on a new flat).
But that only lasted so long. The cost of living in London was too high, and as John couldn’t get work and everything he touched turned to skata, things became desperate. He was suddenly hanging round Aziz’s snooker hall more and more, finding himself drawn into late-night whiskey-inspired poker games where cash was won and lost like it was Monopoly money. John slipped into freefall, haemorrhaging cash in a haze of booze, depression, and drug withdrawal.
In the end, he lost everything.
And not once did he think of his wife, and the consequences his actions would have on her.
*****
They made it back to Edmonton.
By then the RnB CD had finished, but John didn’t bother to put in a new one as they were so close to home. He stopped at a set of red traffic lights and glanced over at his wife, taking a second to reflect on things from her perspective. She’d stuck by a guy who had a chequered past and just the odd problem in the head (you talking about me?), had fallen out with her family for him ’cos she married a ‘bubble and squeak,’ and in return, when he seriously thought it through, what had he given her? Very little, if he was being honest. Very little.
His mind tripped back to around the time he first met her. He was fresh out of philaki, knocking out Es and weed to the heads at Charlie Chan’s, a long gone nightclub in the east end of London. He met a bloke called Yousif at a DnB rave there, who in turn introduced him to his sister, Alisha.
They got together.
They got married.
And that’s when everything turned proper skata.
But getting married was supposed to mature him, allow him to develop a sense of responsibility, to leave all the crap behind him once and for all. He was supposed to take care of her, give her all he could, finally get his life together. And he had gone into it with those intentions. Straight up, one hundred and ten percent, gamota. He loved her. He wanted her. No one else. She’d seen him through many a rough time, and he owed her. But instead of giving her a nice house to live in, a comfortable life, and security, he’d brought her just about more strife and misery than anyone could even mean to give another human being.
He let out a regretful sigh as he pulled into the Edmonton Camping & Caravan Site. Soon, they were surrounded by rows and rows of caravans and staring faces as he drove along the dirt path. John raised his hand to the scruffy-looking bloke sitting in a deck chair, draining a can of Guinness while scratching his balls with his free hand. He nodded his haloed head in response before taking another gulp of his drink.
Up ahead, some kids were playing football up against a yellow caravan, much to the anger of a haloed woman wearing a long, green skirt.
Further up, a family were working together on erecting a tent. Two kids were holding it up, while their father—his face lobster red—was hammering stakes into the ground. The mother watched them in silence, hands on hips, a frown on her mug, and horns planted neatly on her head.
The place was a crisscross of holidaymakers and semi/permanent residents.
But it was also home.
It was all they could afford. John had royally fuck
ed up and he knew it. He so badly wanted to make up for things, get things straight once and for all.
He turned to face his wife again, to see her resting her chin on one hand, her other hand gently stroking her belly, a despondent expression now etched into her features. John took a prolonged glance at her belly, the sight of it reminding him just how much their relationship was kept afloat by lies. Something he’d recently come to realise in full. He was sure Alisha got herself pregnant on purpose. She said she’d always taken her pill, but might have forgotten one, or that for some reason they just hadn’t worked at that particular time. John thought that was the biggest load of skata he’d ever heard in his life. She did it on purpose; he was certain. He guessed as a kick up the kolo for him. Their marriage was supposed to be the motivation he needed to get his shit together, but it hadn’t turned out that way. Now he suspected that this was her final attempt to give him one more wake-up call. Maybe fatherhood would bring out the mature, responsible person in him. In a way, he thought it was genius. It gave him a time limit.
You’ve got nine months to sort this shit out, her belly shouted at him every time they were within two feet of each other. Find me a proper home, Daddy. Get me the nice life that you don’t have. Love me, Daddy. Love me.
However, another part of him hated her for stitching him up like a kipper. What did she think she was playing at? He wanted so badly to spell it out for her—
—We are struggling
—We have no money
—I cannot get a job
—We don’t have a proper home.
You wanna bring up a kid in the fucking sardine tin we’re living in?
But of course, he said nothing. She’d only deny getting herself pregnant on purpose. She’d just lie her way out of it and he knew it.
He finally pulled up by a big cream-coloured caravan, sitting beneath a large sycamore tree. A few t-shirts and old jeans were hanging over a clotheshorse beside it. A knackered deck chair was perched under the tree, a tatty umbrella propped up over it, offering a little shade. John killed the engine and got out of the car, the sudden rush to his head sending that pain shooting through it again. He grabbed a painkiller from the small tub in his pocket, threw it in his mouth, and chewed it, wincing at the bitter taste.
The Survival Game Page 4
