The teacher is still smiling but a shadow of sadness passes across his eyes. ‘Israel will not negotiate with Hamas.’
I am shocked. ‘But they’re elected. It’s a democracy, a government.’
‘I have been to Gaza many times,’ he says, ‘and seen the great work they do building hospitals, setting up schools. These are not terrorists, as the Jews would have us believe.’
‘Then Israel will have to negotiate.’
‘No.’ The teacher’s voice is firm. ‘Instead they will bomb those hospitals and schools.’
I am incensed. ‘They couldn’t.’
‘By winter the ceasefire will be broken and Israeli rockets will murder Palestinian children in their beds.’
His words are so certain I have no reply.
‘This is why President Ahmadinejad said what he did.’ He nods with a conviction so final I am rooted to the spot. ‘Israel will not rest until every good Muslim is annihilated, and to allow them to continue, now that would be haram.’
Lilly emerged from her bed to the smell of burned bread. When she got to the kitchen a low fog of black smoke hung in the air. She gritted her teeth at the thought of her freshly glossed woodwork.
Sam scraped the charred surface of a slice of toast into the sink, scattering charcoal crumbs across the work tops.
‘You know you have to watch that toaster,’ she said.
Like every other piece of electrical equipment in Lilly’s life, it worked against her.
‘What’s the point in a toaster you have to watch?’ he growled.
‘Well, it still miraculously transforms bread into toast,’ Lilly pointed out.
Sam scowled at her. ‘The other day you were moaning at me to eat breakfast. Now I’m doing it and you’re still moaning.’
Lilly bit back a retort. Sam was right. She was having a go and he was only trying to help. Not unlike Jack.
She reached into the breadbin and pulled out two fresh slices of wholemeal.
‘I am glad you’re eating,’ she said as she slid them into the toaster. ‘So let’s start again, shall we?’
‘Breakfast, or this conversation?’
‘Both.’
‘What did you do to your face?’ he asked.
Lilly’s hand flew to her cheek. The swelling had gone down but a violent purple bruise had formed during the night. She’d attempted a camouflage job with the lacklustre contents of her make-up bag, but evidently to no avail.
‘Accident,’ she said, and popped up his toast.
‘Jack’s not gonna be happy,’ said Sam.
‘No shit, Sherlock.’
‘You are a terrible role model.’ Sam waved his knife at her.
Lilly passed him the butter and jam, and watched him slowly chew.
‘Penny will be here in five minutes,’ she said.
Penny collected Sam and took him to school each morning. She’d offered when Lilly had been bogged down in another difficult murder case and the routine had stuck.
‘I feel a bit sick,’ said Sam.
Lilly cocked her head to one side. He looked perfectly fine.
‘Can I stay at home?’ he wheedled.
Lilly paused. Sam was no skiver but there was clearly nothing wrong with him. She touched his forhead to be sure and his skin was perfectly cool.
‘Go in this morning,’ she said, ‘and get Matron to call me if you get any worse.’
He was about to argue when they heard the telltale sound of Jack’s key in the door, followed by the thump of his trainers on the hall floorboards. He was back from his morning run.
‘Here we go,’ said Sam. ‘Prepare to take cover.’
‘Morning,’ said Jack, and padded into the kitchen.
Lilly kept her back to him and busied herself making tea. She knew she was merely putting off the inevitable.
At last she turned to face him. ‘Morning.’
Jack reached out to touch her face. ‘What on earth?’
‘It’s nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘A bit of a bump.’
Jack sighed and dropped into a chair.
‘I’m absolutely fine,’ said Lilly.
‘Is the baby OK?’
‘He’s absolutely fine.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. ‘Or were you hoping I wouldn’t notice?’
That was of course what she had hoped.
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘You were working late last night so I didn’t get a chance.’
Jack looked down and reddened. Only Jack could feel bad about working while his girlfriend was pregnant. He was ludicrously over-protective and it was driving her potty, but his heart, as always, was in the right place.
She came close behind him and nuzzled the top of his head, tasting the salt lick of his sweat.
‘A woman can’t help it if her fella stays out till all hours,’ she teased. ‘What’s she supposed to do? Stay up to give him all her news?’
His face fell. ‘I’m so sorry, Lilly.’
She slid around him until she was perched on his knee. ‘Now you really are being daft.’ She kissed him on each cheek and then on the mouth.
‘Bloody hell!’ Penny waltzed into the kitchen. ‘Get a room.’
Lilly looked up at her friend and Penny’s face dropped.
‘What in God’s name happened to you?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Lilly.
‘You look like you went two rounds with Amir Khan.’
Raffy Khan, thought Lilly.
‘She shouldn’t be working,’ said Jack, his voice heavy with resignation that she would not listen to his wise words.
Lilly ushered Penny out of the kitchen before the conversation could go further. They went to stand by her car, waiting for Sam to get his school bag. The May trees were in full blossom, their boughs impossibly heavy.
‘Have you noticed anything odd about Sam?’ Lilly asked.
Penny frowned.
‘He seems very touchy and he doesn’t want to go to school,’ said Lilly.
‘I heard on the grapevine that some of the older boys had been picking on some of the younger ones,’ said Penny.
‘Bullying?’
Penny nodded.
‘Should I call the Head?’ Lilly asked.
She was no helicopter parent and hated the way some of his classmates were fussed over like bone china, but she would not stand for bullying.
For all the right reasons, Lilly’s mother, Elsa, had insisted she attend a Catholic girls’ school, two bus rides away from the sink estate where they lived. For all its supposed Christian ethos the pupils had taken great pleasure in deriding Lilly’s clothes and accent.
The parents were worse. In seven years Lilly had not received one invite to tea, as if poverty were a contagious disease.
Penny put her hand on Lilly’s shoulder. ‘I think you need to get to the bottom of it.’
Aasha has been crying all night, hiding her sobs under her pillow.
She hasn’t felt this sad since her Grandpa died and even that wasn’t this awful because he was, like, eighty and hadn’t been able to get out of bed to go to the toilet.
She knows she’s being silly. Ryan and she have spent hardly any time together. And yet she feels as if he is the only person in the world who listens to what she has to say. He likes her for herself, not whatever he thinks she should be, like her parents, her brothers or her teachers do.
She slumps into the kitchen, her face puffy, her head throbbing.
‘Are you all right?’ asks Mum.
Aasha shakes her head and bursts into a fresh batch of tears. ‘I feel awful.’
‘Back to bed.’ Mum shoos her out of the room. ‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’
Aasha wipes her nose on her pyjama sleeve and slides back under her duvet.
‘So,’ Mum puts a steaming mug on Aasha’s bedside table, ‘where does it hurt?’
Aasha chokes back a sob. ‘Everywhere.’
Mum smooths a cool hand over Aasha’s temples and Aasha aches to tell her about Ryan.
‘Shall I call Dr Farouk?’ asks Mum.
Aasha doesn’t think there’s much he can do. Is there even a cure for a broken heart?
‘I just want to sleep,’ she says.
Mum smiles and traces a finger over each of Aasha’s eyelids until they shut. ‘Then you do just that,’ she says.
Ryan is completely stressed.
Since that copper came round he cannot relax. He stayed up all night playing Grand Theft Auto and smoking weed and his head is mashed.
His mum is a stupid, stupid, stupid bitch. Why the fuck did she even answer the door? It’s not like she was expecting a friend or something. She don’t know nobody.
He throws the console across the room. If that copper comes back, sticking his nose in, Ryan will be carted off and then she’ll really be sorry, innit.
He can hear her scratching about in her room like some rat. She ain’t come out all night. Too scared.
Lilly parked outside the Free Voice Collective in a dingy sideroad behind Luton Social Services. Sandwiched between a Polish convenience store and Blockbuster’s it vied for attention between lopsided posters of cheese pastries and cherry jam and a life-size cut-out of Heath Ledger as the Joker.
‘Is this it?’ asked Taslima.
Lilly peered in at the window, obscured by layers of grime and frayed lace curtains. It was impossible to see whether anyone was there.
‘Doesn’t look too promising, does it?’
There was a buzzer hanging off the wall by the door, the electric wires bared to the elements. Rather than touch it, Lilly chose to thump the door with the side of her fist. The wood, though peeling, was solid beneath her hand.
They waited a few seconds before Taslima bent down and opened the letter box. It was filled with stiff bristles to prevent people posting junk mail. Or worse.
At last the edge of the curtain twitched and a woman peeked out. She looked from Lilly to Taslima and gestured to the door.
When it opened, Lilly was confronted by a gangly woman in her mid-twenties, her hair cropped, extravagant silver earrings dangling past her jawline.
‘Yes?’ Her tone was friendly yet brisk.
‘Can we talk to you about Yasmeen Khan?’ Lilly asked.
‘And you are?’
‘I’m the lawyer instructed by her family.’
The woman looked at Taslima, a green jewel glinting on her nostril. ‘And you?’
‘I’m Robin,’ said Taslima. ‘To her Batman.’
The woman smiled politely, though not warmly. ‘You’d better come in.’
She led them through a corridor, the woodchip wallpaper dotted with notice boards. Lilly scanned the announcements. Meetings with the Anti-Nazi League and discussion groups with the Black Sisterhood. She felt a pang of nostalgia for her days at university when she and the rest of the Women’s Committee had chained themselves to the car of a Tory MP who had presented a bill to the House of Commons aiming to criminalise abortion.
In due course the police had brought bolt cutters and slung them in the cells for the night where they had driven everyone on duty to the brink of insanity with their tuneless chorus of ‘I Will Survive’. A few weeks later the MP had been caught with a rent boy by the
News of the World
. Heady days.
The room at the end was an office-cum-meeting room, one end covered floor to ceiling by books, the centre dominated by a desk piled high with files and boxes of pamphlets. An outsized computer with an incongruously tiny screen was perched precariously on the end. It looked twenty years old and heavy enough to break a foot if it fell.
The woman gestured to the hard plastic chairs. ‘I’m Kash.’
Lilly lowered herself down. ‘I’m Lilly and this is Taslima.’
‘So what can I do for you?’ asked Kash.
‘We understand Yasmeen called this centre on the day she died,’ said Lilly.
Kash’s face was non-committal.
‘Could you tell us what the call was about?’ said Lilly.
Kash shook her head and her earrings danced. ‘I didn’t speak to her.’
‘Do you know who she did speak to?’ asked Lilly.
Kash reached over to a drawer and took out a small tube of lip balm, which she squeezed onto her little finger.
‘Not off the top of my head, no.’
Lilly watched the woman smooth the cream first across her top lip, then her bottom lip. Deliberately, she replaced the top on the tube and returned it to the drawer.
‘Could you find out?’ asked Lilly.
Kash waved distractedly at the numerous files on her desk. ‘We’re not very good at keeping records.’
‘Give me a break,’ Lilly was surprised to hear Taslima chip in. ‘You don’t have a staff of hundreds. You know full well who spoke to Yasmeen.’
Kash raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
‘All we want to know is what was discussed,’ said Taslima. ‘Is that such a big thing to ask?’
‘Women call here when they are in trouble and they have nowhere else to turn.’ Kash leaned forward and frowned. ‘They know everything they say, everything they tell us, is confidential. If we can’t offer that then, yes, it is a very
big thing
.’
‘We understand that,’ said Lilly, ‘but Yasmeen is dead.’
‘All the more reason not to collaborate with those that were involved in her death.’
‘How can you be so sure her brother killed her?’ asked Taslima.
‘A Muslim girl contacts us.’ Kash clapped her hands. ‘Then she’s gone.’
‘It could be coincidence,’ said Taslima.
‘Get real,’ said Kash. ‘Honour killings are a problem in this community.’
Taslima flared up. ‘Honour killings are unislamic.’
‘Tell that to the fathers, brothers and uncles out there.’
Taslima shook her head. ‘The Prophet, peace be upon him, tells us women are to be cherished.’
Kash banged her fist on the desk. ‘I know exactly what he said, but wake up and smell the coffee, girlfriend. Women are being beaten and bullied and
forced into marriage. When they won’t comply they’re murdered.’
‘Do you think that’s what happened to Yasmeen?’ asked Lilly.
‘To Yasmeen—and lots more like her.’
‘Did you know she was pregnant?’ asked Lilly.
Kash let out a slow puff of air. ‘I didn’t, but that just confirms my suspicions that she was murdered.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Taslima.
‘You’re not listening, sister.’ Kash jabbed the palm of her left hand with the forefinger of her right. ‘Systematic punishment is being meted out.’
‘You make it sound organised,’ said Lilly.
‘It is,’ said Kash. ‘Have you heard of the PTF?’
Lilly shook her head.
‘The Purity Task Force,’ said Taslima. ‘A militia group that polices the women in Afghanistan.’