LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Steph… Jack… Khala… I don’t know what to say… I’m sorry.’

      I turned back to him. His teeth chattered and his body visibly shook from the cold or from facing me again. He looked at me for a response and I wanted to give him one. I wanted to get out of the car, put my arm around him and buy him a drink. I wanted to hear him regale me with the first world problems that always seemed to bother him. I wanted to hear his laughter. I wanted to hold him.

      Instead, I nodded blankly.

      ‘Anything I can do?’ He shrugged softly.

      I shook my head.

      ‘I’ve moved away.’ Shaz hesitated. I didn’t blame him for not telling me where. I had once brought hell to his doorstep.

      ‘It’s okay,’ I said.

      Shaz looked embarrassed at what our friendship had become. He shifted his eyes away from mine and they landed on the passenger seat, on the roll of plastic food bags, the elastic bands, before resting on the handgun and suppressor. He blinked as though trying to find the common factor between the items. He couldn’t. How could he?

      I watched him jerk back, as though he had just been pulled back from stepping onto a busy road. His eyes were wide, wild, worried, expressing what words could not.

      ‘I have to go,’ I said.

      I slid the window up, my eyes not leaving his, and shifted the gear into D and drove away. In my rear-view mirror, past Jack’s car seat, I watched Shaz get smaller and smaller until he disappeared out of my life.

Chapter 3

       Jay

      ‘Jay,’ Idris called. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

      Imy got married? There was an attack? A bomb went off? Yeah, I fucking heard him.

      Not able to bring words to my lips, I nodded and snatched my eyes away from his. Over Idris’ shoulder, a gaggle of giggling girls moved onto the dance floor. A group of three lads followed, all tight jeans and tight T-shirts and perfect glow-in-the-dark teeth. They stood at a safe distance, eyes set on the girls as they coolly nodded their heads to the bass. In an effort to impress, one of them decided to break the monotony and bust a move. His body moved too fast to the music as he drew invisible shapes with his hands. Too soon, I thought, bide your time, mate.

      ‘Aren’t you going to say anything, Jay?’

      ‘Is he dead?’ I asked.

      Idris shook his head. ‘No… But there were fatalities.’

      I nodded again, my eyes still over his shoulder. The over-enthusiastic dancer had peeled away from the group and shimmied closer to the girls. His friends watched and laughed on as though they were used to such an audacious move.

      ‘Who?’ I said.

      ‘Imran lost his wife and son… He lost his Khala… He lost his mother- and father-in-law.’ He held up an open hand. ‘Five fatalities. Six including the bomber. And a whole lot of guests were left with life-changing injuries.’

      I nodded and kept nodding. The disco dancer had made himself a sixth toe, bang in the middle of the group of girls. He carried a huge smile, lighting up his face as the girls laughed and danced around him. I wondered what his biggest problem was. If he had any. I wondered if he would continue to live the rest of his life as free and happy as he was at that moment.

      ‘How?’ I said, not yet able to form any more than one-word responses.

      Idris shook his head again, this time sadly, and took his time telling me. ‘The bomber. His name was Rafi Kabir. He was ten fucking years old.’

      I blinked and moved my eyes from the dance floor and they landed on the traffic light disco lights at the foot of the DJ booth. I watched them flash from red to blue to green. Red to blue to green. Red… Blue… Green. I focused on them until they were burning a hole in my eyes.

      ‘Jay,’ Idris said, putting a hand on my arm. I turned to him, the colours in my eyes moving with me. The bass thumping through my heart. ‘You okay?’ I nodded. He wrongly took it as a sign to continue. ‘Rafi walked into Osterley Park Hotel with an explosives vest strapped to his chest under his sherwani. He detonated at the head table where they all sat.’

      ‘But not Imy.’

      ‘No.’ Idris narrowed his eyes, picking up that I called him Imy, when I had told him I didn’t know him all that well. ‘Not Imran. He was at the other side of the hall, but he witnessed it.’

      I let it sink in. I tried to visualise it. I couldn’t. But I knew what it meant. Imy suffered a punishment worse than death.

      ‘They only got married that morning. Less than a day they were husband and wife!’

      ‘Yeah, alright, Idris.’ I didn’t need to know anymore. I stood up. ‘I’m stepping out for a cigarette.’

      I moved away from Idris with my name on his lips. I ignored him and walked through the half-empty dance floor in the straightest of lines, past the happy, and out of the bar into reception. The receptionist, a friend and colleague of my mum, said something to me, like a joke, something funny about my shirt, I can’t be sure. I laughed politely without catching her eye and walked out to the pool.

      I located my lounger and sat down heavily on it. The humidity, still strong at that time of the night, strangling me. I watched my cigarette shake in my hands all the way to my lips. I sparked up. The swimming pool was empty and blue and still and perfect. I wanted nothing more than to jump in. See how long I could hold my fucking breath for.

      I took a long pull of my cigarette, not realising that I had smoked it down to the butt. The cherry was gently burning my finger tip. I let it burn.

      Idris was walking towards me, drinks in hand, as if we could continue with this fucking evening. As if I would finally tell him what my life had become.

      I wished I could.

      He placed the drinks on the plastic table and pulled up a plastic chair and sat down beside me. I stubbed my cigarette out and slipped out another.

      ‘Rafi Kabir was reported missing from his home in Blackburn by his parents eight months ago,’ Idris continued, when all I wanted was for him to shut the fuck up. ‘Did you not hear about it?’

      I shook my head. A missing brown kid was never going to make any kind of waves in the news. The media is selective as fuck.

      ‘The attack has made front-page news,’ Idris said, as if crawling through my brain. ‘The first few days, the country’s media set up shop out on the Great West Road just outside Osterley Park Hotel. There were protesters from the left, from the fucking right. Gangs of Muslims from Luton turned up. Faces obscured with scarves. It kicked off, Jay! Fights and riots! The Four Pills pub and that Indian restaurant next to the hotel was smashed up and looted. Two stabbings and a fuckload of arrests.’ Idris took a breath as I held mine. ‘All because this kid decided to express his hatred in the most violent way possible, right in the middle of a wedding reception between a Muslim boy and a Christian girl.’ Idris rinsed off his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘The press, as you can imagine, lapped it up.’

      Yeah, I can imagine. The media. Instant fucking hard-on. Instant fucking narrative. Bomb attack at Muslim/Christian wedding. Reporting the level of racism, of hatred it would take for someone to react in that way. To destroy the coming together of two cultures after one had tried so hard to accept the other. I could picture the headlines, designed to prod and provoke, designed to escalate a war starting on social media before drawing blood onto the streets. It’s bullshit, such fucking bullshit! Just another reason

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