Forest Gate by Peter Akinti

Author:Peter Akinti [Peter Akinti]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781409076063
Publisher: Random House

EIGHT

MEINA

DURING THOSE FIRST DAYS we were happy not to see anyone else. We stayed together, out of step with the rest of the world. Each day was a struggle and each night a battle with terrible dreams. Sometimes I would hear him sobbing in the early hours but I didn't dare ask questions over breakfast in the morning. I know James heard my own tears – but he didn't say anything. Instead we just provided each other with reassurance. There were awkward moments such as the time he caught me smelling my breath in my hands, or once when I forgot myself and stepped out of the bathroom looking for a towel, my hair was soaking wet, and he saw my tits.

In the light of day we did as much as possible to act as if our wounds had healed.

James hardly ever went outside the flat. He only had to visit the doctor once a week and he didn't go to school. We ate and shopped together, I would compile the shopping list and he would push the trolley around Morrisons. We watched pirate DVDs that James bought from the Chinese man who stood outside the Forest Gate Pizza Hut on Friday nights. We discovered we shared a love of painting, and bought cheap canvases from Woolworths in Stratford and spent weekends on the canal in Camden where we would picnic, talk and he would paint the Senegalese boys who sold shit weed and I painted the market stalls and the canal boats. James said he hated London – but he knew it so well. I was fascinated by the things and places he showed me. He could get tasty Jamaican or Nigerian food in Dalston; Senegalese in Stratford; the best Chinese food ever in Leytonstone and delicious Turkish kebabs near the college in Walthamstow. Once, when I complained I had never had fish and chips, James took me to a place behind Neal Street in Covent Garden that made me understand what all the fuss was about.

Our brief escape from reality ended suddenly one Sunday night with a loud knock on the door. It startled us; we stared at each other as though someone knocking on the door wasn't the most natural thing in the world.

'I'll get it,' I said.

'No, wait, let me check the window first . . . Shit.'

It was Detective Inspector Whittaker, the policeman who had visited James in hospital. There was a police van and an unmarked car outside. Whittaker entered our living room uninvited, wearing a neat double-breasted suit. He walked around slowly and poked his head into each room.

'How bitter another's bread is, thou shalt know by tasting it; and how hard to the feet another's stairs are, up and down to go,' he recited, ignoring us both.

'What do you want?' asked James. 'My brothers don't live here.'

I moved towards James. We stood side by side, facing the inspector.

'Aahhh, Bisto.' Whittaker tilted his head to the side, smiling. He stared at James for a moment.

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