Something to Hide by Elizabeth George

Author:Elizabeth George [George, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

LEYTON

NORTH LONDON

Repeatedly, Monifa Bankole had phoned the mobile number given her when she and Simi had first gone to the clinic. Consistently, there had been no reply and, ultimately, there had been no room to leave another message. But the appointment book had been stuffed with names. This being the case, it was inconceivable that the clinic was shut down for good. Indeed, what seemed far more likely was that the operation had merely moved to another area in London. She just had to find out where.

But she’d had no luck, and now she knew she had to take some kind of action. Tani had poured petrol on the fire of her anxiety. Abeo, Tani had informed her, had made the necessary purchases he’d been told to make by Chinara Sani, the Nigerian cutter. Tani had binned them, he’d then shown her the list that the cutter had given to Abeo, and then he’d demanded she hand Simisola over to him so that he could get her to a place of safety because all Abeo had to do was repurchase the items and arrange to have Simi cut in another location. When she’d declared that she wouldn’t hand over Simisola to him, he’d shaken a few papers in front of her face, claiming they constituted a protection order that was going to be handed over to the appropriate authorities if she didn’t cooperate.

It was the word cooperate that did it for her. It was the very idea that she was meant to cooperate with her own son because she was female. She’d said to him, “You do not give me orders.”

His tone altered. “Mum. Please. I want to take her someplace safe.”

But she wouldn’t relent. She knew she was risking Simisola’s going into Care by refusing to hand the little girl over to her brother. If he filed the papers on his own, it was probable that Care would be the outcome. But to Monifa, the fear was losing Simi for months upon months and perhaps even permanently.

With Simi’s hand in hers, Monifa went in search of Halimah, the mother of Simi’s best friend, Lim. She lived on Mayville Estate as well, but at the other side of it, on the second floor of Lydgate House in Woodville Road. Monifa herself had never been there—Abeo did not approve of Halimah, as she was divorced—but Simisola had done, so she knew in which direction to head and to what floor they needed to go in the lift to gain access to Halimah’s flat.

Lim had been Halimah’s only daughter, her only child. Halimah had not been keen on having Lim cut, but as she herself had been cut, she had sought someone to perform the ritual. For that was how she’d thought it at the time: merely a ritual to be gone through in order to be cleansed and to herald womanhood. She had intended no harm to her child.

No one, least of all Halimah, had expected things to go so very wrong.

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