my face in the other. Both now closed for business. I hoped the community spirit Hounslow is known for would soon see both of these businesses thriving again. Then again, people have long memories.
I gritted my teeth and moved quickly past, the presence of rioters, looters and protesters apparent as my feet crunched through a sea of discarded leaflets, patronising placards, broken glass bottles and improvised missiles. All that crap that comes when people lose their fucking minds.
There are six wide steps leading up to the entrance. I stood at the bottom, and despite wanting to puke out my heart, I lifted my eyes to Osterley Park Hotel.
The double doors leading into reception were hanging by a thread. Somebody had attempted to board it up, but somebody else had ripped it off again. The board lay by my feet, and scrawled over it in thick black marker was Closed for Refurbishments. It sounded a fuck of a lot more respectable than Closed due to Terrorist Attack. A few windows were smashed, and there were patches of a rough paint job, no doubt covering probably offensive or righteous graffiti. If I made the effort and looked closely enough, I could make out the message under the paint, but what the fuck for? To be honest the damage was minimal; it could be fixed. It was the screams that would be trapped inside forever.
I turned my back to the hotel and sat on the bottom step. I slipped out a cigarette, sparked it and pulled hard.
The fuck had my life become?
I’d lived my life in a lullaby, without a care in the world. Juggling a little weed to the bods in Hounslow and cruising through life in my shiny black Beemer, so blissfully ignorant. I never even used to watch the news or read the papers, and suddenly there I was, making the fucking news. I’d seen first-hand the destruction that most people only read, and cast their judgement about.
Fuck, man, this wasn’t even the first bombsite that I’d had the misfortune to set eyes on. A hospital, located beside beautiful snow-topped limestone mountains in Afghanistan, was the first. It was built and funded by Ghurfat-al-Mudarris for the poor people of a poor village called Hisarak, and devastated by two US military drone strikes.
The result of a war – as was this, thousands of miles away in Hounslow.
The difference, and there was a fucking difference, was that the military action that destroyed the hospital was able to dodge the bad press. Sorry about all the innocent lives but target has been met. A round of applause and pats on the fucking back. Either way, the impact was felt, at the time and forever after. Points are scored as lives are lost. Shit escalates and then calms down for a beat, just before the next devastation. It’s just where we are.
I sighed and it sent a shiver through me as I tried to figure out who was the egg in this fucked-up equation, and who was the chicken.
I took a last pull of my cigarette and added it to the littered ground, and looked out at the Great West Road. Cars were slowing down with purpose, necks craned, phones out, pointing, snap-snap-snapping away like it was a fucking tourist attraction, taking pictures that would burn through their phonebook, tagged with the same insincere message; Look what I drove past today! It was harrowing. Followed by a string of suitable sad-face emojis.
I threw a firm middle finger up at the rubberneckers. Take a picture of that, you fuckers.
Tyres crunched on glass. I turned to see a black cab pull into the grounds. The back door opened and a blue Adidas Gazelle hit the ground. A head popped out. His woolly Raiders hat was pulled down and it took me a moment to recognise him.
He recognised me, though. With his hand gripped to the car door, he remained rooted to the spot. I expected him to fall back in and leave. I looked away. The car door closed. I nodded knowingly to myself and sparked up another cigarette.
A moment later I felt Shaz stand beside me.
I looked up at him, trying to figure the right way to acknowledge him, but he was transfixed on the hotel. I let him be, didn’t say a word. He’d had already made it clear that he didn’t want to talk to me.
Shaz had changed. Obviously he’d changed! Shit like this chews you up, spits you out and then tramples on you. He looked like he’d put on weight and lost weight at the same time. I was used to seeing him carrying a quizzical look on his round face, as though he was trying to work something out, and then beam stupidly as if he had just worked it out. Now he just looked gaunt and sad. Yeah, Shaz looked sad.
‘You alright, Jay?’ he said, after a time.
I nodded. ‘Yeah, you know.’
Shaz looked at the waiting cab before sitting down next to me on the bottom step.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know.’
I pushed my cigarette deck towards him and he slipped one out. I sparked him up. He nodded his thanks and we smoked in silence for a bit as we both ran silent conversations in our head.
‘I had to see for myself,’ Shaz said.
‘Me too,’ I replied. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been—’
‘I didn’t go.’ Shaz cut me off. ‘To the wedding, I didn’t go… I went to the funeral.’
I could have addressed it, asked why he hadn’t attended his best friend’s wedding. I was curious enough, but it wasn’t any of my business.
I changed the subject. ‘Where you off to?’ I said, nodding at the cab.
‘Terminal 3. From there I’m catching a coach home.’
‘You’ve moved. How comes?’
He replied with the smallest of shrugs. ‘Just… I had to get away.’
I didn’t push him, sensing that whatever Imy had gone through, Shaz, in his own way was going through, too. I didn’t blame him for moving. He didn’t ask for any of this shit. The person who he considered his closest friend had carried secrets that had devastated those around him. I know a little something about that. The secrets and the life I’d kept from Idris had strained our friendship, at times threatened to break it. I realised then that I couldn’t allow what happened to Shaz and Imy to happen to me and Idris.
We sat in silence, looking across at the Great West Road through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
‘I got to see him,’ I said, before I could stop myself.
‘What?’ he said, his face scrunched up tight.
I didn’t repeat it. He’d heard me. I waited for him to get his head around it. He did so by bouncing to his feet. ‘What is it?’ he said, standing over me. ‘You wanna pay your condolences? Fuck, Jay! Take my advice, stay as far as fuck away from him. He’s… He’s not right. He ain’t thinking right!’
‘I know he’s not.’
‘You don’t know shit! And you don’t know him!’ His outburst had caused his Raiders hat to shift and I clocked the tail end of a deep scar. ‘Fuck!’ he hissed and pulled down his hat and stared at me in defiance, daring me to say something.
I didn’t.
I watched a fat teardrop roll down his cheek followed by another. I stood up and clumsily rubbed his arm.
‘Sorry.’
