I said. ‘Are you?’
Mum smiled and replied. ‘I am.’
I watched her watch me for a moment before landing one on my cheek and then rubbing off the lipstick with her thumb. She stepped away and linked arms with Andrew, then with a joint smile they walked out of the bar.
‘Right.’ Idris rubbed his hands together like he was trying to start a fire. ‘Drinks?’
‘Yeah, go on,’ I said. I didn’t have to tell him my order. He knew.
Idris went off and ordered the first round of alcoholic drinks of the night. It wasn’t like we were hiding it from Mum, I think she knew, but I would never feel comfortable drinking around her. I did quit for a while, possibly due to the company I was keeping, but I was back on it. It helped, other times it hindered, but each time it numbed and clouded what I didn’t want to see.
My stomach rumbled at the thought of drinking on empty. Once again, my choice of meal had been poor. I’d bent two knives trying to cut through the steak, so I gave up. The potatoes were too squishy, so I left those. The vegetables I didn’t touch, because they were vegetables.
‘Here,’ Idris said, handing me my drink, a bag of crisps, and some sort of health bar. ‘Figured you might be hungry,’ he said, taking a seat opposite me.
‘The hell is this?’ I said, holding up the health bar, all raisins and berries.
‘You don’t want it?’ he said. ‘I’ll have it.’
‘No. I’ll have it,’ I said, taking a bite out of it. ‘So, what’s new?’ I asked, through a mouthful.
‘Honestly, I needed to get out of Hounslow. That place is starting to depress me.’
‘Yeah, it’s not what it used to be. Lost some of its charm.’ I split open the bag of crisps longways and nodded at Idris to help himself. He shook his head. ‘Gone are the days when you could sort out shit with a good scrap. Now it’s all blades and shooters.’
‘It’s worse than that, Jay.’
‘Drugs?’ I nodded. Idris worked for the Met’s Drugs Directorate; he was basically a Narc. It was a role that had taken its toll on him. ‘Fucking junkies are taking over Hounslow.’
‘Worse than that, Jay.’ Idris took a sip and watched me over the rim. It was starting to become clear that he hadn’t just flown over to work on his tan.
‘What’s happened, Idris?’ I said, shifting my drink from one spot to another for no apparent reason.
‘I’ve been meaning to chat to you, but I couldn’t get hold of you at home. You could’ve mentioned that you were flying off on holiday.’ Idris took his time clearing his throat. ‘So when your mum called, I thought, I’m due time off work, so why not. I’ll fly over.’
Stalling…
‘What’s happened, Idris?’ I asked, again.
He took a sip of his drink, and dropped his gaze. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and evenly and eventually, he asked, ‘The name Imran Siddiqui mean anything to you?’
I sat back in my chair and measured the question. Yeah, that name meant something to me, but I wasn’t quite sure what. Imran, or Imy as I knew him, used to knock about with this stoner, Shaz, and on occasion when I was juggling, they’d pick up off me at the back of the Homebase car park, Isleworth. Some shit-talk and that was it, everyone on their merry way. Once I quit dealing, I didn’t see much of either of them.
Until one day Imy tried to fucking assassinate me.
From what little I found out, Imran Siddiqui was a sleeper agent for the terrorist cell, Ghurfat-al-Mudarris, and when said terrorist cell slapped a fatwa on my head, it was on him to carry it out. He couldn’t go through with it, though. Living in London, in Hounslow, had softened him, I guess. The fuck do I know!? All I know is that I was looking down the barrel of a gun and then I wasn’t.
‘What about him?’ I asked, drained all of a sudden. All that optimism dissipated out of me.
‘Do you know him?’ Idris said, one fucking word at a time, like I was a child.
‘I’ve seen him around,’ I shrugged. ‘Way back when, when I was hustling, he used to pick up a little weed off me… You going to tell me what’s on your mind, Idris?’
‘You haven’t seen him since?’
I wasn’t about to give it up that easily.
‘Yeah, knocking around town, probably. Fuck, man, what’s with the questions?’
‘He got married… Last week.’
I shrugged. ‘Yeah?’ The lights dimmed above me as the DJ took his place behind the booth, a ripple of excitement from the few early ravers. ‘Good for him,’ I said. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
The DJ spun his first track, a Christmas classic remixed with a jaunty Euro-trash beat. Idris leaned in over the table so he could be heard over the music. I didn’t know what he was going to say but I had a feeling I didn’t want to hear it. I moved back even further in my seat and crossed my arms as I willed my knee to stop hammering under the table. He inclined with his head for me to join him at the middle of the table. I sighed, leaned in and met him there, our foreheads almost touching.
‘Ten days ago, there was an attack at his wedding reception,’ he said. ‘A bomb went off,’ he fucking said.
I used to have this itch. I’d scratch it and it would appear elsewhere. I’d scratch there. Then somewhere else. It would leave me with scrapes and grazes all over my head and body. At times I would break skin and bleed. It was a condition brought on by stress. Brought on by knowing with certainty that one day my past would catch up with me and destroy all those that I cared about.
I no longer have that itch. I no longer have that stress. My past caught up with me.
His name was Rafi Kabir, and at ten years old he was a child desperately trying to be a man. He reminded me of myself at that age, dripping in poison and ready to infect the whole world for a belief shared by millions but no longer by me. From the first time that I’d set eyes on him, I knew that he had the will to one day achieve what I never could.
I’d only spent a short time in his company, but Rafi often crossed my mind. The cocksure smile, the bravado, as though, at ten, he had it all worked out. Spitting out words with raw intention, the vicious promise to kill for his people, when at that age, his people should have been running around a playground, and not a battlefield.
But that’s not how he was brought up. He was a product of his environment. His father, his brother and his mother, all had a part to play in polluting an innocent mind with sick thoughts.
