‘Whatcha got there, girlie?’ says the man. Tony. She’ll remember his name to tell her dad. ‘Got a battery?’
‘Get out the way,’ says Roxy. ‘You want another taste?’
Tony steps back a couple of paces. Eyes her arms. Looks to see if she’s got anything behind her back. ‘You dropped it, dintcha, little girl?’
She remembers the way it felt. The twist, the explosion outward.
She takes a step towards Tony. He stands his ground. She takes another step. He looks to his dead hand. The fingers are still twitching. He shakes his head. ‘You ain’t got nothing.’
He motions towards her with the knife. She reaches out, touches the back of his good hand. Does that same twist.
Nothing happens.
He starts to laugh. Holds the knife in his teeth. Grabs her two wrists in his one hand.
She tries it again. Nothing. He forces her to her knees.
‘Please,’ says her mum, quite softly. ‘Please. Please don’t.’
And then something hits her on the back of the head and she’s gone.
When she wakes, the world is sideways. There’s the hearth, just like always. Wooden trim around the fireplace. It’s pushing into her eye, and her head hurts and her mouth is mushed up into the carpet. There’s the taste of blood on her teeth. Something is dripping. She closes her eyes. Opens them again and knows it’s been longer than a few minutes. The street outside is quiet. The house is cold. And lopsided. She feels out her body. Her legs are up on a chair. Her face is hanging down, pressed into the carpet and the fireplace. She tries to lever herself up, but it’s too much effort, so she wriggles and lets her legs drop to the floor. It hurts when she falls, but at least she’s all on one level.
Memory comes back to her in quick flashes. The pain, then the source of the pain, then that thing she did. Then her mum. She pushes herself up slowly, noticing as she does so that her hands are sticky. And something is dripping. The carpet is sodden, thick with a red stain in a wide circle around the fireplace. There’s her mum, her head lolling over the arm of the sofa. And there’s a paper resting on her chest, with a felt-tip drawing of a primrose.
Roxy is fourteen. She’s one of the youngest, and one of the first.
Tunde
Tunde is doing laps in the pool, splashing more than he needs so Enuma will notice him trying not to show that he wants to be noticed. She is flipping through Today’s Woman; she flicks her eyes back to the magazine every time he looks up, pretending to be intent on reading about Toke Makinwa and her surprise winter-wedding broadcast on her YouTube channel. He can tell Enuma is watching him. He thinks she can tell that he can tell. It is exciting.
Tunde is twenty-one, just out of that period of his life where everything seemed the wrong size, too long or too short, pointing in the wrong direction, unwieldy. Enuma is four years younger but more of a woman than he is a man, demure but not ignorant. Not too shy, either, not in the way she walks or the quick smile that darts across her face when she understands a joke a moment before everyone else. She’s visiting Lagos from Ibadan; she’s the cousin of a friend of a boy Tunde knows from his photo-journalism class at college. There’s been a gang of them hanging out together over the summer. Tunde spotted her the first day she arrived; her secret smile and her jokes that he didn’t at first realize were jokes. And the curve of her hip, and the way she fills her T-shirts, yes. It’s been quite a thing to arrange to be alone together with Enuma. Tunde’s nothing if not determined.
Enuma said early on in the visit that she had never enjoyed the beach: too much sand, too much wind. Swimming pools are better. Tunde waited one, two, three days, then suggested a trip – we could all drive down to Akodo beach, take a picnic, make a day of it. Enuma said she would prefer not to go. Tunde pretended not to notice. The night before the trip, he started to complain of an upset stomach. It’s dangerous to swim with a stomach complaint – the cold water might shock your system. You should stay home, Tunde. But I’ll miss the trip to the beach. You should not be swimming in the sea. Enuma’s staying here; she can bring a doctor if you need one.
One of the girls said, ‘But you’ll be alone together, in this house.’
Tunde wished her to be struck dumb in that very moment. ‘My cousins are coming later,’ he said.
No one asked which cousins. It had been that kind of hot, lazy summer with people wandering in and out of the big house around the corner from Ikoyi Club.
Enuma acquiesced. Tunde noticed her not protesting. She didn’t stroke her friend’s back and ask her to stay home from the beach, too. She said nothing when he got up half an hour after the last car left and stretched and said he was feeling much better. She watched him as he jumped from the short springboard into the pool, her quick smile flashing.
He makes a turn under the water. It is neat, his feet barely breaking the surface. He wonders if she saw him do it, but she’s not there. He looks around, sees her shapely legs, bare feet padding out of the kitchen. She’s carrying a can of Coca Cola.
‘Hey,’ he says, in a mock-lordly tone. ‘Hey, servant girl, bring me that Coke.’
She turns and smiles with wide, limpid eyes. She looks to one side and then the other, and points a finger at her chest as if to say, Who? Me?
God, but he wants her. He doesn’t know exactly what to do. There have only been two girls before her and neither of them became ‘girlfriends’. At college they joke about him that he’s married to his studies, because he’s always so single. He doesn’t like it. But he’s been waiting for someone he really wanted. She has something. He wants what she has.
He plants his palms on the wet tiles and raises himself out of the water and on to the stone in one graceful movement which he knows shows off the muscles of his shoulders, his chest and collarbone. He has a good feeling. This is going to work.
She sits on a lounger. As he stalks towards her, she digs her nails in under the can’s tab, as if she’s about to open it.
‘Oh no,’ he says, still smiling. ‘You know such things are not for the likes of you.’
She clutches the Coke to her midriff. It must be cold there against her skin. She says, demurely, ‘I just want a little taste.’ She bites her bottom lip.
She must be doing it on purpose. Must be. He is excited. This is going to happen.
He stands over her. ‘Give it to me.’
She holds the can in one hand and rolls it along her neck as if to cool herself. She shakes her head. And then he’s on her.
They play-wrestle. He takes care not to really force her. He’s sure she’s enjoying it as much as he is. Her arm comes up over her head, holding the can, to keep it far away from him. He pushes her arm back a little more, making her gasp and twist backwards. He makes a grab for the can of Coke, and she laughs, low and soft. He likes her laughter.