You Don't Know Me

The next morning I woke up and checked my phone. Nothing. I called Mum and Bless who were still living together then, but they hadn’t heard from her either. Then I thought about trying her friend, Maria. She had this one friend who, to tell you the truth, I didn’t like all that much. Whenever I saw her she always gave me this look like I weren’t good enough for her friend. She might have been right about that but I didn’t think she really needed to make it that obvious. Ki was like, ‘Leave her alone, she’s just looking out for me’, but I reckoned maybe she was into her herself. But the problem was I didn’t have her number. I mean, why did I need her mate’s number? Except I did need her number at that moment. Then I remembered that she worked in some women’s clothes shop in Elephant and decided I would just have to go there and speak to her face to face.

It was one of them shops that had a name like Uniqueé and which only someone like my mum might go into. I jumped on the bus down there thinking that if I didn’t get no joy from Maria, I could go back via Kira’s flat and see if she was maybe there. I pushed open the door and it made this kind of clanging sound to tell the till people that someone had come in. The place was darker than it should have been because some of the ceiling lights had gone and it smelled like those rolls of cloth my mum bought to make clothes out of. There were these round rails full of patterned blouses or whatever and I squeezed past to get to the counter. No one was there so I waited until eventually some old lady shows up and makes a face at me.

‘Is Maria here?’ I go trying to act like I don’t feel too awkward in this place. She shouts out at the back and then Maria comes through, stone by stone. I don’t mean to be you know, fattist, but she was so fat that it was like she came through in instalments. She looked at me and crossed her arms in front of her.

‘You seen Ki?’ I say as cool as I can.

‘Why what you done to her?’ she says, because she was always suspicious of me for some reason.

‘Nothing man! Just wondered if you’d seen her?’

‘I haven’t seen her or heard from her. But tell her why she not replying to my texts when you see her,’ she says and turns back to where she came from.

‘Yeah,’ I say to her back and then duck back out the shop, worried that Ki hadn’t even contacted her friend. Maria didn’t look like she was covering for her. She didn’t even seem that bothered. But why would she? To her, she wasn’t even missing.

So I jumped back on the bus to get to her yard. I walked the short distance from the bus stop and straight away started having that row with her in my head again. By the time I knocked on her door, the argument was in full flow. I was still expecting her to be there, you see. I waited. I swear I could almost see her walking to the door, her face pale from no sleep. Her eyes maybe fat from crying. But she wasn’t there. So I sat on the floor outside her door for maybe half an hour not knowing what to do next. I needed to call somebody who knew her, knew where she might be.

Spooks as I said was in prison so I couldn’t ask him where she was, not that I would even know how to get hold of him. I didn’t even know his real name because even Kira called him Spooks. There was no other family so that was a dead end. And Ki wasn’t really a person for loads of friends so there was nothing to check there after I had tried Maria.

On the second day when she weren’t there I started worrying properly. No texts or calls on my phone. I tried her yard again but there was no answer. I went to the phone shop where she was temping, but they hadn’t heard from her even though she was supposed to be there that day. By then I was getting so para I even considered going to the Feds. But that would have made it into something else I wasn’t ready for so I didn’t. I tried Mum and Bless again but they hadn’t heard anything either. What had happened? I checked my phone every two minutes hoping for something. By then I wasn’t even angry any more, I just wanted to know she was somewhere and alive. Then, when I had basically run out of hope, I tried all the hospitals in the area. Nothing. Thank God though, you get me?

That night I put away my pride and went to the Feds. They did their thing and took a few details but as far as they was concerned I wasn’t really anybody who could be asking them sort of questions. A parent, maybe a brother even, but some next boy like me? Nah they weren’t interested but at least they did tell me that as far as they knew she weren’t dead. I swear down, I was besides myself and baffled at the same time. Where the fuck, sorry Judge but I need to say it, where the fuck was she and how was I going to find her? It was like she’d just gone up in smoke.