You Don't Know Me

She asked me to do it for her once and I tell you I would have. She was hurting so badly that I would have done anything to free her from it. If you would have seen her then yourselves, with your own eyes; if you would have heard her crying in her sleep, I guarantee you would have thought about it too. It would have broken me to do it but I would have done it for her. I would have murdered her just to help her to leave the world behind. You don’t understand, man, I loved her. I loved her with every cell in my body. I would have done it in a heartbeat.

What saved her, what saved me, in a funny way, was seeing Jamil, the deceased, on the road one day.

Break: 11:30

13

11:45

I know that sounds weird what I said before the break, that seeing Jamil that day saved us. But it’s true. This was the day we’ve all heard about when I called him a waste man. I had been on my way to pick up a few bits of food and stuff for Mum and for me and Kira, when I saw him.

He was just chatting to a couple of girls when he clocked me. As I said, I knew Jamil from just being in the area and shit. We weren’t mates or nothing but I knew him to nod at or whatever. So I was going to the shops and he was there on the street just doing his thing. I ignored him as I usually did but this time instead of ignoring me as he usually did, he held out his arm to stop me. He pulled me to one side, away from the girls, like he was about to share me a secret. To begin with he was just whassup and whatever, chit-chat, and then right out of the blue he just comes out with it. ‘I hear Kira’s back in town. Where you hiding her blood?’ he says and grins at me out of the side of his mouth.

My face turns from friendly to something else. I give him this look like I don’t even know him and go, ‘What you chatting about man? Don’t be chatting shit like that at me.’ I stand face to face with him just to make him know that I ain’t even messing with him.

‘Nah blood,’ he says, backing away a bit, ‘I’m just saying that’s all. It’s nuffing man. Don’t worry about it.’

I am panicking because I don’t know what he knows, if he knows anything. Or maybe he’s just bluffing.

‘Why you saying shit though?’ I say to him. ‘You know where she is? You even seen her?’ I say with anger in me.

He looks at me and moves like he’s about to walk away. I can feel he doesn’t want to start a thing over nothing without his mans with him for back-up.

‘Nah bruv. Relax. I was just you know testing out some rumours. That’s all. But it’s all cool bruv. If you saying you ain’t got her, then you ain’t got her, innit?’ he says and starts off in the other direction.

‘Nah, blood,’ I say. ‘It ain’t cool. Don’t be chatting shit about my girl when you know I’m looking for her.’

Truth be told I was panicking, properly panicking. I didn’t know how the fuck he had found out but I was scared. As he leaves he turns to give me a I-know-what-you-been-up-to smile. Before he gets too far I call out to his back, ‘Waste man.’ And then I leave too. As much as he doesn’t want to be starting something here in the street, neither do I. But I had no idea that those words that I said just like that would be bouncing back at me over a year later. And causing all this.

I don’t know how he knew Kira was back, if he even did know. She hadn’t even been out of the flat since that day under the bridge. Then suddenly I realized what it was. Since she had been back I had stopped looking for her. That’s what he must have been thinking. That the only reason I stopped looking for her was because I had found her. I felt sick about how stupid I had been.

I had to deal with this quickly. I did the shopping and ran back home in a sweat. My mind was going crazy like a hundred miles an hour. I knew that if anyone else believed what he was saying, or even heard what he was saying, that somebody would be knocking my door down any day. I decided that somehow I needed to spread the rumours that I promised to spread; that Kira was taken by some gang-banger. That she was kidnapped by them for whatever purposes. Whatever, just as long as nothing pointed her back to me. I also decided I needed to act like I was still looking for her.

So who knows how Jamil knew Kira was back, like I say, if he even knew at all. Jamil was tied up in all that gang shit himself so it’s possible that he heard through the vine that she was missing but I never really got to the bottom of it. I knew he was in a little gang that they called The Squad. I remember they went through a load of names, like Money Squad and SouthEast Squad and whatever, even Flying Squad at one point, like it was just jokes. But as I knew it, it wasn’t proper big man gang like Glockz. It was just kids.