What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabeth George Read Free Book Online Page B

Edenham Estate, and there were a number on the route that Toby’s siblings were taking to get to their bus. But between there being no places and there being no suitable situation in these schools for someone with Toby’s “obvious special needs,” as it was generally termed upon one minute’s conversation with the boy, Kendra had no luck. She was beginning to think she would have to keep the child with her permanently rather than enroll him somewhere—a horrifying thought—
    when the head teacher at Middle Row School directed her to the Westminster Learning Centre in the Harrow Road, just up the street from the charity shop. Toby could attend Middle Row School, the head teacher told her, as long as he had special daily instruction at the learning centre as well. “To sort out his difficulties,” the head teacher said, quite as if she believed an academic tutorial had a hope of curing what ailed him.
    This all seemed meant. While it was a bit of a stretch to think Middle Row was on the direct route to the bus for Ness and Joel, they could still get to a stop in Ladbroke Grove from Toby’s school in a five-minute walk. And after school, having Toby nearby at the learning centre meant Kendra would be able to keep tabs on Joel and Ness as well, for his siblings would have to walk him there every day. Kendra’s plan was that they would take turns doing it, stopping in to see her on the way.
    In all of this, she failed to take Ness into account. Ness allowed her aunt to think and plan whatever she wished. She’d been growing quite adept at pulling the wool over her aunt’s eyes, and like many adolescent girls who think themselves omnipotent as a result of successfully running wild for a period of time with no one the wiser, she’d started to assume she’d be able to do so indefi nitely.
    Naturally, she was wrong.
    HOLLAND PARK SCHOOL is an anomaly. It stands in the midst of one of the most fashionable neighbourhoods of London: a leafy, redbrick and white stucco area of individual mansions, and blocks of costly flats and exorbitantly priced maisonettes. Yet the vast majority of its pupils trek in to the school from some of the most disreputable housing estates north of the Thames, making the populace of the immediate area decidedly white and the populace of the school a gamut skewed to the colours brown and black.
    Joel Campbell would have had to be blind or not in possession of his wits to think he belonged in the immediate environs of Holland Park School. Once he discovered that there were two distinct routes from the number 52 bus to the comprehensive, he chose the one that exposed him least to the blank and uninviting glances of cashmere-garbed women walking their Yorkshire terriers and children being transported to schools out of the area by au pairs driving the family Range Rovers.
    This was the route that took him to the corner of Notting Hill Gate.
    From there, he made his way west by foot to Campden Hill Road rather than ride the bus any farther, resulting in a walk that would have taken him down several streets in which he belonged about as comfortably as a pork pie nestled next to beef Wellington.
    From the first day, he made this journey alone after leaving Toby at the gates to Middle Row School. Ness—cooperatively dressed in her drab grey uniform and carrying a rucksack on her back—went with them as far as Golborne Road. But there, she left her brothers to go on their way while she pocketed her bus money and went on hers.
    She continued to say to Joel, “Better not grass, y’unnerstan? You do an’ I go af ’er you, blood.”
    Joel continued to nod and watch her walk off. He wanted to tell her that there was no need for her to threaten him. He wouldn’t grass.
    When had he ever? First of all, she was his sister and even if she hadn’t been, he knew the most important rule of childhood and adolescence: no telling tales. So he and Ness operated on a strictly don’t ask/don’t tell policy. He had