She hit him with the flat of her hand as he walked in the side door. The blow was strong enough to send him backwards into the counter, her massive head jutting towards him. Shaken, he stared at her, at the pale eyes in the dark face, the force of her malice unexpected and terrifying.
‘Don’t,’ she said warningly.
He was trying not to wet himself, trying to remember that he was eighteen years old. Not a child any more. And yet a child now. Oh yes, back to a child now. He had pushed his luck and knew it. Shouldn’t have mocked her son. Shouldn’t have taunted Emile Dwappa. No one did that. No one with any sense.
‘Don’t,’ she repeated.
A mammoth in a print dress. Nigerian by birth, Londoner by choice. Proprietor of Mama Gala’s Health Shop. Babysitter for the local children, crooning to them as she nursed them in the barley-sugar-coloured rocking chair.
But now he remembered all the rumours he’d heard about Mama Gala and her son. Wondered if, perhaps, they weren’t rumours after all. And the chair in the corner by the window seems suddenly skeletal, malignant, a corpse on rockers.
It’ll do you no good to say sorry, Hiller thought. She’s not having it.
One of Mama Gala’s hands was resting on the counter beside him, her bulk blocking any escape. And now he could see the rumour coming alive, a vision of evil taking shape in front of him. Her face was waxy, like bruised fruit a day before rotting, her skin giving off an odour of sweat and dead meat.
Hadn’t his uncle warned him? Said, ‘Don’t go to work at Mama Gala’s. She’s not what you think. She’s Emile Dwappa. . .
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