Broken Homes

didn’t think the Faceless Man would be taking this much interest unless it had.
    The WiFi connection dropped off and, search as I might, nobody else was offering free connections to the good people of Elephant and Castle. There were plenty of internet cafés in the immediate area, but I wasn’t that keen on doing without my TV that evening. Or at least that was the story I was planning to stick to.
    Betsy Tankridge lived four floors up from us in one of the four-bedroom flats. When I rang the doorbell it was opened by Sasha, who stared at me for a good fifteen seconds before asking what I wanted.
    ‘Is your mum in?’ I asked.
    It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for him to parse a simple question before he turned his back on me.
    ‘Mum,’ he yelled as he walked away. ‘Someone at the door.’
    As he stomped up the internal stairs his mum peered around the kitchen door and gave me a big smile.
    ‘Peter, come in,’ she said and bustled me into the living room before retreating back into the kitchen to rustle up tea and biscuits. I sat down in the sort of large leather sofa that my mum would have approved of, and checked the room. The sideboards I reckoned were genuine antique oak but the cupboards, complete with decorative plates, were the new Polish furniture – although the high-end stuff made from real wood cut from an identifiable tree. The top row of plates were from Royal Weddings starting with Princess Anne and ending with Will and Kate. The shelf below was all Royal Jubilees starting with the Silver Jubilee in 1977. Old Liz II looking increasingly dyspeptic with every plate.
    Mounted on the wall opposite the sofa was a 75 inch Samsung LED which neatly confirmed that I’d come to the right place.
    There were at least half a dozen pictures of Kevin, twice as many of Sasha – although mostly from when he was younger and less sullen. There were older pictures of a pleasant looking white man with a square face and lank brown hair – including a couple of him in a wide-lapelled penguin suit and top hat getting married to a stunningly attractive Betsy. Mr Tankridge I presumed.
    Betsy came back and caught me looking, but instead of telling me about her husband she put her tea tray down on the coffee table and asked if I took sugar. She poured from a pot-bellied teapot hidden under an obviously hand-knitted tea cosy into two mismatched but clean mugs. She dropped in two sugar lumps from a red bowl with a green Easter egg frieze around its lip and handed me the mug.
    ‘I’ve only just moved down here and—’ I started.
    ‘Oh, where were you from before?’
    ‘Kentish Town.’
    ‘That’s in Camden isn’t it?’ asked Betsy.
    I said it was and this seemed to satisfy Betsy, who lifted her mug to her lips, took a big slurp and gave me a calculating look.
    ‘So what can we do you for?’ she asked.
    ‘I don’t know the area and I was just wondering if you could point me in the direction of a reliable secondhand shop,’ I said.
    ‘What you looking for?’ asked Betsy.
    ‘Just a TV for now.’
    Betsy gave me a happy smile.
    ‘Well, it just so happens that you’ve come to the right place.’
    ‘You’re mad to be moving in now,’ said Kevin in the lift going down.
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. Because what with the council wanting everyone out it was only a matter of time before they started cutting off the electricity, or the water, or ‘forgetting’ to send the dustbin men around. I asked him why he was still there.
    ‘Can’t leave Sasha and Mum on their own, can I?’ he said. ‘Christ knows what would happen to them.’
    I thought it more likely that his dear old mum would happen to somebody else rather than the other way round. But I kept my mouth shut.
    ‘What about your brother, is he keen to move out?’
    ‘He lives in his own little world in his room, don’t he? Hardly ever comes out of that room,’ said Kevin. ‘And he won’t be here for much longer.’
    I had Sasha pegged at about fourteen, fifteen tops – so I asked where he was going.
    ‘Oxford,’ said Kevin with obvious relish. ‘Cambridge, somewhere like that.’
    ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘Computers?’
    Kevin gave a little bark of laughter.
    ‘Computers?’ he said. ‘I wish. God that would have been so useful. Nah. I got him a computer, state of the art and he just uses it for his homework. Pure mathematics, that’s what Sasha does, he’s taking his A-level this year.’
    God, he was