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‘Whatever,’ she says and rolls her eyes. But she kept the paper though and even an idiot knows that that was a good sign.

It was a full two months though before she agreed to let me take her out. And even then she made it sound like she was doing it out of pity. ‘You look like you need a good meal in you,’ she had said. ‘Be round at mine at seven sharp. If you’re late, you will be.’ Ha. Still remember them exact words.

She happened to live not that far from me and so I walked it. Although it was already well into October, it was still warm enough for people to be in the streets drinking and hanging out. I had just bought these new trainers so I was giving them a spin and truth be told I was looking alright. I walked past a group of kids by the stairs at the main door to the block where she lived. This kid Jamil was there even though at that time I didn’t know that’s what his name was. To me he was just some kid hanging with his boys. I did know one of them though and I checked him. He nodded back at me and turned back to his boys so I slipped past them all and bounced up the concrete steps to her door.

She opened it looking like a Hollywood movie star, long dress, bare shoulders and still smelling of chocolate. ‘Come in,’ she goes and turns into the hallway. I follow her in.

I didn’t really know what to expect. Sometimes you go round a mate’s flat and it could be the exact same everything as your own flat, same windows, same doors, same rooms, same layout but at the same time it could feel like you had just stepped into another world. Someone would have like everything modern in their yards, all the gadgets, flat-screen whatever. Someone else would have like the same shit that they had in the eighties, you get me, with all like nest of tables and big soppy posters on the walls in black plastic frames. So I had no idea what I was about to step into, but I thought I would be prepared for whatever and take it in like it was just normal.

Kira lived by herself since she was like fifteen. She had no mum, the dad was wherever and the one brother she had, Spooks, was always in and out of jail, so it was just one of them things. Her place though was a complete surprise to me. It was the same shit, as I say, square rooms, low ceilings, iron-framed windows, old radiators. Just your standard council thing. But the thing that made her place different was the books. Every surface had a pile of books on it stacked as neatly as they could be and as high as they could get without toppling down. I don’t mean just the tables and chairs and what have you, but the floor too. Except for a space that made a path from the doors, it was basically books all the way round. They went round the sofa, the table legs, round the TV, everywhere you could see. It was like she’d robbed a library.

‘This place is alright, you know,’ I say because I really couldn’t think of anything else to say. My heart was going a bit if I’m honest with you. She didn’t say anything but shrugged her shoulders a little as if to say ‘whatever’ and sat down on the leather sofa. There was a space for her legs but nothing more than that.

‘You got enough books innit?’ I say. She reaches over to what was probably once a small table but what was now just a high pile of books and hands me a beer.

‘You got one chance to impress me,’ she says flashing them grey eyes at me.

I took that as my cue to start babbling and I do just that for the next four hours. To this day I am not sure what I said to her, but something I said seemed to do the trick because after that night as far as anyone was concerned she was my girl.

When Mum and Bless met her for the first time, they both loved her. Kira loved them too. Sometimes a good thing can happen to a person for no reason. She was the good thing that happened to all of us. Don’t get me wrong, she was no angel by any means. She could have these dark moods that would stretch out for weeks. She could snap at you for the tiniest thing and she could rage at you like it was the end of days and she was there to judge you. But underneath all that and underneath all the pretty features and the wide eyes, she was a good person. When she came round to the flat she would always make some food up for Mum and Bless and clean up the place a little before she left. And even though Bless was more or less silent, when Kira was around, she picked up a lot and sometimes you even got the feeling that she was on the verge of coming back to us.