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grandad died, his uncle moved out to live with his Aunty Pauline, Rob and his mum and dad moved into the house theylived in now, further into the estate. His nan went into the old people’s flats. Things changed. Miss Johnson left the school, other teachers too. Loads of kids left as well, like Jasmine Quereishi, who Chelsey had seen him talking to. Jasmine’s dad had recently saved Rob’s dad’s life. He was working on how he’d tell her this. It was true. His old man had a heart attack. Her dad was a consultant at Russell’s Hall and did his dad’s triple bypass.
    Adnan saved a girl’s life once, at a swimming lesson at Dudley Baths. They were all stood on the edge of the deep end, shivering and shouting in a line, not listening to the teacher’s instructions. Suddenly Adnan, standing next to Rob, dived in. Dived properly, God knows how he knew to do it, like someone in the Olympics. Rob remembered his body stretched out like a smooth brown frog’s, suspended in the pool’s blue light just before the moment of impact. Rob saw him kick his legs under the splashing water and, next thing, he was back out on top with an arm around a tiny, silent girl called Deborah Taylor, dragging her to the side. She was heaving and spluttering, had fallen in with such little splash when they were all making a noise that no one had noticed.
    Adnan did everything like that, better than you’d ever seen anyone do it before, then he’d just brush it off like it was nothing. He breezed through school work, read piles of books, back and forth to the library, interested in things, ideas, people. He was fascinated with computers and made tapes with little games on that he’d written himself, things that involved chasing spiky monsters or steering a car around a track. He was good at sport, tall and willowy, and when he’d played football he’d ran and swerved with the ball at his feet like Mark Walters at the Villa, whose sticker they’d plastered up and down the lamppost by the shops. He’d fight if he had to and he had to a lot – he didn’t go looking for trouble but never backed down.When they were kids Rob thought Adnan would end up as prime minister or something. Rich, at least. He didn’t think he’d be a taxi driver.
    When they moved on to Cinderheath High, back then especially, all the Asian boys were meant to know their place, really. They could sit and do their work and get involved with sport, but as far as fighting and messing about and hanging around with the white girls went, that was something else altogether. Rob heard there were schools near by that had things the other way round. When he was growing up, for instance, Cinderheath kids called the school up in Dudley the Ape House, scared of black boys taking their money when they went into town. Somebody always had to be on top, he supposed, some group or other. It was the way the world worked.
    He and Adnan grew apart as they got older. Rob concentrated on his football; Adnan on his school work, turning in on himself, sitting at the computer that school had given him when they were getting new ones. He went on to sixth form when Rob went to the Villa: they didn’t see each other much while Rob sat miserably in his digs in Wrexham, pretending to be a professional footballer. Adnan drifted along when he finished sixth form – his family assumed he’d go to university like his brother – doing the odd day’s work in warehouses and factories, inevitably ending up driving a taxi for Joey Khan. Then one morning he just drove off, disappeared.
    Yer cor just vanish into thin air, though, mate, Rob said to Zubair.
    He’d had a drink with Adnan’s brother every week now for the near ten years he’d been missing. They’d meet at Zubair’s office on Wolverhampton Street or sometimes down at the magistrates’ court now it had moved, have a couple of pints in Dudley