wall.”
“ And you really think that’s who he is looking for,” asked Gerradine.
“ He is the missing link gentlemen.”
Chapter 9.
I had no desire for a retrial, by the way. I didn’t want to see Abdul Hamid spend an easy life behind bars. Free food, television and a gymnasium. No way. That little bastard was going to suffer.
To tell you the truth, at that point in time, I didn’t actually have a plan for Gerradine and his pals. I cursed the day that we emailed him to start with. Bloody Norman and his drinking. All I knew was that I had an ear at last. All these months of silence, with no one to talk to or discuss things with, hadn’t been the most enjoyable period of my life, albeit a very necessary period.
I had found the nightmares starting to return. Maybe it was the strange surroundings that I found myself in or the alien language? When we all lived together in Laputa, things had been better. We all felt safe. I had begun to miss Kalif as well. He was younger than Norman and Albert and we had gotten along so well. It felt like yet another part of me had been torn away.
I couldn’t wait to get the job finished in this god-forsaken country and head home, back to our tree, to face our destiny. To face the apple tree.
It would be two days until I contacted Gerradine again. I knew I had to get my head together. I felt like things were starting to fall apart. Paranoia and nervousness had become part of my waking being. Yet when I sat down and thought about it, there was no logical reason for it. No one knew where I was or even what I looked like anymore. The English orchard lay bare. I had the choice to stop this now. I had enough money left to buy a house somewhere and live out the rest of my days in solitude. But something was pulling me deeper into the darkness. To this day, I still can’t explain it; I suppose you have to experience it for yourself. The pure hatred of a person cannot be put into words, I couldn’t write it down. Not for myself or for them. It is something you have to breathe, a poison in your veins, a hatred, which rots your soul and the only way to cleanse yourself, is to eradicate the cause.
When I was a small child, I remember a neighbour kicking my arse for hitting a tennis ball against the side wall of his house. My parents grounded me for a week, during school holidays of all times; I remember festering in my bedroom for those long, seven days. Maybe that was the start of the rage? On the eighth day I stole a few shillings from my Mother’s purse and paid some older boys to teach that neighbour a lesson. I told them that he had touched me in a place that he shouldn’t have, a place that even my parents wouldn’t go. I watched from my bedroom window as those boys beat that man to within an inch of his life in the alley behind our house. I watched as he lay in the pool of his own blood and I had a strange feeling of satisfaction pass through me.
Adela Nissar .
Age: 17. Location: Lahore, Pakistan. Status: Engaged.
Adela and Hamid were second cousins. I found out about the arranged marriage through Adela’s prolific Twitter account. She bleated on like a spoilt princess about the ring he had given her with their entwined initials on it, how sweet he was and how she couldn’t wait for the date to be set. Wake up time! I’m setting the fucking date bitch!
Adela was proving a little trickier to find than some of the other apples. She didn’t mind blurting out her private life all over the net, but she kept certain things close to her chest. For instance where she lived, worked, played, ate and drank. To tell you the truth, she was beginning to piss me off. I had spent a whole day online, trying to find her, but at each turn, I drew a blank.
I had begun to wonder whether Nissar was her actual surname or perhaps she was just using a middle name. I couldn’t find anyone Nissar of the same caste as Hamid’s parents in the whole of Lahore. They would