Uh-oh! It’s time to intervene.
She races down the stairs and out into the cool freshness of the garden. Blossom is drifting down from the trees. As she approaches she sees that the man in the wheelchair is trying to shoo away half a dozen skinny cats fighting over raw chicken wings, snarling and hissing and batting each other with their claws.
The woman is egging them on. ‘Pss, pss! Come on, my lovelies! Eat up!’
The wheelchair man has fake legs — metal posts are fitted into his shoes where his legs have been amputated below the knees. He is not effective at shooing the cats away — they are literally running rings around him. Then the schoolboy she saw before, the one with the grey uniform and short trousers, appears from the other end of the path.
‘What’s up, Len?’ he asks the wheelchair man.
‘Bloody cats, innit?’ the man exclaims. ‘It’s against local authority regulations feeding vermin!’ His cheeks are red with rage, and his brow below his red football-supporter hat is shiny with sweat.
‘They’re not vermin, they’re God’s creatures!’ shrieks the lady in purple. Beneath the shower cap, her hair looks stiff with lacquer like a warrior’s helmet. It reminds Violet of another song they used to sing at church in Nairobi: Onward, Christian soldiers! A pair of arched pencilled-on eyebrows give her a look of permanent alarm.
The boy starts to run around, chasing the cats away. They scamper for the bushes, but then his phone sounds, he pulls it out of his pocket and wanders off down the path, busily texting with his thumbs. The cats slink back.
Violet asks the wheelchair man, ‘Why don’t you like them?’
At once, the old lady launches her counter-attack. ‘Don’t you go sticking your nose in here, young madam. I’m just doing the Lord’s work, feeding the hungry.’
‘They come in my flat, steal my food and piss in the corner!’ shouts the man. ‘And she bloody encourages them!’
They both seem mad with rage. When she was little, her Grandma Njoki used a trick of distraction whenever there was a fight among the cousins.
‘Have you seen these notices?’ She points to where the notices have been fixed to the lamp posts and tree trunks. Now she sees they have mostly disappeared; only a couple are still hanging by a shred of sticky tape.
‘More stray bloody cats. I’d poison ’em if I had my way! Or shoot ’em all!’ The man in the wheelchair is warming himself up for another eruption.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Not the lost cat. An application for planning permission. They want to build a block of private flats here. On the garden. Where the cherry trees are.’
‘Get rid of all the bloody cats, wouldn’ it?’ mutters the wheelchair man, deflated.
‘Private flats is better,’ says the shower-cap lady. ‘No scroungers.’ She looks daggers at the wheelchair man.
‘But what about the cherry trees? They’d have to cut down all the trees,’ says Violet.
‘They make a bloody mess, don’t they?’ he mutters. ‘All that white stuff. Blows everywhere. Gets stuck on my wheels and ends up on the carpet. They don’t think about that, do they, when they plant them?’
From being at loggerheads moments before, they are now united — against her.
‘But don’t you think they’re beautiful? Uplifting?’
‘Uplifting?’ The shower-cap lady studies her through narrow eyes. ‘You don’t live around here, do you?’
‘I live up there.’ She points up at her window.
‘There’s a mad old woman lives up there. Potty as a whacker.’ Her look implies it is contagious.
‘Living in a natural environment is good for us. It’s an established fact.’ Her mother was always going on about trees.
‘Huh!’ snorts the wheelchair man.
‘Mm. But it could affect property values.’ The woman stiffens. ‘You!’ She jabs a finger at Violet. ‘You talk posh. Why don’t you ring up the Council and find out what’s going on?’
‘I can’t. I’m too busy.’
The woman has a cheek, insulting her and then bossing her about. She has more important things to do right now than get involved in some local squabble.
‘No you’re not!’ snaps the woman. ‘Nobody round here is busy.’ Then she adds in a softer tone, ‘Where I come from, round Thanet, there’s no end of cherry trees. God’s gift. Look proper at this time of year, don’t they?’
‘Well, all right, if I find time I’ll give the Council a ring. But don’t count on me to do anything else.’
By Monday morning the cherry trees and the planning application have vanished from her thoughts as she flaps around deciding which outfit to wear for her first day in Wealth Preservation.
She runs to the bus stop in her trainers, carrying her high heels in her bag. Crossing the cherry garden, she sees the boy again, dragging his feet as he crawls along a few metres behind his dad while she sprints towards the bus stop, and she feels how lucky she is to have an interesting job with good prospects — if only she could tell him it is worth putting in the effort at school.
Breathless and wind-blown, she changes her shoes in the lift. Marc looks up from his computer as she taps on the door and enters his office.
‘Welcome to Wealth Preservation, Violet.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘That colour suits you. Matches your name.’
She blushes and wishes she’d worn the dove grey.
His office is small and hot, cluttered with papers and dead coffee cups. A fancy black and chrome coffee machine gleams on a side bench beside the copier. There is a subtle smell of coffee, expensive aftershave and something else — how would she describe that smell? Male. The smell of maleness.
‘Sit down. Coffee? Now, Violet, what do you know about Wealth Preservation?’
‘I’ve had a look on —’ She stops herself. To admit to looking things up on Google sounds naff.
‘It’s not as technical as it sounds.’ He presses a capsule into the coffee machine and hands her a thick slip case. ‘Here, have a look through these files. It’ll give you an idea of what we do. A lot of it is just about moving client money around to low-tax jurisdictions. How do you like your coffee?’
‘White with one sugar.’
It turns out Marc has no milk or sugar. She finds some in the fridge in the kitchen corner. Back at her desk in the outer office she sips her coffee, which is very strong and too highly roasted for her taste.
She misses having Laura to chat to. Most of her new colleagues are several years older than her and although they are perfectly pleasant towards her seem to be mainly interested in property prices, stock indices and other such fascinating topics. She sends off a text to Laura with an emoji kiss for the baby. Then she opens the slip case and starts to read through the papers.
At first, nothing seems to make much sense. The wealthy clients seem to be mainly from poor places — Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, China, India and several African countries. There’s even a file for HN Holdings. Could it be the same company that is building the shopping mall in Nairobi? This one is registered in the British Virgin Islands, not Kenya. Strangely, it appears to be a subsidiary of GRM. Marc Bonnier is named as company secretary on the paperwork. The firm seems to specialise not in building development but in imports. In fact they are importing large quantities of plastic buckets into Kenya. But why are they sending out repeat invoices for different amounts of money?
As she puzzles over the invoices, a pattern emerges. The buckets are purchased for $1 each in China, then sold on to the Health Department in Kenya. What is staggering is the sale price: $49 per bucket. How can a plastic bucket cost $49? There must be a mistake somewhere.