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1 LaTisha KaNisha Jones walks through the Fruit & Veg section of the supermarket, where she works as a supervisor, fifteen minutes before the doors are due to open she's Chief Fucking Bitch on the prowl or Major General Mum as her kids call her she's already consulted with the personal shoppers who've been trawling the aisles during the night for online orders, to synchronize on replacement stock she's checked the warehouse to make sure her section's deliveries are in order and she'll shortly be recording 600 kilos of King Edward potatoes as undelivered, even though the supplier has charged the store for them (criminals!) she for one isn't going into negative inventory today, which will show up tomorrow as an unexplained deficit on her otherwise (almost) spotless report card she's done data rotation with the scanner, made sure the shelves are properly stacked with older stock on top

she's made sure the displays of fruit are neatly arranged, all of them perfectly shaped and unblemished as per customers' wishes, who don't realize that most fruit in its original, unadulterated state looks anything but standardized in shape, texture, size and colour as she learned at the supermarket training academy or that carrots were purple, yellow or white until seventeenth-century Dutch farmers cultivated the mutant orange ones of today as she likes to impart to her kids, Jason, Jantelle and Jordan, to make learning more interesting for them because they have no choice other than to do well in their exams unless they want to be chained up in the cellar without food, water or toilet facilities for twenty-four hours as she threatens frequently LaTisha is wearing her uniform of navy blue trousers with a crease down the front, navy blue cardigan, fresh white shirt, hair gelled down and side- parted very smart and professional, because that's what she is now, after she crawled her way out of the horror movie of her teenage years to begin climbing the giddy heights of retail supremacy winner of Colleague of the Month six times in three years Supervisor of the Month three times in six months the money's crap, only one pound per hour extra for a helluva lot more responsibility and she's still on shifts and still has to work weekends at least it means she's on the move, who knows, she might make general store manager one day if she works hard, sucks up to her superiors, doesn't piss off her colleagues (too much) and stays focused on her goal, which means remaining single LaTisha started working for the supermarket when she left school a head- banging argumentative gobshite with no qualifications who wouldn't take no orders from no one just like school when it tried to impose its senseless rules she didn't see the point in studying when it didn't make you happy (swots were miserable and had no dress sense) and too much studying

wears your brain out (scientific fact) as she told her teachers especially Fuck Face Mrs King who used to accost her in the corridors, you're not stupid, LaTisha, if only you'd apply yourself LaTisha replied that it made common sense to conserve your mind power, Mrs King, all the while emoting pure insolence, a special skill of hers, according to the teachers our brain cells are dying all the time and I'll deplete my resources – like our endangered planet, Mrs King, if I use too many of them in my youth, I might even end up going ga-ga in old age, she said, while emitting a look that said, yeh, just like you, FF Mrs King struggled to reply and just when she looked like she'd found the right words in her mind and was about to speak them LaTisha walked off (result!) the same with sports, which she got out of as often as possible with periods lasting from the beginning of the month to the end of it were they going to ask to see her used tampons? she even thought of starting a No School Sports campaign because enforced exercise was going to wear their bodies out and nobody was telling them the truth as she told Ms Robertson, her sports teacher, who also accosted her in 'the corridor of teachers with nothing better to do than harass innocent people' to tell her she needed to do sports to keep fit and stay healthy it's like this, Mzzzzzzzzz, LaTisha replied, what about ballet dancers who end up crippled when they're old? or gymnasts who end up with replacement hips? and runners who do their knees in? and you're telling me sport is good for me? Mzzzzzzzzzz Robertson likewise struggled to reply (result!) she'd have said all of this in the rally speeches of her imagination, standing on a podium, speaking into a megaphone preaching the word of common sense to her generation of teenagers, inciting rebellion on a grand scale from the children of the world, creating utter havoc which is what she felt inside after Daddy left

Daddy worked in Pest Control for the council, which gave him great job satisfaction, no two days are ever the same, he'd say, as they sat around the kitchen table eating their tea of fish fingers and salad, it's my role to kill the devilish vermin who plague people's properties and give them nightmares, and then to heal their trauma with reassuring words it's a vocation, a calling, my contribution to the world, y'unnerstan? Mummy's eyes disappeared into her forehead, and LaTisha and Jayla would giggle, even though they'd heard it all before, he was still funny in a silly way weekends he topped up his income as a bouncer in a swanky nightclub, like a UN peacekeeper except on a smaller scale, y'unnerstan? prompting more eye-rolling from Mummy Daddy had long black dreadlocks and was six foot five and just as wide it's all muscle, not fat, here, feel this, he'd say to LaTisha, flexing his enormous biceps from his bodybuilding sessions at the gym have a squeeze, she couldn't even make a dent in them, or circle them with her two hands when he asked her to have a go at that too by the time Jayla asked if she could have a go, he was too busy eating, he said, not now, later, Jayla, later except later never came he liked rubbing shoulders with famous footballers, who were good tippers and secret gamblers because they earned too much too soon for too little, so them doan know the value of money there was a back room in the club where they lost more cash than most people earn in a lifetime; they begged to have their photographs taken with him, the legendary Glenmore Jones, king of the bouncers, as he boasted around the kitchen table the other way round more like, Mummy said Daddy would look fake-outraged footballers offered him jobs as their private security man; he declined because he liked to be home at teatime I want to be with you guys, my children plus my wife equals my life because L is for love, I is for immortal, F is for family, E is for eternal he did night shifts at the club every other weekend came home Saturday and Sunday morning

her parents used to take her and Jayla to all the free museums in London Mummy said children who did well in life had parents who took them to museums, and you don't need to be rich to do that once inside, they let her and Jayla lead the way, although it was LaTisha who got her own way more than her sister, who was shyer and held back if LaTisha wanted to spend forever looking at the scary dinosaurs before anything else, it was allowed she did just that for years, wishing she could climb inside their skeletons until she got bored of their prehistoric weirdness and Mummy said, I'm glad that phase is over same with the sharks in the London Aquarium who were really dangerous, although close enough to almost touch behind the glass tank surrounded by all the smaller fishes with their creepy shapes and ogling eyes it was like being in a fantasy world when she watched them she couldn't really believe they were real once a year they went to Butlin's at Skegness they couldn't afford to go to the Caribbean as a family which should have been their Number One holiday destination to visit relatives one day we'll take an ocean liner there, Mum said, with a swimming pool and cinema on board we'll start saving this very week, Daddy agreed Mummy came from St Lucia when she was two years old she grew up in Liverpool, went to a church school with a good reputation, and got on to a social worker course as soon as she left it Daddy came from Montserrat when he was thirteen speaking funny and looking foreign, as he told his kids a hundred million times when he complained of the cold, the teachers said he had behavioural problems when he spoke patois, they thought he was thick and put him in a class the year below, even though he was top of his class back home when he was naughty with his white schoolmates, he alone was singled out and sent to the Sin Bin when he got angry at the injustice of it all, they said he was being abusive

when he stomped out of the classroom to let off steam, they said he was being aggressive so he decided to be, threw a chair at a teacher, narrowly missing him the first time but not the second he was sent to Borstal for the crime of chair-throwing, LaTisha, it was like a prison for young offenders, where he served time with junior murderers, rapists and arsonists I didn't want to be like them so I kept mi head down, luckily I was a big bwoy so they didn't bother me once I was free again, I picked myself up and made a life for myself inna dis country, LaTisha, addressing her alone, even though Jayla was at the table too Jayla accused her of being Daddy's favourite it was true and she liked it not gonna deny it I put all-a my pent-up rage into bodybuilding, never lost mi temper with nobody ever again, that's why the daddy you know is such a peaceable and agreeable person, ain't that right, Pauline? yes it is, I find your father very agreeable indeed, girls, and they'd both laugh like it was a private joke between them so one minute it was all happy families with jokes, then the September she started secondary school, he left didn't even let them know he was going, like there was no preparation for it, he went when the girls were at school and Mum was at work, left a note on the table saying he was sorry it was like, how can this even happen? is this for real or one of his practical jokes? Mummy went into meltdown, tried to contact him – when his phone rang, they realized it was in the house, he'd left it under his pillow she called everyone who knew him and found out he'd gone abroad somewhere LaTisha sat by the living room window waiting for him to come home, Jayla stayed in her room

the whole of that Monday night, LaTisha sat there, dozing off, waking up when foxes started fighting, or a neighbour's car pulled up or people walked past talking loudly the whole of Tuesday, and that night, too, the whole of Wednesday Mummy didn't force her and Jayla to go to school because she was in a right state herself, took compassionate leave, her sister Aunty Angie came round and took over the cooking and consoling duties, forced LaTisha to have a bath, eat, clean her teeth, forced her to go to bed the fourth night she went to sit by the window that night LaTisha took Daddy's dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door and slept inside it, smelling his sweat and deodorant, feeling his arms around her weeks later, Mummy reached him on the phone and screamed down it he couldn't provide a viable excuse, LaTisha heard her tell Aunty Angie, who said he was obviously with another woman, usually the reason men left their families he'd said he wasn't coming back, Angie, not now, not ever, I thought he was a big softie, I realize I don't know him Angie dug around and discovered he'd gone to live in New Jersey with Marva, one of Mummy's friends from work, who'd grown up there Tiannah, her cute four-year-old daughter, was his Mummy took down all photos of him, burned his remaining clothes, threw away his favourite things like his mug, Imperial Leather soap, old flannel LaTisha and Jayla were never to speak of him again, he doesn't exist any more except the ghost of him did, LaTisha could see and feel him everywhere at the kitchen table telling them the stories her mother said were exaggerations if not downright fabrications in the downstairs hallway when he came in and called out, Daddy's home! knowing her and Jayla would drop whatever they were doing to be the first to rush up and hug him hello in the living room in his special armchair with the electronic leg rest, hearing him snore and wake up with a start when they tickled him

all of them dancing to soul and Motown albums at birthday parties and at Christmas, and to reggae on Sunday evenings his bulk filling the corridor upstairs, the game she and Jayla played when little of running under his legs to get past him before he could clamp them shut hearing his voice booming downstairs when she was upstairs she even missed him banging on the bathroom door to hurry up and why do I have to live with three ooman who take so rahtid long to do their tings? her mother started to overeat, crept downstairs in the middle of the night to raid the fridge, snuck gin into her water from breakfast onwards, thinking they didn't notice, or the bottle going down or a new one in her shopping bag every two days then Mummy sat them down either side of her on the sofa in the living room and told her and Jayla that it was time for them to know the truth Jayla, your father is a previous boyfriend of mine called Jimmi who turned violent, when he tried to throw me down the stairs, I caught the train from Liverpool to London that evening he never knew I was carrying his child and I've not seen him since she fell for Glenmore in the last weeks of her pregnancy he said he'd love the child as his own Jayla wouldn't talk to LaTisha about it, stayed inside her room even more, played computer games when she wasn't at school and when LaTisha went in to sit on her bed and chat like they used to, she was told to shut the door when you leave without Jayla even looking up from her computer one morning when they were all having breakfast together, Jayla said she wanted to meet her dad, the man you've kept from me my entire life, Mummy – who rooted out the address of his parents, you shouldn't go, Jayla, he's bad news Aunty Angie took Jayla to Liverpool, they turned up on the doorstep of the house where he grew up, his mother was taken aback when she revealed who she was, had to admit she was the spitting of Jimmi Jayla could tell she wasn't pleased to see her

she called Jimmi on the phone in the hallway, told him to come and meet his daughter, another one, she heard her whisper he cyan't meet you, she said when she walked back into the room, he's got enough children, don't need no more you're better off without him in your life when Jayla returned home distraught, LaTisha told her to forget him, he's another bastard, like Daddy when Daddy phoned LaTisha on her birthday, nearly a year later, he cried down the phone, he'd done it because he realized he loved Marva more than Pauline that don't mean I doan love you and Jayla, y'unnerstan? she put the phone down on him.