Courting Trouble by Kathy Lette Page A

Roxy, pet,’ Granny Phyllis said, her voice as sweet as her soft, even features.
    ‘Vodka is just water with attitude,’ my mother advised, thrusting a drink at her with one hand, while gently prising free the gun with the other. My mother’s nod indicated that I was to distract Phyllis while she stowed the firearm in the hallway broom cupboard.
    ‘I do suggest you slug it down, Phyllis. It’s medicinal . . . So what exactly happened?’ I asked, steering the small woman across our living room and into an armchair. When she sat back, her dainty feet in their scuffed slip-ons didn’t even reach the carpet. Blue veins, like lumpy knitting, ran from chubby ankle to dimpled knee. What poor tiny feet, I thought, to carry such a heavy load.
    ‘Chantelle. My darlin’ little granddaughter. She was raped. In a stairwell. By two gang members. Off the estate. She was on ’er way out to celebrate ’er birthday. Her sixteenth birthday. She wouldn’t give ’em a “shiner”. That’s what all the girls are expected to do,’ she said matter-of-factly.
    ‘Blow job,’ my worldly mother translated. ‘Go on, Phyllis,’ she urged, sitting by her side and taking her wrinkled hand. They were the hands of a labourer, the hands of a woman who’d spent her life cleaning other people’s toilets. Provocation or mental impairment, I calculated: three years – max. Plus great mitigating circumstances . . .
    ‘Uppity, they called ’er. Snobby an’ that. So she was targeted and punished. She called me on ’er mobile, Chanty did. I went straight there. ’Er mother’s in prison. Drugs.’ She waved her hand in a weary way. ‘I’ve raised ’er. My darlin’ Chanty. She’s the most sweet and lovin’ angel. And there she was. Lyin’ on the ground, beaten, sobbin’, broken.’
    She faltered, pausing to retrieve a hankie from inside her cardigan sleeve to wipe her red-rimmed eyes. She then took a ragged breath and gulped down the vodka, flinching at its bite. ‘She gave me a description of them, Chanty did – leather jackets, tatts, the lot. I got me car and got ’er to the ’ospital, then drove back to their end of the estate. I followed those rats to see where they lived. Took photos on Chanty’s phone. Then went back to the ’ospital to show ’er. She identified ’em. So I took me ’usband’s old gun – he used to shoot rabbits, back ’ome in Derry, before the emphysema got ’im – then went round to their flat and knocked on the door. When one of ’em opened it, I shot ’im in the gonads. The other one I only grazed, I think. But I doubt he’ll be playin’ Hide the Sausage any time shortly. Then I came straight to Roxy.’
    My mother and I exchanged wide-eyed, raised-brow glances.
    ‘You took photos of them before the attack?’ I asked, my heart sinking. This was premeditation. The prosecution would put her away. Ten years minimum.
    Phyllis extracted her granddaughter’s mobile phone from her cardigan pocket. She patted the side of the armchair as an indicator that I should perch beside her. She scrolled through the photos she’d surreptitiously snapped of her granddaughter’s attackers. The two men, in their late twenties or early thirties, were pictured swigging from beer bottles outside the local pub. In their regulation leather jackets and huge biker boots, they looked as though they’d just popped in from the Hun/Goth-infested Dark Ages of evolution. The tall, bulky one had the body of a stegosaurus, with a brain to match, no doubt. He had pale, acned skin and his dirty brown hair seemed to have been styled with a whisk. The shorter one was Asian – wiry, brittle and mean-looking, like a halfstarved, malicious ferret.
    My mother and I stared at the photos for a while in silence, contemplating the veracity of Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis.
    ‘Honestly, Phyllis, I too have a beautiful granddaughter,’ my mother finally sighed. ‘I would have done the same thing myself. The low-life,