Silas Nash book 1 Hush Hush Honeysuckle chapter 2

Maxwell Jones was invincible. Nothing could touch him. He couldn’t be killed because, at twenty-eight, he was already dead. He had a brain tumour, and it was terminal.

That morning, he’d worked two hours at his youth group for refugees and was humbled by how little the children and young people had. After everything they’d been through, they still smiled. Their homes had been bombed, and their relatives killed. And then, they’d risked their own lives by sailing to England—the land of plenty—in a sardine can. When they got here, they were housed in a concrete hell. They were spat on in the street, and wherever they went, the good British public abused them and told them, ‘Go home. Scum.’

Max taught them to read, and he helped with their English. He taught them interview techniques and showed them how to find work. He’d even brought many of them into his own business, often having to create an opening for them, to the consternation of, Henry Watson, his business partner. Some of them robbed him blind, and some were doing well. Like every walk of life, there were good people and not-so-good people—and these were desperate people, which heightened the results of these extremes. Most of all, he taught them three words to help them through every brick wall. ‘Sod you. Arsehole.’ That got him into trouble with the organisers, but he wanted these good people—part of our country’s future—to walk with dignity.

‘Right, you motley rabble. Repeat after me Mot-ley rabble.’

There were thirty attempts with varying degrees of coherence. ‘I’m going to the store cupboard. You know, that place where some of you find all kinds of goodies to flog outside Barrow Market? Keep practising, and when I come back, you’re going to give me your opening gambits in an interview.’

As usual, in the store cupboard, supplies were low, and it wasn’t, as he’d suggested in a joke, that the students were stealing them. He grabbed two of the last three reams of A4 paper and made a mental note to come back after class and place an order on his own company credit card. He’d done this at least once a month for six months, and Henry had gone from turning himself varying shades of purple to accepting that what couldn’t be changed had to be endured. ‘Henry, you old penny counter. You can't change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.’ At this point, Henry would go into a rant about accountants and end-of-year bookkeeping. ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ Max would say before stealing chocolates from the dish Henry kept on his desk for clients.

Max grinned at the thought of another Henry tirade as he looked up. One of the refugees had come in, and he was almost nose-to-nose with him. Max jumped out of his skin. He was a big lad over six foot, with a shock of black hair and intense steel blue eyes. Max hadn’t seen him before, but these frantic people came over in boats every week. Max was going to say hi, and guide him to the classroom but didn’t get the chance.

‘Me Kami. I am Iran.’

‘Hi Kami, let me show you where you should be, mate.’

‘You find, man. Hurt me.’

‘Somebody hurt you?’

‘I Kami Hakimi. You find Man.’

‘Okay, dude, let’s talk about it, and I’ll see what I can do.’

The man had done some form of martial arts training, probably after being enlisted in the Iranian army, where they were still forced into National Conscription. Every young man from eighteen had to go into the army for two years. The refugee pushed Max in the chest, but he never saw it. The movement was so fast that one minute he was on his feet, and the next, he was hurtling backwards into a rack of shelves and looked up, sitting amid a pile of stationary on the floor.

Kami was gone.