Troublemakers

by Catherine Barter

  I say, ‘I was wondering if we could—’ but she has started shaking her head.

  ‘No. No. I’m sorry, no, I can’t. I really can’t. I’m meeting the head of Lewisham Council in twenty minutes and I’m worried you’re going to make me cry.’

  ‘Or maybe we could—’

  ‘I want to tell you that you look just like your mother. That’s what people always say at times like this, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t. I already know that I don’t.’

  ‘No. In fact you look like the image of your brother when he was your age.’ Her hand hovers for a minute like she’s going to touch my arm but then she doesn’t.

  ‘Did you know my brother when he was my age?’

  ‘Did I – Alena. Yes. I knew him his whole life. Since he was a baby. Until he stopped speaking to me.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve never—’

  ‘And I have to respect his wishes. I have to respect Danny’s wishes. This shouldn’t be happening. I have to respect him as a parent.’

  ‘You don’t. You don’t.’

  ‘Does he know that you’re here?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘Alena—’

  ‘You don’t know him, though. You don’t know what he’s like. He doesn’t even have to know. You don’t have to respect him. Honestly. He’s just weird, he’s a weird person, you have to ignore him. It’s because of – it’s because of his grieving process or something – you don’t have to respect him at all.’ He doesn’t respect you, I think. He pretty much hates your guts.

  But that look is coming into her eyes, that adult look where they think they understand something that you don’t. ‘Alena—’

  ‘Why have I never met you before? Nick told me that you and my mum were best friends. Didn’t you want to – I don’t know. Didn’t you ever want to meet me or something?’

  She looks a bit devastated. ‘Of course I did. Of course I did. I can’t tell you how many times—’

  ‘Then why—’

  ‘But it’s a complicated situation, with a lot of complicated feelings, and much as I would like so much to get to know you—’

  ‘You can get to know me, you can—’

  ‘—I decided a long time ago that I was going to respect your brother’s wishes. I’m so sorry. I really am.’

  Somebody else is gently edging up on us, putting a tentative hand on Lynn’s arm. ‘Lynn, if you’re ready—’

  She nods. Still looking stricken, she says, ‘Yes. Alena, I really have to go. We can call someone for you. How are you going to get home?’

  I don’t even answer. I don’t trust myself to speak. I just turn and walk away and since there’s no point going back to school I go to a seminar about what to do if you’re facing eviction.

  Everybody in the room looks pissed off and depressed so I fit right in.

  THIRTY

  When I get home, Danny is waiting for me. Lynn has called him. Which I suppose was predictable.

  I start to wonder if I might hate her, a little bit.

  Danny says, ‘You don’t cut school. You do not cut school. You do not go to Clapham, on your own. Clapham.’

  ‘It’s on the Northern line,’ I say, pointlessly.

  ‘I don’t care if it’s on the Trans Siberian Railway. Do you understand how dangerous this city is right now? Have you watched the news lately? And you’re riding around on the tube in the middle of the afternoon on your own. Do you have any idea—’

  ‘It’s in Zone 2.’

  His eyes flash. ‘I know where Clapham is, Alena. My point is, you don’t go there. You don’t go there, you don’t go anywhere else when you’re supposed to be—’

  ‘You’re banning me from Clapham.’

  ‘I am. I am. I am banning you from Clapham, and I’m banning you from going anywhere or doing anything apart from school. This is it. I’ve had it up to here with this. Give me your phone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want your phone and your laptop. Give them to me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you know what? No more hanging out at the coffee shop. You know what you’re doing this weekend? You’re coming to work with me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have to work this weekend and guess what? Now you do too.’

  ‘I want to talk to Nick.’

  ‘Tough.’

  He’s walking circles round the coffee table while I stand in the kitchen. Everything is the wrong shape without Nick here. This is a flat where three people live. This space is meant for three of us and me and Danny don’t know how to fill it on our own. We don’t know where to stand or how to talk to each other. There’s all this space that should be filled up with Nick saying something sensible.

  ‘I’m so angry with you,’ Danny is saying. ‘I am so angry. I am so angry. I’ve had it up to here with this shit. I’ve had it up to here.’

  It carries on like this for a while. He’s had it up to here. With me. He is angry. He is so angry.

  I have no idea what I am.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Danny makes me get up at eight a.m., and stands by the door impatiently while I eat a bowl of cornflakes. I make zero effort to look presentable: a messy ponytail and my oldest jeans. We get the Central line and change to the District. The trains are quiet because no normal people go to work on a Saturday morning. Danny looks at his phone the whole way and doesn’t talk to me.

  His office doesn’t feel like an office: just somebody’s – Jacob Carlisle’s – posh flat with the furniture replaced by desks and computers. There’s a lobby area with a photocopier, a closed door on one side with a printed bit of paper saying Campaign Manager stuck to it, and an open door on the other side. We go through the open door into what obviously used to be someone’s living room. The only person there is a woman behind a desk eating biscuits and writing notes on a long list of numbers. Danny puts his hands on my shoulders and says, ‘Leila, this is my little sister. Alena.’

  ‘Oh!’ Leila looks genuinely happy to see me. ‘Alena! I’ve heard so much about you. It’s so lovely to meet you, how exciting, we’re all really—’

  Danny interrupts. ‘Yesterday she cut school for the afternoon and went to Clapham on her own, so now she’s grounded and has to come to work with me.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Leila. ‘Oh, well. OK. Welcome!’

  ‘But I have a strategy meeting with Will and then we’re meeting the bus drivers, so I have to leave her in here with you for a couple of hours. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course it is. Is that OK with you?’ She is asking me, not Danny. ‘There’s nothing very exciting going on. Melissa was supposed to come in and help me with these supporter calls but she’s phoned in sick.’ She gestures to a sheet of paper on her desk. ‘There’s thousands of them. How’s your telephone manner, Alena?’

  ‘Not great,’ I tell her.

  ‘No, neither is mine.’

  ‘Nothing exciting is what we want,’ says Danny. ‘She’s not supposed to be having fun. No fun.’ His hands are still on my shoulders and he turns me round to look at me. ‘No fun. Understand?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I say.

  He gives me a brief smile.

  ‘Will’s in his office already,’ says Leila. ‘He says he’s feeling invigorated.’ She rolls her eyes, slightly.

  ‘Fantastic.’ Danny takes off his jacket and hangs it over the back of a chair, then points to a desk opposite where Leila is sitting. ‘So sit there and do homework or something, Lena. Please. I’ll be back soon.’

  When he goes, I say, ‘Who’s Will?’

  ‘Will Rofofsky. He’s our campaign manager. He’s very – energetic.’ Leila offers me a ginger snap. She has a lot of snacks: Kit-Kats and little Tupperware boxes of cashew nuts and grapes and biscuits. ‘I’m trying out vegetarianism,’ she tells me, starting to carefully peel an orange. ‘And I’m starving. Literally starving, morning to night.’

  I feel like I should respond in some way so I say, ‘Nick says
brazil nuts are good if you’re trying to give up meat. There’s a lot of fat in them, or something.’

  ‘Yes!’ she says. ‘Brazil nuts are incredible. It’s like eating butter. Who’s Nick?’

  ‘Danny’s partner.’

  I sometimes think that this doesn’t really do Nick justice, Danny’s partner, but it’s the simplest explanation, or at least it used to be. Leila looks a bit confused and for one tiny moment I think that I’ve just outed my brother in his workplace – maybe they are all massive homophobes and he’s been living a lie – but then her face clears and she says, ‘Oh, Nick. Of course. Of coffee shop fame.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I always thought I’d quite like to run a coffee shop.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She smiles. ‘So it sounds like you’re in trouble. What was in Clapham?’

  ‘Oh. Nothing. There was nothing. I was just – we had hockey, at school. I hate hockey.’

  ‘God, me too.’

  I haven’t brought any homework with me. There’s a Jacob Carlisle manifesto lying on the desk. When Leila’s phone rings, I pick it up and flick through it. On the first page, it says, My vision: a safer city for our children. Let’s cut violent crime by half. Let’s take back the streets.

  There’s a picture of him with a teenage boy – his son, I guess – grinning and sweaty with marathon numbers on their chests, holding medals.

  The boy looks a bit like this boy at my school who once, for no reason at all, wrote dyke in Tipp-Ex on Teagan’s violin case. I remember because she didn’t bother to remove it until her parents made her.

  ‘Will he be here today?’ I say, when Leila hangs up the phone.

  ‘Who? Jake?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Could be. Can’t promise it. He’s in and out. He’s a bit of a hard man to pin down. He likes to run his own schedule.’ There’s a tone in her voice when she says this, like she doesn’t really like him very much. She nods at the manifesto I’m holding. ‘Your brother wrote almost all of that, you know. He had about three days to do it. The manifesto we were working with when he started was a mess. Seriously amateur. He rewrote the whole thing. Daniel’s been our saviour, I don’t mind telling you. We’re all crazy about him. Will especially.’

  ‘Will especially what?’ says a voice behind me. I turn round. Danny is standing in the doorway with one of the best-looking non-famous people I have ever seen. He’s holding a Starbucks coffee and leaning against the doorframe. He’s got artfully tousled brown hair and twinkly eyes and an immaculate white shirt.

  ‘I was just telling Alena that we all worship her brother around here.’

  ‘We do,’ says Will. ‘That’s true.’

  Danny looks appropriately awkward and doesn’t meet my eye. It’s suddenly clear to me why he might like working here, where everybody thinks he’s so fantastic and doesn’t pick fights with him all the time like his family. Some part of me feels weirdly angry about this, like, Tough, you can’t have him.

  ‘So you’re Alena.’ Will gives me a very direct smile. ‘We’ve heard a lot about you.’ He’s got one of those impeccable, neutral BBC accents.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, not particularly politely. ‘I’m Lena.’

  ‘We just need those budget numbers,’ says Danny. ‘Sorry, Leila. Can you send them again? Then we’ll get out of your way.’

  ‘So.’ Will is still looking at me. ‘Are you interested in politics, Alena?’

  ‘Yes.’ I don’t follow this up with anything and he looks a bit disconcerted.

  ‘And what do you want to do when you’re older?’

  It has been my experience that adults, when introduced to a young person, cannot go more than seven minutes without asking this question. As if this is all just killing time before my real life starts, as if my life isn’t actually happening to me right now.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I haven’t decided.’

  ‘You can’t blame her,’ Danny says. ‘I’m thirty-one and I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.’ Ha ha. They both laugh.

  ‘You’re thirty-four,’ I say, and get a dirty look.

  ‘Well, keep up the good work,’ says Will, and they leave. I see Leila roll her eyes again as she picks up the phone. Danny’s jacket is still hanging over a chair and when they’re gone I lean over and search through his pocket to find his phone since he’s confiscated mine. I flick it on.

  The picture saved on his home-screen is of me and Nick on holiday last year.

  I feel like calling him, Nick, telling him where I am. Maybe he will come and save me. But then that seems rude, in front of Leila who is being so nice, so I look to see what games he has instead.

  ‘You look bored out of your mind, Alena.’ Leila has the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder and is slicing the foil on a Kit-Kat with her fingernail. ‘Do you want something to do? Say no if you want.’

  I say yes. The job she gives me is photocopying. So when I first hear about it I am standing in the lobby of the campaign office, leaning against the photocopier, tugging at a thread that’s come loose in the sleeve of my jumper. The photocopier is churning out some sort of fundraising leaflet.

  In the office next door, I hear Leila say, ‘Oh no. Oh no.’

  Danny and Will are both behind the closed door of Will’s office and I am alone in the lobby. There’s suddenly a bunch of voices next door and I realise that Leila has switched on the television that’s mounted in the corner of the room: ‘—information from a number of sources – no casualties have been officially confirmed but we’re showing live pictures now from – yes, you can see here, these are live pictures, and we should have our correspondent – we’re just waiting for our correspondent—’

  Leila barrels through the open door on my left and marches across to Will’s office without looking at me. She bangs on his door a couple of times and then opens it without waiting for an answer. I see Will come into view, slouched in a leather chair with his feet on the desk. He says, ‘Leila, we’re in a meeting.’

  She says, ‘You need to come next door and see the TV.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s been an explosion in Bethnal Green.’

  I can’t see Danny, but I hear him say, ‘What kind of explosion?’

  Will gets to his feet and Danny appears from the corner of the room.

  ‘They’re not saying yet,’ says Leila.

  ‘Just now or when did this happen?’ says Will.

  ‘Just now. Just this morning. About an hour ago.’

  ‘Is anyone hurt?’ says Danny.

  ‘They’re not saying,’ says Leila.

  They all come out of the office and walk back across the lobby and nobody asks me anything about my photocopying so I just follow them back into the main office. We all gather round and look up at the TV in silence.

  On the screen, it’s just like last time. There’s a police cordon at the end of a street, and about twenty metres behind it there are ambulances and police cars almost blocking the view of a Tesco Metro. In front of the camera is a reporter with a raincoat over his shirt and tie, holding one hand against his ear the way they do when they’re trying to hear the person back in the studio.

  ‘That’s Chris Mahoney,’ says Will, to no one in particular. ‘He was in my year at Cambridge.’

  Chris Mahoney says: ‘It does seem as though – it’s too early to say with any certainty, but obviously everybody is going to be assuming this morning – obviously, Sophie, everybody is going to be asking if this is the action of the so-called East End Bomber, who has targeted a series of big-name supermarkets in the past four months and who tragically last month claimed his first victim.’

  Sophie says, ‘Chris, can we confirm that there have been casualties this time?’

  Chris says, ‘Sophie, the police as yet have not given any details, but I can tell you that I have seen – I have myself seen evidence that this was an explosion of considerable size – that there have almost cer
tainly been some injuries though it’s far too soon to say any more than that.’

  ‘Chris, thank you,’ says Sophie. ‘Chris, we’ll be coming back to you very shortly.’

  I wonder if Chris and Sophie are friends in real life.

  Sophie says, ‘That was Chris Mahoney in Bethnal Green. Confirming there what we have heard so far, which is that police are not confirming anything at this stage but are reportedly advising the public, who are understandably alarmed right now—’

  ‘Fucking right,’ says Leila, then puts a hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she says. She looks at me and then at Danny. ‘Excuse my language. Sorry.’

  ‘She’s heard worse,’ says Danny.

  ‘It’s Bethnal Green,’ says Leila. ‘Jake needs to say something. That’s his old constituency. Does he need to say something?’

  Will is standing with his arms crossed, looking rapt at the television. ‘Of course he needs to say something.’

  ‘I mean, before anybody else? If he has a connection to the area?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Will. ‘He does.’

  ‘He needs to say something soon, then,’ she says. ‘Before everyone piles in, am I right? Get ahead of it? Before the one o’clock news maybe. Do you think they’ll have him on?’

  ‘On the news?’ says Danny. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Not even local?’

  ‘Maybe local.’

  ‘Or should he wait until they know if anyone’s been killed, or what?’

  ‘We should wait,’ says Danny. ‘We should be careful.’

  ‘No,’ says Will. ‘He needs to be quick.’

  ‘God, I feel cynical,’ says Leila. ‘I hate myself right now. Don’t listen to this, Alena. This is a very cynical conversation.’ She looks at Will. ‘Where is Jake? Is he still at the carbon strategy thing? He probably doesn’t even know.’

  I am still trying to watch the television, where now they are showing a different angle of the street, and Chris Mahoney is listening to his earpiece again.