Immediately I had his full attention. Lowering my gaze, I continued in a sad, small voice. “I’m adopted. I only found out recently.” I paused for effect. “By mistake.” Another long beat. Then, when he didn’t speak, I carried on in an even softer voice. He leaned forwards to catch my words. My heart leapt. I was reeling him in. “It’s an odd story. All I know is a woman showed up at our house a month ago, looking for me. I just happened to see her when my parents were hustling her off the premises. They never mentioned it, but since that night I’ve thought of nothing else. I’m trying to track her down. That was why I was down by the river.”
I lapsed into silence.
He didn’t fill it.
I looked up. His eyes lasered me.
I took a few seconds before continuing. “Since this mystery woman showed up, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to disappear. Tonight down by the Tate, everything fell into place. I knew that it was now or never. It’s a quest, I guess. I know that sounds cheesy, but I’m deadly serious about it. My parents are going to freak out when they discover I’m missing. They’ve probably called the police already. I hate them…” I tailed off, as if I had found it too painful to discuss. I was good at acting roles.
“No problem. It’s your stuff. I get you, it’s private.” Latif shrugged, giving a good impression of being totally uninterested. But I could tell he was intrigued.
“It’s just something I need to do.”
“Find your own way.” He gave me a look as if to say, “You haven’t made a very good job of it so far.”
I forced a sad little half-smile. “Up until the bridge, things had been going well. I was on a real high.” Jeannie came back inside and started wiping down the counter, but I managed to hold his gaze. “Thanks again for helping me out.”
“Pleasure, chica. All in a night’s work.”
“Is that where you work? Under that bridge?” I asked, wanting to shift the focus onto him. But as soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to grab them back again.
“Yeah right! That’s my office.” A wry smile played at the corner of his mouth as he checked the clock on the wall. “Know what? I’ve got unfinished business back there so I’m going to head back. I’ve been staking the place out for days.”
“Can I come?” I prayed my voice sounded casual.
“What, you?” He looked taken aback.
“Yeah. Why not?” I drew a squiggle in the spilt tea on the table with my finger. “I can’t go home. I’ve got nowhere to go.”
“Not my problem, Dasha.”
“Okay.” I stared at the squiggle, shaped it into a question mark. I wasn’t sure how to play him. After a few seconds I stood up, zipped up my coat and shrugged my bag over my shoulder – all the while staring into the night. I met his gaze and said, “Seriously, thanks for rescuing me down by the river. It’s been nice meeting you.” I flashed him my best smile. “If not a little weird.”
“Are you going home?”
“No way. I’d be nuts to go back. I’m on a mission.” Then I quickly averted my eyes and looked out into the darkness, pretending to wipe away a tear. It was a pretty low-down trick to pull, but it was the if-all-else-fails part of my game plan. Playing parts was the one thing the Golds had schooled me well in. “Where’s the nearest Tube?” I asked, voice trembling.
“’Sakes, Dasha. Don’t be so ramshackle.” He looked uneasy.
“Seriously. I’ll cope. It’s no big deal,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “I know I’m gonna regret this…” He drummed his fingers on the table. “You up for a bit of after-hours work?” He smiled. “No fear, I’ll protect you, bubblehead.” He gulped down his last mouthful of tea. He seemed happier now there was a plan of action, and we were on the move again. “If you get freaked out, you gotta get back out there again. Soon as, get me?”
“Like when you fall off a horse?”
“Hell. Yeah! Just like that, bubblehead.” His smile split open his face. “So you up for it or not?”
Without waiting for an answer, he was up and in the kitchen rooting around in the cupboard beneath the sink, getting under Jeannie’s feet and making her curse. A few minutes later, he was back, clutching a black hoodie, a baseball cap, a pollution mask and a set of street cleaner’s waterproofs, identical to the ones he was wearing. The logo on the jacket read Westminster City Council.
“Take these.” He pushed the bundle of clothes into my hands. I took them reluctantly. The overalls were covered in mud and smelled of rubber and sweat. I wrinkled my nose.
Seeing my expression, he laughed and said, “If you wanna keep a low profile, chica, these are the real deal. They’re essential night garms.” He pointed to the label. “Nobody sees you, you know, really sees you. Not as a real person. You’re a street cleaner. A loser. People cross the road to avoid you, scared they’ll catch your bad luck. I’m not joking around. It’s like a passport to a parallel world. Last month I painted a statue of Winston Churchill blue. Turned him into a Smurf. No questions asked.”
I smiled. “He’d make a good Smurf.”
“So? You up for it?”
I ran my finger across the Westminster logo, pretending to turn his offer over in my mind. He’d fallen into my trap. Mission accomplished. Hopefully I’d bought myself some time. Now all I had to do was persuade him to help me out, although I wasn’t exactly holding my breath.
“Yeah. Why not?” I smiled.
He smiled back.
The overalls were stiff and rustled as I went to slip them on.
Latif put his hand on my arm. “Not in here,” he said. “And leave that douchey bag with Jeannie.”
“What? No way.” I clutched my crocodile-skin bag to my chest.
“You’re meant to be blending in, bubblehead! Check it!”
I smiled. “Suppose overalls don’t rock with croc.” I took out my cash card, shades, smartphone and a lipstick and stuffed them into the back pockets of my jeans before handing it over.
“First rule. Switch your mobile off.“
“It is, I swear. I turned it off so I wouldn’t be bombarded by texts from the ’rentals.”
“And the GPS?”
I nodded, but he checked anyway.
“Okay, vamos, chica.”
“Why do you speak in Spanish?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“Take care, Lats,” Jeannie said as we headed out.
“Safe, Jeannie. Tell Mum and Ren to bell me when you see them.”
“Righty-o!” she shouted after us.
Back on the streets, I slipped on the hoodie, followed by the waterproof overalls. They were big and bulky. But I was tall for my age, so I didn’t have to roll the trousers up too much. Catching sight of my reflection in a shop window, I winced; I looked like a waterproofed Charlie Chaplin impersonator. Glamorous or what? A jogger passed without giving us a second look. He saw slouch kids who’d dropped out of school. That was when I understood Latif’s point. We were trash. Instantly I was glad I was with him. He knew how to work the streets. My instinct to get him to help me grew stronger. I felt giddy with excitement, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
“So you don’t work for the council?” I asked, catching a glimpse of our reflections again.
“Nah!” he said.
“But the overalls?” I pulled out the waterproof trouser legs and started to imitate the Chaplin walk, all heel-skittery and topple-back.
Latif laughed. “They’re contraband. If a guy leaves them by his cart, I nab ’em. They’re slick for undercover work. It’s what nighters wear.”
“Nighters?” I wrinkled my nose – that word again – I had no idea what it meant.
“You’ll see. I bomb this city.”
I slowed down.
“Not for real, bubblehead. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Sorry!” I muttered. “I’m feeling a bit edgy.”
He shrugged as if to say, “That’s to be expected,” or that’s h
ow I read it, anyway.
Up ahead, a couple crossed the road. He nodded.
“See what I mean? We’re toxic!”
And for the first time in my life, I felt invisible, anonymous, disguised, strangely liberated. I stared at a woman walking a labradoodle who didn’t so much as glance in our direction. We were part of the street furniture. The recklessness was back – in spades. The night tingled with promise.
Bombing the Train
TEN minutes later, we were back under the railway bridge, standing in the shadows, staking things out – exactly what things, Latif wouldn’t say. A chauffeur-driven limo swooshed past. My heart accelerated. A train rumbled overhead. Latif stared out into the darkness – completely still, but alert.
Across the road, behind high grey railings, a civilian train crawled to a stop, doused its lights.
“Bang on time,” Latif whispered, more to himself than me.
The driver jumped down. His torch beam revealed a depot for trains. Watching him shrug on his overcoat, I was struck by how alone he looked. I shuddered, remembering how alone I’d felt only a few hours earlier. He stretched and started walking towards Victoria Station, his torch bobbing into the distance.
When the darkness had swallowed the driver up, Latif changed his focus. I followed his gaze. Attached to a six-foot security fence, a CCTV camera swivelled back and forth, watching over the sleeping trains. Gently clicking his fingers, Latif timed the speed of the camera’s arc, like a jazz musician counting in the rest of his band. Then, as its steely eye rotated back again, he signalled to me to stay put and ran across the road, taking care to keep behind its surveillance curve, even though his keffiyeh covered his head and face, leaving only eye-slits.
I shoved my knuckles into my mouth. By my reckoning he had no more than twenty seconds to do whatever he had to do. I needn’t have worried. In five, he was on the opposite pavement. In seven, he leapt up and slam-dunked the camera with his cowboy hat. Now sly-eye was no more threatening than a giant hatstand. Latif beckoned me over with a long, loose-armed gesture.
As I rushed after him, he leapt up onto a garden wall in front of a block of red-brick flats, and swung up into the branches of a tree overlooking the railway yard. From his surefootedness I could see that he’d taken this route many times before. I scrambled after him, my trainers skidding and scuffing across the silvered bark. Vertigo tingled my limbs, filling me with an urge to jump. I rested my cheek against the tree’s rough trunk and hugged it tight.
“I’m rolling,” Latif whispered, as he fixed a headtorch around his keffiyeh. “Keep lookout. Whistle if anyone shows up.”
He edged along a wheezy branch until he could grasp the railway yard’s spiky railings, and then, with one fluid movement, he vaulted down, landing panther-slick in the yard below. I heard the zip of his rucksack, followed by rustling. Peering into the darkness, I fleetingly thought Latif had grown translucent wings. But as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw he was holding sheets of plastic. Next he took five aerosol cans from his rucksack and lined them up on the ground.
He switched the torch on.
Action stations.
With a can in each hand, Latif started shaking up the paint, waving his arms around, as if he were dancing to hardcore techno. The metal aerosol balls bashed out a minimal beat. The hiss of paint punctuated the night. He worked fast and efficiently, swapping stencils, juggling spray cans. The beam from his torch was a choppy disco ball.
When he had finished, Latif stood back to admire his work, and as his torch swung back and forth across the side of the train, I saw his graffiti in jump cuts. It featured a guy wearing a black and white keffiyeh and a pair of mirrored Aviators. He was some kind of freedom fighter, maybe. The image of a rioter throwing a homemade petrol bomb was reflected twice – once in each shade. Below the image, bright red lettering spelled something out in Arabic.
I had no idea what the words meant. I imagined it was some kind of call to arms, but I didn’t care – it was totally cool. Switching on my smartphone, I took a photo. My mailbox was full of texts from my parents. I itched to open a few, but the control-freaks were history. I turned it off again.
A metallic crash made me jump and I nearly toppled from my perch, but it was only Latif rushing the fence. Hugging the tree trunk more tightly, I watched him scale the mesh quick and easy as Spider-Man.
“What do you think?” he asked, as we stood squashed together in the fork of the tree. “I throw a piece up every day. I paint what’s going on in the world as I see it. Good and bad. My moniker is Radical Witness.”
“It’s amazing. That writing’s Arabic, right?” I whispered. “What does it say?”
“Brainpower not firepower.” He made a freedom fighter’s fist.
“Oh, my days, I’m a complete dim-bulb.” I reddened. “So you’re anti-violence?”
He shrugged. “I don’t judge. I paint what I see.”
“The petrol bomb made me think it was jihad or some kind of call to arms,” I mumbled, hating the way I was coming across all hairspray and lipgloss.
“Yeah! You and every other doughnut. But that’s my point. When people see Arabic graffiti they think the words must be inciting violence. I mean, give me a break… Sometimes I quote Sufi poetry, so beautiful it makes you want to cry. I use Arabic to mess with people’s heads. The freedom fighter is my tag, but I change the words and what’s reflected in his shades daily.” He grabbed hold of a branch. “Don’t get me started, coz we’ll be here all night and we gotta ghost.”
I could hardly watch as he swung out into the darkness and jumped soundlessly to the ground.
The birch tree glowed silver in the moonlight, its branches surrounding me like protective arms. I looked down; my legs tingled and my stomach leapt.
“Move it,” Latif said, pointing out knotholes to support my feet.
I counted to three before scrambling down after him, glad of the thick work overalls. Then I scurried across the road and waited under the railway bridge once again. This dank place was getting a bit too familiar for my liking. With laserpoint precision Latif ran at the CCTV camera, strides lengthening as he grew closer until he finally leapt into the air and snatched back his hat. The steely eye stared down unblinking. Latif stood defiantly in its gaze and punched the air with a freedom fighter’s fist. I tensed up, hoping nobody at Railway Control was watching. Latif enjoyed taking risks; I guessed that was all part of the buzz. Next minute, he was charging up the road yelling for me to keep up.
When we reached Chelsea Bridge I collapsed against its side, gasping for breath and giggling. This was all so new to me – so exciting. I shook my head, finding it hard to believe that I was out at night with a stranger, without guards or minders, just being carried along by adrenalin.
“That was trill,” Latif said, hardly out of breath.
“What?” I spluttered. The sprint had blown my lungs to smithereens.
“Mental. A riot. Real!” His blue-green eyes shone in the moonlight.
“So that’s what you do?” I straightened up.
“Yeah. Most nights.”
“That’s bombing nighter-style?” I smiled, picturing his paint bombs of words.
“Sure is, bubblehead… I bomb the city’s furniture – trains, statues, walls and stuff. Have done for years. That’s what nighters do: we run, we tag, we outwit the police.”
“Do you always tag at night?”
“Yeah. It’s safer. These days you’ve gotta be quick, though. I’ve been busted a few times when I was a kid. That’s why I take precautions.” He pointed to the logo on his overalls. “Like I said, these garms make me look official.” He shoved his hands into the pockets. “Appropriate the look of the state to do it over. Get me?”
“Official anarchy.” I smiled.
“Truth!”
“But don’t you get bored hanging around?”
“Nah. Adrenalin’s addictive. Believe it!” He nodded in the direction of the train yard. “That’ll
be buffed by morning. It’s crazed how quickly tags disappear. That’s why Mum called my story ‘Words Disappear at Dawn’.”
The moonlight spangled the water into silvery rounds, like the ghostly lips of mermaids, coming up for air.
I shivered.
“Don’t your parents mind…” I tailed off, seeing Latif’s left eyebrow shoot upwards once again, and finished lamely, “you know, that you’re out all night?”
“Nah. Mum’s driving most nights and Dad…” He stopped mid-sentence.
A siren wailed – close by, heading our way.
Latif sucked air through his teeth. “Fed alert.” He started unwinding his keffiyeh from around his face. Then, glancing over at me, he said, “Pull up your mask.”
The mask smelled of peppermints.
I sped up. He grabbed my arm. “Slow it down. We’re night workers, yeah? Pissed off. We don’t hurry for nothin’. Check it!” He shoved his hat into his rucksack, followed by his keffiyeh. Then he pulled up his hoodie.
Blue neon flashed along the embankment. I counted two police cars. Latif glanced back towards the train depot.
“We’ve got fed action. Mirror me, Dash!” He slipped into a slow, loose-limbed, who-cares stride. “The train driver or security must’ve spied us.”
Fear stiffened my limbs. I struggled to mimic his laidback look. More sirens wailed in the distance. Unease infected me. The police were all over the city like a rash. I glanced over at Latif. He shot me a grin. He didn’t seem the least bit perturbed. In fact, he appeared to be relishing the buzz.
“All in a night’s work,” he said with a wink.
There was a hot-dog caravan on the south side of the bridge where a few cabbies were chatting, hands cupped around steaming cups of coffee. I kept my eyes lowered, praying they wouldn’t think we looked suspicious. But they didn’t give us a second glance, merely seeing night workers like themselves. Besides, they were too busy checking out the police action on the other side of the river. As we passed, I caught the word ‘murder’, in a strong Glaswegian accent.
We walked on down the road, the dark expanse of Battersea Park stretching out to our right. We’d only gone about fifty paces when Latif whispered, “You ready?”
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