I grasped the rope and started to inch down. Although it burned my palms and cinched my waist, I carried on, desperate to prove to Latif that I wasn’t a complete loser. Luckily the wall wasn’t as steep as I’d anticipated, so, in a matter of seconds, the riverbed squelched beneath my trainers.
“What took you so long, bubblehead?” Latif threw his rucksack down onto the riverbed, followed by the rope. It slithered across the pebbles.
“Very funny,” I said. The rope wriggled from my belly, like an umbilical cord, and in that instant, I saw myself through Latif’s eyes – helpless as a newborn baby. I untied the rope.
No wonder he wants to lose me, I thought.
All of a sudden, I sensed the thick seaweedy air stir in the river basin and, looking up, I saw Latif swooping through the inky darkness. His body appeared fluid, elastic, but controlled – like a high diver spinning shapes. Except… Oh my God! There wasn’t any water. I screwed up my eyes, hardly able to watch. He landed with a dull thud, rolled and jumped to his feet, easy as if he’d jumped off a bus.
“You scared the hell out of me,” I hissed. “What are you trying to do? Kill yourself?”
“No, you’re the spare part. Remember!”
I couldn’t help smiling as I handed him the tangled rope. “That was awesome! Where did you learn to do that?”
“I jump London, Dasha. No sweat. I’ve been doing it for years.” Latif coiled the rope lasso-style around his arm, took his hat and keffiyeh from his rucksack, before stuffing the rope back inside.
“Like in the adverts?’”
“Yeah. Something like that.” He rolled his eyes. “Come on. The tide’s on the turn. Keep close to the wall.” He set his cowboy hat low on his head and strode off into the darkness. The riverbed smelled stale and salty, like a fisherman’s pocket. There wasn’t a whisper of breeze. Downriver, Chelsea Bridge’s reflection blazed across the water’s glassy surface, like a vast cathedral of dreams.
“How long have we got?” I asked.
“An hour max.” His words drifted back, muffled by the clammy-fingered air.
We walked in silence, sidestepping Londoners’ rubbish – a fridge without magnets or messages, a computer wiped of information and a headless doll. Buttons, glass, clay pipes and triangles of pottery scrunched underfoot.
The river wall shot up to the stars. We were in a secret, subterranean world, way below the sleeping city, safe for now. I searched the sky for a shooting star or some other lucky sign. But the constellations were cocooned in fuzzy orange neon. Only the big fat Michelin moon dazzled. I felt sad. Somewhere in the city my birth mother might be looking up at the same moon. Perhaps she was even thinking about me. I sighed and kicked a stone towards the water. As if. She’d be in bed, like the rest of London – that was if she even lived in London.
Maybe it was the silence or the full moon or thoughts of my impossible quest, but my throat started constricting and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I clutched my throat with both hands, gulping at the night air.
Latif stopped. “Bubblehead, what’s with the crazy breathing routine?” he asked, clearly exasperated. “Be easy, Dasha!” He turned on his heels and headed off.
I took a few more deep breaths before following him.
He was striding ahead now, shoulders hunched, hands sunk deep into his pockets, and, even though he was wearing workers’ overalls, a cowboy hat and a keffiyeh, he looked super cool – an urban cowboy. I doubted that he’d ever had an identity crisis in his life. He just was Latif. Unique. Unconventional. Charismatic. So different from the blaggers and jetsetters I hung out with. He cared about things – the world and other stuff that mattered – which was probably why he hadn’t got time for me.
“Wait!” I shouted, breaking into a run.
Latif stopped close to Chelsea Bridge.
When I reached him, he asked, “Are you okay?” His voice was gentle. It caught me off guard, and for a second, I considered telling him the whole truth – revealing my real identity, and asking him straight out for help. I studied his face in the glow cast by the lights on Chelsea Bridge. It was handsome, kind – almost serene. But his eyes glinted with cool amusement. I had to face facts. Latif thought I was a liability and wanted shot of me. He’d also made it clear that he thought the global super-rich were a complete waste of space. For that reason, I couldn’t risk giving him the perfect excuse to send me back to the Golds and pick up a huge reward into the bargain.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“So no more heavy-breathing routine, bubblehead,” Latif cautioned gruffly. “We’re ghosts. Silent. Get me?” He kicked a soggy tennis ball into the river.
I nodded and clamped my lips shut.
The foreshore became a narrow strip down by Battersea Power Station, its white chimneystacks stretching up to the heavens. Inside, I imagined a spaced-out Moon Goddess putting silvery lips to the white funnels and sucking stardust down from the night sky, getting wasted – just as Coco and the List would be doing round about now. Crammed into The Glitz, shouting shiny-eyed lies about how good, great, fantastic their lives were, their eyes roving, desperate for stardust.
We trudged on, our progress monitored by landing cranes that stood in the river like prehistoric wading birds – past the Toxic Waste Company and its mountain of yellow containers, past Fedex, past bleak industrial units, finally stopping twenty metres upriver from a huddle of houseboats, stranded on the riverbed by the tide. They were moored to a jetty. The American embassy squatted further down the river.
Latif gestured for me to hang back in the shadows, but seeing my alarm, he said, “Tranquilo, chica. It’s not the Yanks you have to watch out for.” He paused before adding cheekily, “It’s the rats. They’re king-size.”
I watched him skulk over to the boats, silent as a moon shadow. Crouching down, he removed a pair of bolt cutters from his rucksack, and started cutting through a chain that attached a small dinghy to a yellow houseboat.
More tricks of the trade, I thought.
The water was edging closer. A rat scurried past, its tail slapping at the pebbles. I stepped back. Stones scuttled sideways. The riverbed was a scrabble of crabs. Squatting down, I studied them, amazed to find them living in the Thames.
Hearing a scraping sound, I looked up; Latif was dragging the dinghy towards me, like a funky, twenty-first-century Robinson Crusoe.
“Get in!”
He steadied the boat while I clambered aboard. He waited until I was seated before jumping in after me.
Latif rowed in silence, his brow furrowed. Every so often, he’d let out a puff of exertion. I could tell something was troubling him, but whenever I asked him if everything was okay, he shrugged me off.
The oars splashed against the water and finding their splish-splish soothing, I tipped my head back, and watched the planes gliding through the darkness at two-minute intervals, red lights blinking. Their reflections slid across the glassy surface of the river, like blips on a GPS grid. I let out a slow sigh of relief – if my parents had got their way, I’d be up there right now in their Learjet, heading for our private island in the Caribbean.
For a minute or two – out there on the river – I let myself believe that I’d slipped the moorings of my old life. But the tide was on the turn, and I could feel the swirling currents tugging at the boat, pulling it this way and that. I clasped the sides, terrified a dark, dangerous undertow might drag us under at any moment, and sweep us back downriver to GoldRush HQ. I started counting the dip and splash of the oars. Slowly my anxiety settled.
We were about halfway across the river when Latif leaned forward and asked, “Did you take photos of my tag?”
“Yeah, just one.” I took my smartphone from my pocket and was about to turn it on when he hissed urgently, “Don’t, Dasha.”
I stared down at my mobile. My fingers twitched. I longed to see if the kidnap story was trending worldwide, find out who had been kidnapped for real. I hoped she was okay.
“Not n
ow.” There was something in his voice, which made me shove my phone back into my pocket without protesting.
A siren wailed. A blue light twirled on the embankment. We were about fifty metres from the shore.
“Not a word,” he said.
I glimpsed the red letters of Dolphin Square once again.
My heart sank; I was more or less back where I had started.
So much for being on the run, I thought.
We came ashore by Westminster Boating Base. Its rickety pier was knee-deep in water. A line of tiny, beached sailboats lay on the mud like multicoloured seals. Latif jumped out and dragged the dinghy up onto a strip of stony ground, before helping me out. Then he pushed it back out into the river. I watched it bob and twist on the current. To our left a large blue fishing boat stood on the riverbed, its white prow towering above us, like a huge cresting wave. We walked over. There was a ladder on the river wall next to where the boat was anchored. Latif climbed up first. I followed, but the rungs were slimy, forcing me to take it slowly. Reaching the top, I held Latif’s outstretched hands and stepped onto the deck. I did a double take. The boat was moored alongside an Astro Turf tennis court, which gleamed emerald in the moonlight. At one end, a pair of swans stood on the baseline, beak to beak, as if discussing tactics for a doubles match.
“Does anyone live here?” I asked, even though the boat was fenced off from the tennis compound by wire mesh. I cringed. Sometimes nerves made me ask questions to which I already knew the answers.
“Nah. Squatters did, but the feds evicted them months ago. You’ll be safe here for a few nights, that’s if you don’t want to go home. Sleep on it. You’ll probably think differently by the morning.” He turned to leave.
“No, Latif!” I grabbed his arm and said urgently, “Please don’t.”
“I’ve told you, Dash. I’m not going back on my word. It’s too complicated with a novice.” But seeing my panicked face, he relented. “Okay. I’ll stay with you tonight. One night only, special offer, so you can get some kip. I’ll keep watch.”
We exchanged a look, as surprised as each other by his choice of words – keeping watch suggested some kind of war footing.
But war against what?
We let the moment pass.
It was a classic fisherman’s tug, made of wood with a little wheelhouse on its prow. The door groaned open. It was warm inside and there were blankets piled up in the corner. I stared at the sailboats, bobbing off Westminster Boating Base’s pier, their masts clinking and clanking. I turned the ship’s wheel, my emotions spinning.
“So?” Latif said, as soon as he’d shut the door.
“So what?” I’d been dreading this question.
“What are you running from?” His turquoise eyes trapped me in their beam.
Immediately my mouth was full of marbles. “I told you I’m trying to track down my real mother. And…” My words came out thick and strange as if my tongue had been needled with anesthetic.
“And?” His gaze bored into me. “It’s not my style to ask questions. Everyone’s got a right to silence. But I get the feeling you’re not being straight with me. You’re a rubbish liar, bubblehead. So the truth, from now on – else I’m ghosting.”
He took some worry beads from his overalls, and started working them across his knuckles. So he’d had his suspicions about my story all along. The clack of the beads was calming, and the way he made them dance across his knuckles mesmerised me.
He looked up when I didn’t say anything. “I need to know exactly what you’re up to. The full picture, get me? Then I’ll decide if I’m gonna help or not.” He turned the full force of his gaze onto me. “You’re hiding something, Dash. Swear down!”
I felt myself colouring up. The flush started at the base of my neck and spread across my cheeks. The full picture? I still wasn’t up for mentioning my parents by name. Not yet. I didn’t want him to leave me, not in the middle of the night. I promised myself I’d tell him everything in the morning, but for now I settled with more partial truths.
“It’s big. Being adopted is only part of it.” I spun the boat’s wheel again. “My parents want me to be someone I’m not.” The flush was hot and oppressive. “I need space to think things through,” I added lamely. “Work out who I really am.”
He just kept on staring, refusing to fill the silence, to help me out.
Turning the wheel again, I saw the whole scene as he would see it – Rich Fake in Identity Crisis Shock. I looked at him, sprawled across the boat’s wooden panelling, so confident – so comfortable in his own skin.
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t understand.” My words came out soft, resigned. “Nobody does.” But deep down, I believed that if I chose my moment carefully, Latif just might. I sighed softly. “I’ll tell you everything in the morning, I promise. I’m too tired right now. Deal?”
He stretched his hand out. “Deal.” Then again, that crooked smile.
His hand was warm while mine was reptile cold. As I shook his, I realised how much I wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t in my parents’ pocket.
I wrapped myself in a blanket, which Latif had found in a cupboard beneath the boat’s wheel, and curled up on the floor. It was uncomfortable, but I was too exhausted to care.
I fell asleep to the clink and clank of masts, and dreamed I’d been captured and placed in chains.
Snakes and Ladders
I WOKE with a jump. Someone was shaking my shoulder. Still drowsy, I saw manga-huge eyes staring down at me. Thinking I must be dreaming, I closed my eyes again. Another shake – rougher this time, followed by a husky voice. “We’ve got to split. It’ll be light soon.”
I sat up, and when I saw Latif propped up against the boat’s wheel, everything came back to me. Stuck in replay, the events of the previous night spooled through my head, scary as a horror flick. I hit the skip button and shot back into the present.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Why? So you can dump me?” I stood up, stretched and unkinked my spine.
The Thames was at high tide and the boat swayed uneasily beneath my feet.
“Don’t give me a hard time, Dash. You know the rules.” Latif was whittling a stick down to a point. Shavings scattered the floor like potato chips. He’d taken off his overalls and was wearing black skinny jeans, an orange T-shirt, and a charcoal-grey hoodie, plus his keffiyeh and his cowboy hat, of course.
“Whose rules? I thought you hated rules.”
He tested the point with his thumb, then, seemingly pleased with his work, said, “Let’s munch. There’s a live cafe near here.” He pressed the sharpened end of the stick against my forehead. “We’ve got a deal, remember?”
“Like you’d let me forget!” I batted the stick away.
This time he prodded the stick into my chest and spoke very slowly, as if talking to a naughty child. “I’m not promising anything, bubblehead.” He gave me another prod. “You seriously cramp my style.” And with that he fished a car-wing mirror from his rucksack and gave it a wipe on his keffiyeh, before attaching it to the whittled-down stick. Then he headed out onto the deck.
I stayed inside and started taking off my overalls, reluctantly, though, as if losing a protective skin. After I’d removed them I stood there for a few minutes, feeling exposed, like a soldier contemplating imminent combat without camouflage. I took a deep, calming breath, trying to psyche myself up for action.
Outside dawn glimmered.
Greys and mauves streaked the skyline.
A solitary seagull squawked.
It was that smudgy time of morning, that hazy hour tinged with sadness, emptiness and missed opportunity, about the time, I guessed, when I used to head home after a night’s clubbing at the weekends when I was back from the Academy. Big Stevie would be at the wheel talking football while we cruised along the Embankment, the speedometer hovering at 100 miles per hour, safe in the knowledge that the police wouldn’t dream of stopping a car with a GOLD number plate.
“Psst. Quit dreaming, Dasha, and get over here.”
Latif’s whisper jumped me back to reality. He was crouching down at the rear of the boat, hacking through the security fence with his bolt cutters. I went over and stood behind him. The dewdrops flashed and flickered in the beam from his head torch, as if a kaleidoscope of tiny butterflies had landed on the fence. When he’d finished he held back a flap of mesh, and as I squeezed through, a dewdrop fell onto the nape of my neck, cold as an Eskimo’s kiss. I shivered and pulled up my hood.
We waited by the gate to the tennis court compound for a convoy of sleek, black, chauffeur-driven Mercedes with tinted windows to swish past, and I found myself wondering if I might know the people inside. It could be Scarlet or any one of my friends. It felt good to be on the outside looking in for once. Fascinated, I watched my former life glide out of view.
The streets were empty – lonely somehow. Apart from us, only a few bleary-eyed night workers huddled at a bus stop, staring blankly into space.
“Illegals mostly,” Latif said, following my gaze. “They put London back together again every night. Do Londoners’ dirty work. This city would be a dump without them. But nobody gives them the time of day. They were probably doctors, teachers or poets back home before they had to escape because some deranged dictator wanted them dead.”
“They look so sad,” I whispered.
“So would you, if you had to clean up everybody’s crap and were a million miles from home.” His voice was clipped, impatient.
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