‘Cheaters are the worst,’ Charlie agrees, like I want to hear what she thinks about my boyfriend. I really don’t.
‘My boyfriend cheated on me once; I didn’t let him cheat on me twice. Kicked his arse right to the kerb,’ says one of the girls who are sitting behind us.
‘An arse kicking is the only language a cheater understands.’
‘Why do they think they’ll get away with it when they always get found out?’
‘Yeah, you have to have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to cheaters.’
It’s a Greek chorus of roller derby girls all chiming in with their two cents on bad boyfriends they have known and how you have to show them no mercy.
I can’t think. Can’t sort out the jumble of emotions that are all clamouring for my attention. Can’t do anything but stare down at the pictures on my phone.
Then it beeps again and I turn it off and shove it back in my bag. I’m not emotionally equipped to deal with any more concern trolling from OMG!Martha. ‘I have to go now.’ I struggle to my feet. I was right, the grass has embedded in my thighs, but that’s the least of it. ‘I have stuff to do.’
I have no idea what this stuff might be. Mostly crying into Gretchen Weiner’s stinky fur, and periodically trying to screw up the courage to phone Mark and ask him what the hell’s going on. Then again, I don’t have the guts to phone Mark because I have a horrible, sick feeling that he’s gone from nought to not loving me in the thirty minutes since we last spoke. I don’t understand how or why, though. I don’t understand any of it.
‘Yeah, that’s the spirit! You go and hunt him down and you tell him exactly what a wanker he is.’ Charlie punches me on the arm with a lot more force than Emmeline. It hurts. These roller girls never know their own strength.
‘Are you really going to do that?’ Emmeline asks doubtfully. ‘You’re going home to mope, aren’t you?’ She starts gathering up her things. ‘OK, all right, I’ll come with you. There will be no moping on my watch.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say quickly, because even though I appreciate the offer, Emmeline has hotfooted it all the way to Crystal Palace to hang out with her roller derby friends and, more importantly, make major romantic inroads with Charlie. I didn’t want to piss on her romance chips, as it were.
‘You’re not fine,’ Emmeline insists. ‘Who would be? Tell you what, when we get back to yours, we’ll grab hold of all the stuff Mark has left there and we’ll burn it. That’ll make you feel better.’
It really wouldn’t and there’d already been one unfortunate incident involving naked flames this week; I couldn’t handle another.
‘Please, Em. I can’t deal with your tough love approach right now. I need ice cream and my special sadness blanket.’
Emmeline shudders at the mention of my special (and really ratty and kind of smelly) sadness blanket. ‘I can dial down the tough love.’
Her face is open, guileless. She’s straight up. She means it. If I want her to hoof it all the way back across London so we can go to mine, shut all the windows, black out the summer heat and eat ice cream because that’s what you do in these situations then she will. I know that to be true even though I’m uncertain of so many other things. And Emmeline will say, ‘I never liked him anyway.’ She’ll say that a lot. She’ll even say, ‘That girl … she looked like a right skank,’ though Emmeline’s mum is always going on about how we shouldn’t slut shame other girls – even if they do really deserve it.
Emmeline will do that because she’s my best friend, but she can’t help the tiny glance in Charlie’s direction. It’s hopeful, so hopeful – then her hope turns into regret.
This best friend thing goes both ways.
‘Oh no,’ I say. ‘I really will be fine. I promise I won’t mope too much. I just need to sort my head out, maybe speak to Mark. Anyway I have to clean up the flat before Mum and Terry get back and if the mopes get the better of me I can call Alex or Martha or Archie. I might call them anyway. They helped make the mess.’
Then I lift my chin up and manage to smile. It’s a three-out-of-ten smile, at best.
‘Are you sure?’ Emmeline asks.
‘So sure. And if I change my mind then I can meet up with you in town later, if you’re still going clubbing.’
A collection of tarts and cakes are wrapped in napkins to sustain me for the long journey. Someone gives me not just idiot-proof but Sunny-proof directions out of the park and instructions not to go to Penge West this time but Crystal Palace station and change to the Northern line when I reach Clapham.
‘I should get going then. Sorry to bail,’ I say, with a limp little wave to match my three-out-of-ten smile.
As soon as I’m over the hill and out of sight, I take out my phone and I call Mark.
He answers on the first ring. ‘Babe,’ he says, instead of answering with a song about sunshine, like he usually does. ‘Just about to call you. It’s not what you think, not even a little bit.’
REASONS WHY I THOUGHT MARK WAS THE HEIR TO MY HEART
1. Every time we speak on the phone, he greets me with a song that has my name in it. On the greyest day, he’ll sing, ‘Don’t blame it on the sunshine, don’t blame it on the moonlight.’ It always chases the shadows away.
2. And for my birthday, he made a Sunshine playlist on Spotify and got everyone to add songs to it.
3. He’s the first boy I ever kissed and now I can’t imagine kissing any other boy.
4. He always calls out his mum when she’s being borderline racist. Which happens a lot. (‘So, Sunny, is that short for something African?’ ‘Your dad’s a barrister? Really? How absolutely extraordinary.’ ‘I expect you’re quite good at dancing, aren’t you? I always think that your people have a natural sense of rhythm.’) One time he even threatened to report her to the Race and Equality Council.
5. Whenever he goes into Crouch End without me at lunchtime, he always buys me a Belgian bun from Greggs.
6. The day before we first hooked up, in English he read aloud from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and looked at me the entire time and made me feel things that I’ve never felt before.
7. Not to be shallow or anything, but Mark’s a DJ. People have actually paid him to provide audio entertainment. Well, Archie’s dad slipped him fifty quid when he DJed at Archie’s birthday party, and he got paid in lager the time that he replaced the DJ at Alex’s parents’ silver anniversary party because the guy had played ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ on a loop.
8. He always holds my hand when he walks me home from school. Always.
9. He spent most of today, the hottest day of the year so far, helping me repaint the shed. Though Emmeline said that if he and Archie hadn’t set fire to the broom and then tried to baton twirl it, the shed would never have got scorch marks. (Note to self: buy new broom before Mum gets back.)
10. I never imagined that he would ever suck face with some skank in short shorts behind my back.
9.23 p.m.
CLAPHAM
Before the railway arrived in 1863, Clapham was all green fields and famed for its lavender crops. Its most noted feature, the two hundred and twenty acre Clapham Common, used to be a favourite hangout of highwaymen in the late seventeenth century when noted diarist Samuel Pepys lived there.
Clapham was part of Surrey until the creation of the County of London in 1898. Clapham Junction station (one of the busiest in Europe) was originally called Battersea Junction, but was changed to Clapham because it sounded posher. Residents of Battersea are still quite sore about this.
Famous Claphamites include Brian Dowling, winner of the second series of Big Brother, Brighton Rock author Graham Greene, and sisters Anna and Ellen Pigeon, who in 1873 became the first female mountaineers to traverse the Matterhorn.
At the sound of Mark’s voice, I realise that I’m angry. Furious. Quite mad with rage.
My dad always tells me not to be angry. ‘Don’t be the angry black girl,’ he says. ‘That’s what people expect.’
Instead it made him determined to work hard, and now he’s a lawyer who fights on the side of justice and good, though he still gets stopped occasionally because the police think that if you’re a black man and you have an expensive motor then obviously you’re a drug dealer. Which is ridiculous. Like any self-respecting drug dealer would be seen dead driving a Volvo.
What with Dad insisting that people see the colour of my skin first and Mum telling me that it isn’t what I am but what I do that’s important, it’s no surprise that I’m so easily confused. It also isn’t any wonder that they split up before I turned three.
Anyway, right now I am mad and it’s glorious. ‘I don’t even want to talk to you,’ I tell Mark and I absolutely mean it.
Mark talks to me anyway. He says, ‘It was me being kissed, not me kissing her, I swear.’
And I say, ‘Yeah, your tongue really looked like an innocent bystander. Try again.’
By now I’m getting on the train at Crystal Palace station and Mark says, ‘A bunch of my old Chelsea friends just turned up at The Lock Tavern and they have a different vibe to us. It’s all kissy-kissy and “darling” this and “darling” that.’
These are the Chelsea friends that I’ve never met who Mark spends alternate weekends with so he can kiss girls who aren’t me, safe in the knowledge that there’s no way that I will ever find out about them. Until now, that is.
‘Whatever,’ I snap. ‘No wonder you never wanted me to meet them. Too worried that I’d bump into your, like, every-other-weekend girlfriend, I’ll bet!’
‘I didn’t want you to meet them because they’re arseholes,’ he says. ‘And I turn into an arsehole when I’m around them and then you won’t love me any more.’
All the time we speak, my phone is beeping like it’s possessed. I think OMG!Martha has shared the happy news and the ‘U OK hun?’ texts are gathering pace, which is just more petrol flung on the bonfire of my fury.
‘I had to find out from OMG!Martha. You’ve totally shamed me.’
Then Mark goes on a massive rant about Martha, like this is all her fault, when it’s hardly her fault at all. ‘This is so like her,’ he says. ‘Sticking her nose into stuff that’s nothing to do with her. She’s such a shit-stirrer. You know that she’s jealous of us, always hanging around when we just want to be alone together. Always causing drama too. Like when she tweeted that clip of Archie trying to skate off the low wall by the science block and he got a detention.’
‘She didn’t do that on purpose,’ I say, though without much heat because now I’m remembering the time I got grounded because Martha tweeted a picture of me on the rope swing on the Parkland Walk and my mum saw it and knew that I’d skived off the revision session I promised I’d go to. ‘Someone should take her phone away from her.’
‘She’s kind of a hater. Anyway, where are you now?’ Mark asks, and it’s too soon to change the subject when we haven’t even begun to get to the heart of the subject, but then I realise it’s my stop.
I jump up. ‘I’m at Peckham Rye. I have to change onto the Overground now to take me to Clapham.’
‘Peckham? Isn’t that where Only Fools and Horses was set?’ Mark asks. ‘Would it make you feel better if I let you call me a plonker? Or I could sing the theme tune?’
It’s harder and harder to stay furious with Mark. Especially as now I’m furious with Martha too and about how complicated it is to get out of South London. It’s as if once they’ve got you south of the river, they’re determined to never let you leave.
Mark must sense that I’m wavering. ‘I love you,’ he says. ‘You’re about the only good thing that’s happened to me since my parents split. I’m not going to do anything to screw that up. Come on, Sun, you know I would never willingly kiss another girl. Especially not tonight of all nights … but we don’t even have to do it tonight. We’ll do whatever you want. I’ll help you clean up and you can make me watch Mean Girls for the fiftieth time – just get here soon, Sunny. Where are you now?’
‘I’m one stop away from Clapham High Street,’ I say. ‘Then I have to change on to the tube so I have to go in a minute.’
‘But you believe me, right? She was kissing me, I wasn’t kissing her, and my hand kind of gripped her arse in shock. It sounds so shady, I know, but it’s the truth.’
I’d forgotten about the arse gripping and it did sound really shady, but then there’d been the time on the way home from a night out that I’d lost my balance when I was moving down the bus and it had gone over a speed bump and I’d fallen face down in Archie’s lap. Of course, Archie had gone bright red and everyone else, even complete strangers, had laughed at me. And now that I came to think about it, it had been Martha who’d made it even worse. ‘I never knew you felt that way about Archie,’ she’d cackled as if I wasn’t embarrassed enough.
And what had Mark done? He’d pulled me out of Archie’s lap, seen that my eyes were getting ready to unleash the tears of utter mortification and he’d kissed my cheek and said quietly, ‘Accidents happen, Sun. Don’t sweat it.’
So now I decided that I wasn’t going to sweat this … accident.
‘OK, well then I guess we’re cool. I’ll see you in a bit then, yeah?’
‘I can come and meet you at the station. Are you getting out at Camden or Chalk Farm?’
I’m just about to tell Mark that only a tourist would get out at Camden Town station on a Saturday night, but he says, ‘Wait a sec.’ I can hear someone shouting to him in the background. I think it might be a girl, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s that girl.
‘Babes, I have to go. Text me. I’ll see you soon. Love you.’
Then he’s gone and I’m not angry any more. Honestly, I’m really not angry. Mostly I feel like a bottle of Coke that’s been shaken up. I fizzed for a little while but now I’m flat as I walk the short distance to Clapham North so I can get on a tube train. Dear, dear old Northern line. I’ll never diss it again. Not after the journey I’ve had to get this far.
But when I get to the station, the railings are pulled across the entrance to the tube and locked tight. Then I see a notice about planned engineering works, and apparently it’s impossible to take a tube train from the south to the north of a major global city on the August bank holiday weekend. Like we’re in the bloody Dark Ages or something.
It gets worse. Because written on the notice and then repeated by the surly man in Transport for London livery taking passenger queries and general abuse are the three worst words in the English language. The very worst words.
RAIL REPLACEMENT BUS.
No! No! No! NO!!!!
Oh God, why have you forsaken me?
Right on cue, the rail replacement bus rocks up. A bunch of miserable people stare out of the windows as more miserable-looking people queue to get on.
Is this to be my fate? To spend hours of my life travelling from Clapham in deepest South London to Camden in the North on a rail replacement bus that stops at every tube station en route? I’ll be lucky to get to Camden in time for breakfast. I can’t even cab it. I would never have enough money for how much that would cost.
I look around for divine inspiration. That, or a handy teleportation device.
I’ve been to Clapham once before, with my stepdad, Terry, and my half-bro (and full-time pain in the arse), Dan, to give a quote on a house clearance. The house belonged to a lady who’d lived there all her life and now had to pack up and move into one room in a care home. Terry reckoned that the place hadn’t been decorated since the 1940s. It was like walking round a museum except you could touch stuff, though you kind of didn’t want to because it was someone’s home. Where their whole
life had happened to them.
She sat there, Mrs Sayer, on one of her green velvet bucket chairs and twisted her pale, veiny, liver-spotted hands together. ‘I don’t know what to do. What to take,’ she said. ‘How do I choose what things mean the most to me?’ Then her narrow, bony shoulders slumped. ‘What does it matter anyway? They’re just things.’
Terry had said he’d make some tea and he’d asked me to sit with her. Each uncomfortable minute punctuated by the ticking of her funny old clock sitting on the mantelpiece. I never know the right things to say and I’d looked around her living room; the sepia-tinted photos of weddings and babies and a man in uniform. A fragile blue vase, sunlight shafting through the delicate glass. A china windmill with ‘A present from Margate’ painted on it.
‘I’d take the things that made me happy when I looked at them,’ I said at last. ‘The ones that make you think of all the good things that have happened.’
She’d looked at me like she didn’t quite know what I was doing on her sofa. Then she smiled. ‘That sounds like an excellent idea.’
Terry had gone into her loft to get some suitcases down for her and then he’d given her a quote to clear the house, which had made Mum shout at him when we got back because she said they’d be bankrupt within a year if he kept quoting so close to the resale price.
After we’d left Mrs Sayer, we went to a greasy spoon and had double bacon, double sausage, beans and chips, then we’d driven all the way back to Crouch End crunching on extra-strong mints so Mum wouldn’t smell dead animal on our breath.
That was what Clapham meant to me. Now from my lonely perch at the bus stop outside Clapham North station, I can see a solicitor’s office and a beauty salon, a couple of convenience shops and a church. On the corner is a pub painted primrose yellow with people spilling out of its courtyard onto the street; smoking and drinking and chattering. I could be anywhere in London but it’s not my London; the London that I desperately need to get back to.
London Belongs to Us Page 3