London Belongs to Us

by Sarra Manning

  But God’s plan for me is the rail replacement bus that apparently runs every five minutes, because another one is trundling towards me.

  Suddenly I hear the hoot of a horn. Two hoots. Then there’s a cacophony of non-stop hooting and l look past the bus stop to see two boys on mopeds pulling into the side of the road. Two boys in sharp, skinny suits, who I’m betting would have huge volume-defying mops of hair if said hair wasn’t currently obscured by their helmets. They still have their shades on and the scooters are the ones that have an Italian name that always makes me think of chocolate. Vespas. They’re on Vespas. Like Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday or all those mods heading down to Brighton to fight rockers in Quadrophenia, which Terry always makes us watch when it’s his turn to choose a film.

  It’s the French boys. The Godards. I don’t know what they’re doing in Clapham or why they’re tooting their horns like it’s a new national pastime, but they are.

  Whatever. Not my problem.

  I join the people queuing to get on the rail replacement bus.

  ‘Sunshine! Hey! Sunshine! C’mere!’

  Only one person calls me Sunshine, even though it’s the name on my birth certificate, and that’s my mum. She only calls me that when I’m in unholy amounts of trouble. But one of the Godards (how does anyone tell them apart?) has taken off his helmet and is calling out my full name and waving at me.

  I mooch over unwillingly. I can’t think why two mysterious French boys would want anything to do with me.

  ‘Hey,’ I say when I’m within speaking distance. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Ah, I was just about to ask you the same thing,’ the unidentified Godard says. He doesn’t sound at all French. He sounds as if he was born and bred in North London like me. The other Godard hasn’t even taken off his helmet but sits on his scooter like he’s desperate to dive back into the traffic. ‘Your friends remembered the Northern line was closed, but you’d already gone and you weren’t answering your phone.’

  I look at my phone. I have so many unread texts, voicemails and missed calls that it looks like the phone of someone who’s really popular. ‘They’re running rail replacement buses.’

  ‘That sucks,’ he mutters, this boy whose name I don’t know, who might not even be French. ‘I went on a rail replacement bus once. Someone was sick over my shoes. It was very traumatic.’

  I stare down at his feet. His skinny legs end in a pair of black, pointy-toe boots. Then I look up because he’s holding out his hand like he wants me to shake it.

  ‘We haven’t met, I know, but your mother, la belle Hélène, talks about you all the time. I’m Vic.’

  ‘Sunny. Everyone calls me Sunny.’ We shake hands. He has a firm handshake and for a second it feels as if he’s holding my hand, and that’s nice, but maybe it’s because I’m still overcome by flatness and I could really do with a bit of hand-holding.

  When Vic lets go of my hand, it’s a tiny loss. Then he jerks his head and says something in French to his maybe twin, maybe doppelgänger boyfriend. I catch the word ‘allez’. And I also make out the word ‘wanker’ in the torrent of French that I don’t understand because I took Spanish as my language option for GCSE.

  Then the other one gets off his scooter and steps towards me and I want to step back because Vic is in a white shirt and he seems light and friendly, but this other guy is wearing a black shirt, which exactly matches the expression on his face.

  ‘Sunny, this is Jean-Luc. He’ll pretend he doesn’t understand a word of English. He’ll also pretend to be a gigantic wanker. Not true in either case. He’s just a normal-sized wanker.’

  Even though he’s wearing shades, I’m sure Jean-Luc is rolling his eyes. I hold out my hand but he ignores it and simply says, ‘Enchanté,’ like he’s the absolute opposite of enchanté.

  In ordinary circumstances I’d be stammering and blushing the way I did when there were cute boys present and I was trying to act cool, but these are extraordinary circumstances. My heart isn’t quite whole and Mark is the only one who can make it complete again, so I just stand there and I fold my arms and I decide that stroppy French boys are too much to deal with tonight.

  ‘It was nice of you to come and find me to tell me about the Northern line. Thanks.’ I mutter. ‘I’ll get back on the Overground or take the bus or something.’

  As soon as I say it, yet another rail replacement bus arrives. If possible, the people on it look even more miserable than the people on the first two buses. Like it isn’t really stopping off at all the stations on the Northern line but going straight to the very bowels of hell.

  Both Vic and Jean-Luc are still there. What with the helmets and the shades and the maybe being French, I wonder if they’ve ever thought about forming a Daft Punk tribute band and then I feel the giggles bubbling up and have to turn away.

  ‘Thanks again.’ I wave a feeble hand and I would join the reluctant queue waiting to get on the bus, but the Godards are now blocking my way.

  ‘You’re going back to North London?’ Vic asks.

  ‘Yeah, Camden. Well, Chalk Farm but …’

  ‘It will take you hours and someone may throw up on your shoes, or worse!’ Vic shudders theatrically. Then he takes off his helmet. Immediately his hand is in his hair to tug and pull at it so it regains its former volume. Only then does he speak. ‘It’s too much.’

  I don’t know if he’s talking about the transport situation or his hair, but Jean-Luc nods and takes hold of my arm. He has impossibly long fingers. Of course he has. ‘And you’re suffering from, er, the romantic disappointment.’

  ‘Suffering from …? Oh God, does everyone know that my boyfriend has … has … has disappointed me romantically? Anyway, he hasn’t. We sorted it out. It was just a misunderstanding. I’m going to meet him now.’

  They both stand there and share an amused look, like they’re well used to the delusions of young women who have been romantically disappointed. Then Vic turns to look at me – a comprehensive up and down, then a decisive nod as if I passed his inspection. ‘We know all about your boyfriend,’ he says with a smirk.

  I put my hands on my hips. ‘Oh yeah?’ I’m not normally so challenging. I don’t know what’s got into me, but his smirk is infuriating. ‘How come?’

  ‘Your mother,’ Vic says and my heart sinks. ‘In fact, I was going to come over and say hello at the picnic because I recognised you from la belle Hélène’s photo that she has on her desk in the shop …’

  ‘And always she’s showing us yet more photos of you on her phone and your petit frère, Daniel, and even le chat with the ridiculous name –’ Jean-Luc adds.

  I had to stop him right there. ‘Gretchen Weiner isn’t a ridiculous name for a cat! She’s got loads of poufy fur like she hides all her secrets in it and sometimes when you’re trying to shift her off an armchair she gives you this “You can’t sit with us” look, which I suppose doesn’t really mean anything unless you’ve seen Mean Girls.’

  It’s obvious that neither of them have seen that cinematic masterpiece because Jean-Luc shakes his head and makes a tiny scoffing sound. I hope it’s hot and sweaty inside his helmet and that he gets heatstroke for dissing my cat. ‘“Oh, my Sunshine, she’s so pretty if only she’d smile more,”’ he says in this weird, high-pitched voice. ‘“And now she’s going out with this boy who walks about with his underpants showing and there’s something very untrustworthy about his face. I do worry about her.”’

  ‘I bet my mum doesn’t say anything like that.’ Except I know that she does. I can hear her saying it. She was also fond of saying that she should have called me Storm Cloud rather than Sunshine. But to say it to the Godards who I don’t even know … I make a mental note to kill her when she gets back from camping.

  ‘She worries about you,’ Vic says. ‘Like a good maman should. And it’s only right we help you get home safely.’

  ‘But I’m not going home.’

  ‘Your friend Emmeline said that you we
re,’ Jean-Luc says. He’s definitely the bad cop. ‘That your boyfriend was un cochon total and you needed to mope and eat ice cream.’

  I make a note to kill Emmeline too. ‘She’s wrong. I’m not going home and I’m absolutely not moping.’ It doesn’t sound very convincing out loud, and for some reason the thought of Emmeline absolutely determined not to give Mark the benefit of the doubt makes my eyes prickle as if more tears are amassing in my tears ducts like coffee dripping through a filter. I swallow and try again. ‘Mark and I are fine. Just fine. He doesn’t make a habit of going around and kissing other girls. The girl he was photographed with was kissing him and he was an unwilling participant. Very unwilling.’

  I’m not wearing shades because the light has almost died and also I’m not a total poseur, so maybe they can see the one tear that clings to my lashes and then ever so slowly trickles down my cheek.

  None of us says anything. I’m too scared to open my mouth in case I do something stupid like sob.

  Jean-Luc is the first to turn away but he’s only opening up the little pannier thingy on the back of his scooter. He pulls out a helmet, looks at it doubtfully, then looks at my hair.

  ‘You may need to, er, squash down your hair so this fits, non?’ He thrusts the helmet at me. ‘Come on! Allez!’

  ‘You’re going to give me a lift to Camden on the back of that?’

  ‘Much quicker than the bus,’ Vic adds. ‘You don’t have to go with him. I’ll give you a lift. La belle Hélène will know you’re in safe hands with me.’

  La belle Hélène would have ninety-nine fits if she knew I was so much as thinking of careering around London on the back of a two-wheeled motor vehicle – even if one of her lovely French boys is steering. In fact, I’m sure she’d rather I got pregnant or committed murder or failed my AS levels than got on the back of one of their Vespas, especially as odds are that one of them will take a corner too fast or get cut up by an HGV and the emergency services would have to scoop up the bits of my body left scattered across the road.

  ‘No, it’s OK. I can get the bus,’ I say as yet another rail replacement bus turns up. ‘But thanks. I’ll tell Mum you said hi.’

  I shove the helmet back to Jean-Luc – with some force because he responds with a pained ‘ooof’, then I hurry over to the bus stop so I can ask the driver how long before we get to Camden.

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ he says helpfully. ‘How long’s a piece of string? Took me two hours on the last run.’

  Vic and Jean-Luc are still there. I walk back to them. Jean-Luc hands me the helmet.

  ‘I’m not dressed for riding on the back of a moped,’ I explain. ‘I don’t want the paramedics to have to pick lumps of tarmac out of my legs.’

  The three of us stare down at my legs. I’m not wearing bootie shorts, unlike other people I could mention. I’m not exposing bottom cheeks, not in the slightest. My shorts come down past the annoying fleshy bit of my inner thigh. They’re cuffed. They’re respectable and weather-appropriate, but now I do this weird, awkward, embarrassed thing where I twist my legs together until I nearly fall over. ‘Stop looking at them,’ I want to whine, but I don’t. Instead I have to confront the uncomfortable truth of the situation: my options are severely limited if I want to get to Camden sometime before Christmas. There’s nothing else for it – I’m going to have to do the unthinkable and come to a decision right here, right now, no dithering.

  Maybe just a little bit of dithering. ‘Which of you is the safest driver? Like, if there was a gun to your heads and you had to choose.’

  ‘C’est moi!’

  ‘Me, of course.’

  ‘Gun to your heads!’

  Jean-Luc holds up his hand. ‘Un moment!’

  The two of them have a quiet, intense conversation in French.

  Then it gets louder. They step up to each other, chests out like strutting pigeons. They’re saying French stuff like ‘zut alors!’ and ‘mon dieu!’ and even ‘incroyable!’ that I didn’t think French people ever said in real life.

  I get my bottle of water out of my bag. It’s lukewarm and I decide that I have time to get another bottle from one of the shops across the road. But then there’s a triumphant ‘tant pis!’ and it looks as if Jean-Luc and Vic have stopped jostling each other and talking comedy French and Jean-Luc has declared himself the winner.

  Vic humphs in disgust. ‘At least I don’t ride like a little old lady,’ he sneers. He’s definitely the nicer of the two of them, but there’s a restlessness to him that’s unnerving. He’s not slouching like Jean-Luc but in motion, snapping his fingers to get me moving as he climbs onto his scooter. And once I’m on the back of Jean-Luc’s moped, my heart racing in the same way it does when I’m waiting for a roller-coaster to fire up, Vic has already taken off with a roar of his engine. Immediately he starts weaving past yet another rail replacement bus, then darts through the cars waiting at the traffic lights and I’d much rather be with Jean-Luc, because he really does drive like a little old lady.

  THINGS MY MOTHER HAS STRONGLY ADVISED ME AGAINST DOING

  1. Getting on the back of someone’s motorbike. Never. Not even if I have a crash helmet and a full set of leathers and they promise not to go above twenty miles per hour.

  2. Putting anything in my vagina that I wouldn’t put in my mouth. This came up while I was helping to make a Thai curry. Mum always likes to combine cooking with a little mother/daughter sex chat. ‘So, I can put garlic or chillies or ginger up there, then? If it’s all the same, then I think I won’t.’ ‘I was talking as a general rule of thumb.’ ‘Thumbs are allowed too, are they? Why, though? Why would you want to …’ ‘Oh, just use your common sense, Sunny!’

  3. Which leads to: getting pregnant before I’m thirty/in a stable, committed relationship/able to support myself financially (all applicable).

  4. Eating cheese after 8 p.m. Gives you nightmares, apparently.

  5. Going out without a hat when it’s cold outside. ‘I don’t care if it messes up your hair – everyone knows you lose seventy per cent of your body heat through your head.’

  6. Forming an emotional attachment to any of my dad’s girlfriends, as none of them stick around for that long.

  7. Informing Childline or the Department of Works and Pensions that she only gives me fifteen per cent commission on the bureaus, chests, bookcases and, once, a ginormous wardrobe, that I sand down, paint, distress, varnish and generally upcycle for her to then sell at a gigantic mark-up. ‘It’s not below minimum wage, Sunny. Not when you factor in that I’ve fed you, provided a roof over your head and all manner of other sundries for the last seventeen years.’

  8. Having a weave. (She was right about that one.)

  9. Believing that Food and Nutrition would be an easy GCSE. (Also right.)

  10. Watching The Exorcist, even though Dan, who’s six years younger than me, said it wasn’t that scary. (Also right – had nightmares for weeks.)

  11. Going out with M …

  Really, what does my mother know anyway?

  9.55 p.m.

  CAMDEN

  Camden Town, named after Charles Pratt, First Earl Camden, became an important but unfashionable location full of undesirables and ne’er-do-wells when the Regent’s Canal was built through the area in 1816.

  Camden’s famous markets started in 1973 and are an essential stop for anyone requiring bootleg concert DVDs, T-shirts with totally not funny witty slogans or a steampunk starter wardrobe.

  Home to the Britpop scene of the mid-nineteen-nineties, many celebrities have lived on Camden’s hallowed streets from Charles Dickens and poet Dylan Thomas to Noel Gallagher, Gwyneth Paltrow and him out of Coldplay, and the late Amy Winehouse.

  Being on the back of a moped, even if it’s being ridden very carefully, is still scary. Maybe the scariest thing that has ever happened to me.

  I squeal every time Jean-Luc brakes or takes a turn and my arms tighten round his waist so hard that he grunts. Ordinarily, it would be mortifying t
o be intimately pressed up against a boy who I’ve only known for ten minutes (or even a boy that I’d known for much longer than that), but mortification is no match for feeling small and vulnerable like I have a target on my back. If a car or lorry gets too close, the slipstream could be enough to knock us into the traffic on the other side of the road and we’d crumple up like paper dolls. But with more blood and gore.

  Then after about five minutes, it’s not scary so much as thrilling. The hot, sticky evening now has a breeze that brushes against my legs and makes my stripy tee billow. The hot gush of car exhausts feels almost tropical and for a while we ride alongside a guy delivering pizzas on his own moped who grins at me like I’m a two-wheeling kindred spirit, then gives me a thumbs-up before he turns off.

  The best bit is when we cross over the Thames at Waterloo Bridge. Not just because crossing over from south to north always makes me feel as if I’ve come home, but because seeing the city backlit against the darkened skies, the old and the gleaming new all nestled together, never fails to stir my heart.

  It feels as if something else is stirring too. I was so worried about being maimed in a road traffic accident that I didn’t give much thought to Jean-Luc, other than to use him as something to cling onto for dear life. Literally. Not even figuratively.

  But now that riding through London on the back of a moped is my new favourite thing, I take stock. In my stocktaking I notice that my legs grip Jean-Luc’s hips and thighs, my arms around his waist, and as I mimic the movement of the moped, I lean into him, my face pressed against his back.

  He smells amazing. Sweet like a cake that’s just come out of the oven, but sharp too, like limes. There’s also a perfume-y synthetic base note that I just can’t place.

  Every now and again, when we stop at traffic lights, Jean-Luc turns around and says, ‘Ça va?’