London Belongs to Us

by Sarra Manning

  The fact that I’m no longer shrieking and clutching him in a vice-like grip should have made it clear that I’m totally ça va, but each time he asks, I shout, ‘I’m cool!’

  We get to Camden in twenty-three minutes. Take that, rail replacement bus! We drive through Regent’s Park and I crane my neck to see if I can see any giraffes as we pass London Zoo, but they must all be asleep. Then we catch up with Vic, who’s waiting for us at the top of Parkway.

  The traffic is thicker now. We crawl up Camden High Street, slowing as drunk girls in tiny skirts and teetering heels stumble into the road. Beered-up lads shout at us – one reaches out to grab my arm. Jean-Luc has to veer wildly around him, then he shouts at him in French and takes a hand off the handlebars to gesture wildly.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m all right. Keep your eyes on the road!’

  There’s not much road left once we reach the little bridge over the canal. Maybe one hundred metres more and The Lock Tavern is on our right.

  Vic turns into Harmood Street, we follow, pull into the kerb and when Jean-Luc switches off the engine I wish he hadn’t. That we’d just carry on until we ran out of road. Go to Brighton. Whitstable. The seaside. To sit on the beach and gaze at the inky outline of the water, let the breeze roll in from the sea and ruffle your hair, taste the salt when you lick your lips.

  But that would be a stupid thing to do when Mark is sitting a few metres away, waiting for me.

  I take off the helmet and shake my hair free of the hair-band I’d tied it back with. It had been very hot under the helmet. I tip my head upside down and zhoosh my fingers through my hair, but it’s not back to its previous levels of immenseness.

  ‘You want some of this?’

  Vic and Jean-Luc have removed their helmets too and out of their panniers they both produce a familiar gold can. It’s the smell I couldn’t place. Elnett hairspray. My grandmother bathes in the stuff, my mum swears by it when she’s coaxing her fine blond hair into a beehive and I never turn down a product that will embiggen my Afro a little bit more.

  I spray it on my hands, then plunge them into my hair and work it through. Vic and Jean-Luc primp too, tugging at their helmet-flattened tufts until their hair is vertical again.

  ‘Your hair.’ Vic looks at me thoughtfully. ‘It’s so … big. Is it natural?’

  I nod and wait for him to ruin everything by asking if he can touch it. People want to do that all the time. It’s so rude. Like, I’m a dog happy to have its head stroked.

  But Vic doesn’t, and Jean-Luc squats down to look at his reflection in the wing mirror of his moped and pouts. Both of them are really quite … I don’t even know what they are. Odd. Singular, except there’s two of them.

  By the time I’ve reapplied my mascara and lipgloss, they’re smoothing down their lapels, shades still on. ‘OK, so this is my stop,’ I say. I don’t know why I feel like I’m about to walk naked into battle. It’s Mark and we love each other and everything is all right. ‘Thanks so much for the lift. I’d still be in Clapham if I’d got that bus.’

  ‘Do you want us to come with you?’ Vic asks. ‘In case there’s trouble.’

  ‘Why would there be trouble?’ I frown. ‘I told you, it was just a misunderstanding. Honestly, I’ll be fine.’

  I look down the street towards the pub. As usual, there’s a crowd of people gathered outside, even though there are notices up protesting that it’s a residential area and that everyone needs to pipe the hell down. Inside, on the roof terrace where we always hang out, will be Mark. Is he on his own? Or are his Chelsea friends, the arseholes, still there? Is that girl still there? Is she still all up on him with the kissing and arse-gripping?

  Each thought is worse than the last. And with the last thought, I take a step back. Then another one. And another one. I hate confrontations.

  So, I can just keep taking steps backwards until I’m at the other end of the street and then I can get a bus and go home and stick to the original plan. There’s not much to cry about any more, I don’t think, but I can still eat so much ice cream that it’s a toss up as to whether I get brain freeze or throw up first.

  ‘Pourquoi t’es encore là, toi?’ Jean-Luc exclaims. He’s taken his shades off, they both have, because it’s dark now and it turns out that they’re not such poseurs that they’ll wear sunglasses when there isn’t a glimmer of sun left in the sky. Jean-Luc’s very scowly without his shades, though that might be because he is scowling at me. I suppose there are some girls who like the dark, brooding thing, but I’m not one of them. ‘Off you go! Allez!’

  ‘We talked about this,’ Vic gently reminds him. He turns to me. ‘Sorry. He’s only been in London a year. I keep telling him that he can’t be as rude to people here as he was in Paris.’

  ‘I was rude?’ Jean-Luc asks me. He sounds baffled at the very idea.

  ‘Well, maybe a little bit,’ I say with an apologetic grimace. ‘It’s OK. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Alors! C’est quoi, le problème?’

  Vic cuffs Jean-Luc on the shoulder. ‘In English!’

  Jean-Luc shrugs him off with an angry twitch. ‘Je ne veux pas parler Anglais!’

  ‘You can speak English perfectly well, you just choose not to.‘

  ‘Whatever! Is that English enough for you?’

  I thought me and Dan argued a lot, mainly about how he’s an annoying git who needs to keep his snotty little nose out of my business, but Vic and Jean-Luc take arguing to a whole other level. ‘OK, right, well I’m going now,’ I say, though they’re too busy glaring at each other to pay much attention to me. ‘So, thanks for everything and, um, I’ll see you around, I suppose.’

  ‘Say hello to la belle Hélène!’ Vic calls out and I wriggle my fingers in acknowledgement and then head up, shoulders straight, forward march.

  I fight my way through the crowd on the pavement to even get into the pub, then I walk sideways like a crab through the bar. Stomach sucked in, leaning backwards, then forwards, hunting for tiny pockets of space to open up.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, excuse me, sorry,’ I murmur like a mantra until I reach the stairs. There’s a bottleneck at the door to the terrace and it takes me a long time to squeeze through, like ketchup slowly oozing out of a gunked-up bottle. The terrace is heaving with people. I have to do the same crab-like shuffle until I see a red beanie in the distance and I hone in on it like it’s the mothership.

  It’s not the mothership, it’s Archie. He’s with George and Alex (of Glasto-devirginising-fame) Hassan and Martha. I wave, catch George’s eye, and he must say something because they all turn round and as soon as I reach them Martha throws her arms around me.

  ‘You OK, hon?’ She thrusts me away so she can stare deep into my eyes. I’m not sure what my eyes are saying to her, but she decides I need another hug. ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Please, Martha, your watch strap is digging into me.’ I wriggle until she lets me go. ‘Anyway, everything is all right. I spoke to Mark. It’s all cool.’ I look around. ‘Where is he? Has he gone to the bar?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ Alex says. ‘Left about ten minutes ago with his posh Chelsea friends.’

  That didn’t mean that things weren’t all right. I’d said I was going to text Mark when I approached North London, but that had been a little difficult on the back of a moped.

  ‘He’s probably texted me.’ I reach into my bag and grope for the chunky shape of my phone. ‘So, what are his posh Chelsea friends like, then?’

  Alex rolls her eyes. ‘Posh. Really posh. The word posh doesn’t really do them justice, does it?’

  The others shake their heads and make general sounds of agreement. ‘One of the dudes was wearing a pink polo shirt with a popped collar, two of them were called Giles and none of them knew how to use their indoor voices. So posh.’

  ‘Yeah, and one of the girls kept jawing on about her holiday in Cap Ferret.’ Martha widens her eyes. ‘On a yacht!’

  ‘Ferret?
That doesn’t sound very glamorous.’ I’m determined not to get side-tracked. ‘Mark said they were arseholes. So was this the girl who –’

  ‘Bloody inbreds, the lot of them.’ George stamps one of his great big feet in disgust. ‘I’ll tell you what, come the revolution, I will personally escort the whole lot of them to the gallows.’

  ‘Not the firing squad, then?’ Hassan asks with a sly smile.

  ‘Nah! Waste of good bullets, mate.’

  There’s no point in paying any attention to George. He spends all Saturday outside Waitrose harassing people to buy copies of the Socialist Worker newspaper. I’ve muted him on Twitter because he won’t stop tweeting links to Change.org petitions to end global slavery and protest against the military regimes in countries I’ve never even heard of. I mean, after a hard day at school, I just want to click on links to pictures of cats looking grumpy. I told Martha that it was a pity I couldn’t mute George when he’s in our Sociology class ranting on about privilege.

  Then of course Martha told George, who told Emmeline that I had the political conscience of a goldfish and I said to Emmeline that someone should start a Change.org petition to ban George from Change.org, and then he tore into me about it at a party and I had to go into the bathroom to cry, but whatever, I’m totally over it.

  ‘So, Mark explained what happened with that girl,’ I say very casually like it’s not a big deal, because it really isn’t a big deal, as I unlock my phone and wade through all the unread messages. ‘Um, Martha, did you text those pictures to, like, well, everyone? That’s kind of not cool.’

  I cringe a bit because it’s the most confrontational thing that I’ve ever said to someone who isn’t Emmeline or immediate family. Of course, Martha instantly draws her shoulders back and opens her mouth in a gasp of indignation. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathes. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’

  There are texts from friends who are still on holiday and one from a girl that I only met once at a Duckie gig, but nothing from Mark. I send him a quick text – ‘@ the Lock. Where r u? Sunny xxx’ – as I explain to Martha and the group at large, ‘Look, that girl kissed Mark. Because that’s what they do in Chelsea. And his hand wasn’t meant to be on her arse. I ended up touching quite a few arses when I was fighting my way through the bar, and what about when I was on the bus that time and I slipped and landed in Archie’s lap? Sometimes stuff happens!’

  Alex and Martha synchronise their eye rolls, then Alex mutters, ‘Yeah, it really looked like their mouths just landed on each other.’

  Archie nods earnestly. ‘We saw a different side to Mark tonight. To be honest with you, Sun, he was acting like a bit of a dick.’

  I’m not that girl – the girl who blindly goes along with everything that her boyfriend says and does, because she can’t bear to be boyfriendless. A sad girl. I’m really not her. I’ve been boyfriendless for all but the last nine, nearly ten, months of my life and I was fine with it. But the evidence against Mark is hardly overwhelming.

  ‘Everyone acts like a bit of a dick sometimes,’ I say, and then no one says anything because all of them are looking at me like I’ve just come back from taking all my clothes off and doing a streak of the roof terrace. An ‘are you really that stupid?’ kind of look.

  I’m really not that stupid. But maybe I’m a bit too trusting, a bit too much of a people pleaser, a bit too sensitive, and that’s why I can feel the angry, hurt prickle behind my eyes again and I’m almost grateful to George for being the first one to break the silence. ‘Well, this isn’t at all awkward, is it?’ he booms out, and then Archie reaches for something on the seat behind and hands me a broom.

  ‘There you go,’ he says proudly, like he’s bestowing a great honour on me and not a grey plastic broom with blue bristles. ‘Went to Sainsbury’s on the way here.’

  ‘Wow, thanks! That’s kind of random.’

  ‘Because we set yours on fire on Thursday night,’ Archie reminds me. ‘When Mark and I were trying to do flaming baton twirling.’ That was proof right there that everybody, including Archie, acted like a bit of a dick sometimes. ‘Did you get the scorch marks off of the shed?’

  ‘Had to repaint the whole thing in the end. Still got to slap on the weatherproof varnish before my mum gets back.’ And remove all evidence of meat eating and alcohol drinking and clean the house from top to bottom. The sheer weight of my to-do list hangs heavy. Saturday nights are meant to be more fun than that, I’m sure of it.

  ‘You all right, Sun? Well, apart from the obvious?’ Hassan asks. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Yeah, but, no. I should go and find Mark or go home. I still haven’t cleaned up from the barbecue.’ I cringe again. ‘Sorry to be such a buzzkill.’

  ‘No, you’re all right.’ Alex strokes my arm. ‘If I don’t sleep through my alarm tomorrow, I could come over and help you tidy up.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t have to do that,’ I say automatically, though actually it would be lovely if she did do that. ‘But if you didn’t sleep through your alarm …’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ she says and then she looks pointedly at Archie who mumbles something about how maybe he might be able to come over. Maybe. Then Martha says that she’ll come too. Hassan says that he totally would but he has to go to mosque. It’s weird how he always has to go to mosque when someone asks him to do something that he doesn’t want to do.

  ‘Well, I’m not coming,’ George says. ‘I don’t help people who mute me on Twitter.’

  Whatever. He really needs to get over it.

  TEN MINUTES LATER

  Like he has a sixth sense about these things, Mark calls me as soon as I’ve fought my way back out of The Lock Tavern.

  I’m annoyed that he bailed on me but relieved that he’s called me so I don’t have to wage a great internal debate about whether it would be really clingy if I called him when he hadn’t replied to my earlier text.

  ‘Where are you?’ It comes out as a sad, little whine.

  ‘Ain’t no sunshine when you’ve gone,’ Mark sings. He sounds happy to hear from me, whiny or not. ‘You still at The Lock then, Sun?’

  ‘Outside.’ For one moment I’m sure all my suspicions about the supposedly innocent kiss and arse-groping are about to come pouring out. That my doubt and the pain that was still lurking at the edges would transform into vicious, stabby words like poisoned darts. But, no. Turns out I’m still not done with the whining. ‘Why did you leave without me?’

  ‘Oh, babe! Babe!’ he says. ‘My friends were being twats and I needed to get them out of there. We’re at The Edinboro Castle but now they really want to go to Shoreditch.’

  ‘But you don’t have to go with them, do you?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, no, of course I don’t. I mean, except not going with them would turn into a whole thing that I really don’t want to deal with.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Right.’ It’s frustrating how impossible I find it to speak my truth.

  ‘Don’t be like that, babes. Hang on!’ He says something to a disembodied voice in the background. ‘Look, why don’t you come here and meet everybody?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is that girl –’

  ‘It’s just we have a car coming in five minutes. We’re on the guest list to some club but we have to get there before eleven. Look, babe, I’m desperate to see you. I bet if you run, you can make it. Come on, Sunny! Run like the wind. See you in five!’

  He hasn’t even hung up and I’m running. Like it’s a matter of life and death that I get to The Edinboro Castle before Mark’s cab. I run faster than I ever have before. I run like the survival of the planet depends on it.

  The pavements are so crowded that I run on the road, arms clamped against my chest so my boobs don’t bounce, my bag banging against my hip, clutching the broom.

  I hate running.

  But it clears the mind and then I have this moment of, like, clarity. I don’t see the cars rushing towards me or people swerving away so I don’t barrel into them; instead, I see
the pattern so very clearly.

  Mark says jump and I jump.

  Marks says run and I run.

  Mark kissed another girl. Or was kissed by her – but even so his priority should be making things right. Chasing me. Not the other way round.

  I stop running. What the hell am I doing?

  ‘Hey, little sister! Where you going in such a hurry? You want a lift?’ A rickshaw has pulled up alongside me. The guy pedalling it, shaven-headed, tanned and tatted, flashes me a toothy grin.

  Taking a lift from a stranger with tats was another thing la belle Hélène would expressly forbid me to do, but what la belle Hélène doesn’t know won’t kill her.

  Everything will sort itself out once I catch up with Mark. It has to. I leap onto the seat. ‘I need to be at The Edinboro Castle, like, five minutes ago!’

  He looks over his shoulder at me. Grins again. ‘Nila problemo!’

  I never thought much about rickshaws before apart from the times I’ve been almost mown down by one when I’m in town. Then I haven’t liked them very much. Never thought I’d be seen dead in one either because they were just for tourists or what Emmeline sneeringly calls ‘the bridge and tunnel crowd’, but now I’m sitting in one.

  … sitting and also clinging desperately onto one of the poles that holds up the canvas hood as the driver starts pedalling full pelt.

  He cuts straight across Camden High Street to bomb down Jamestown Road and I wish he’d pay attention to where he’s going but he’s too busy looking round at me as he talks. His name is Jason and he’s from Australia, Brisbane. He calls it Brisneyland. He was meant to be staying in London for a week before heading to Amsterdam to meet up with friends, but he’s run out of cash.

  ‘Everything in London is so expensive,’ he says. ‘Went to this place in Covent Garden. Five quid for a pint! Anyway, what’s your name? Why have you got a broom with you?’

  ‘Sunnneeeeeeeeeeeeee!’ Jason speeds up to get us through the lights before they change to red and as we bounce over a pothole, my arse lifts up off the seat. When I land, every bone in my body feels the impact. ‘Left! Go left here!’