London Belongs to Us

by Sarra Manning

  Jason goes left pretty much on one wheel and sets off a cacophony of drivers pressing down on their horns to let us know that we’re a menace and shouldn’t be on the roads. I don’t care. I can see The Edinboro Castle coming up on the right. But I can’t see Mark.

  Jason does an illegal U-ey right into the path of a black cab, which brakes sharply so the driver can lean out the window and shout, ‘You want locking up, mate. You’re a bloody danger to society, you are.’

  We come to a gentle halt outside the pub. It takes a little while for my legs to stop shaking and even once I’m back on solid ground, they’re still a bit wobbly. ‘How much do I owe you?’ I ask Jason.

  What was the going rate for being cycled a few hundred metres at breakneck speed?

  Jason shook his head. ‘We’re cool. It’s on the house.’

  ‘Aw no, that makes me feel bad when you’re trying to save up to get to Amsterdam.’ I open my bag, even though I know I don’t have that much cash on me.

  ‘It’s OK. I used to be a boy scout. I like to do one good turn every day. Pay it forward, right?’ Jason rests his elbows on his handlebars. He really is kind of cute if you were the sort of girl who went for surfer types.

  I am the sort of girl who only goes for very unreliable types.

  I glance down at my open bag, see some napkin parcels and pull them out. ‘I have baked goods.’ I unfold the napkins. ‘The rock cakes are more rock than cakes and everything else is kinda smooshed, but you need to keep up your energy levels if you’re going to pedal that hard.’

  I watch Jason pedal off into the night, one hand raised in salute, then I pull out my phone.

  I could go into The Edinboro Castle and worm my way through yet another sticky mass of people who don’t want to let me pass, but for the first time tonight I’m certain of one thing: Mark isn’t here. He’s already left. Otherwise he’d be outside waiting for me.

  Oh God! Was this his way of dumping me without actually going to the bother of dumping me?

  Why would he do that? He said that he loved me. And God knows, I love him. A few hours ago, he was going to be the boy that I gave it up for, and I wasn’t giving it up lightly.

  My phone beeps. Text incoming:

  Babe! Sorry I missed u. Where u at? Come to Shoreditch. M xxxxx

  Where in Shoreditch?

  Babe! No love?

  U didn’t wait for me so no love. Where in Shoreditch?

  As I hit send, someone shouts, ‘Sunny!’

  Mark’s come back for me! My heart thuds excitedly, even if the rest of me is doubtful and suspicious. Yup, my heart thinks it would be absolutely dandy to see Mark, but when I turn round it’s not Mark. It’s a boy in a sharp suit on a moped pulling into the kerb, followed by another boy on a moped.

  Jean-Luc pins me with a look as black as his shirt before unleashing a volley of French. I don’t get all the little words but I make out an ‘imbécile’ and ‘une fille stupide ’.

  ‘I’m not an imbecile or a stupid girl,’ I say. ‘You … you’re stupid.’

  Jean-Luc snorts. ‘Je vais tout dire à ta maman . . .’

  ‘Tell my mum about what?’

  ‘Sunny! We saw you in that flimsy rickshaw taking a corner on one wheel. What were you thinking?’ Vic clasps a hand to his chest, like the memory of it still causes him great pain. ‘We tried to catch up with you but neither of us would ever do an illegal U-turn so we got caught up in the one-way system.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t an illegal U-turn. I just needed to get here really quickly because Mark was here and he was about to leave.’

  Jean-Luc makes another huffy sound. ‘Have you, then?’ He draws a finger across his throat and hisses. ‘You dumped him, non?’

  ‘Non! He’d already left. Not that I was planning to dump him. Though, I did think … it’s all very, very complicated.’ The doubt and the uncertainty has returned along with a cold, icy fear that makes me shiver and tastes like rust at the back of my throat. But if I could see Mark, everything would be all right. He’d roll his eyes a little because I was being really clingy, but then he’d take my hand. ‘Babe,’ he’d say, ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

  Well, he might not say exactly that, but he’d say something similar that would put my mind at ease. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe the very worst thing in the world would happen and he’d dump me for reasons I couldn’t even begin to understand, but at least then I’d know. At least then I could go home and weep and rage and take to my bed and become a shadow of my former self and not be stuck in this awful limbo.

  How to explain that to the Godards, who are still looking as if they were about to grass me up to la belle Hélène?

  ‘Look, I did what I had to do. Anybody who’s ever been in love would do exactly the same thing,’ I add, then wish I hadn’t because it sounds really ridiculous. ‘What’s important is that Mark’s on his way to Shoreditch and that’s where I need to be.’

  ‘But, Sunny, that’s still no reason to let that madman on a rickshaw risk your life and limb,’ Vic protests. ‘Also, where did you get that broom from and – hey! What are you doing?’

  Pulling out his spare helmet was what I was doing. ‘You ride like a madman too!’ I glance down at my phone. 10.43 p.m. ‘Can you get me to Shoreditch before eleven?’

  ‘No, he can’t,’ Jean-Luc states firmly.

  ‘I think you’ll find I can!’

  ‘But you’re not going to!’

  Vic obligingly helps me onto his moped, hand in the crook of my elbow, fingers lingering longer than necessary when I was sworn off boys and we were on a clock. ‘You’re not the boss of me,’ he tells Jean-Luc.

  ‘Or the boss of me either,’ I add.

  After tonight, I will be a slave to no man, I vow, as Jean-Luc mutters something in French, then sighs and starts his engine too. After tonight, only I will be the boss of me, but first I need to make sure that me and Mark are cool.

  ‘You’d better hang on tight,’ Vic tells me. ‘I’m taking no prisoners.’

  WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WITH MY SATURDAY NIGHT?

  10.57 p.m.

  SHOREDITCH

  The parish of Shoreditch in London’s East End has been in existence since before Ye Olde Medieval Times and was known as Soers Ditch or Sewer Ditch, as it was once pretty much a glorified bog.

  The first playhouse in England, The Theatre, was built in Shoreditch in 1576 but the po-faced Powers That Be did not approve of the shady behaviour of the theatrical folk, nor the taverns, gaming halls and brothels that littered the narrow streets.

  The area was taken over by mostly French silk weavers in the seventeenth century, but by Victorian times the theatrical folk had moved back in.

  These days, Shoreditch is full of media, arty and creative types being all media and arty and creative in converted factories and warehouses. Famous residents have included William Shakespeare, responsible for many an English GCSE meltdown, shouty artists Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, and Barbara Windsor, late of the Queen Vic, Walford.

  I scream all the way to Shoreditch. Not out of terror. Not any more. Just from the sheer, giddy, heart-skipping exhilaration of going really fast. Probably not that fast, but when you’re on the back of a moped, just you and the open road, it feels fast enough to break the sound barrier. It also feels bloody fantastic.

  It’s late Saturday night, bank holiday weekend, so there isn’t that much traffic. All the better for Vic to bomb along the Euston Road and zip down tiny side streets while I hold onto his waist like it’s the last lifebelt on the Titanic, the broom tucked tight under my arm.

  Vic doesn’t mind the screaming or the holding or that the broom keeps poking him in the head; he roars with laughter and jerks the scooter this way and that and I scream even more, which just makes him laugh even harder.

  By the time he pulls into the side of Shoreditch High Street, we’re both a bit hysterical. ‘Jean-Luc is probably still in Camden. He has no sense of danger.’

 
I don’t know Jean-Luc well enough to pass comment. ‘I hope he’s not really going to tell my mum what I’ve been up to. Normally I have a midnight curfew at the weekend.’

  ‘Oh please! Nothing exciting in life ever happens before midnight.’ Vic turns his head and grins roguishly. That pain in my heart is still niggling and Vic is so far out of my league that I’m languishing in the third division. But despite all that, he’s very pretty and it’s such a pity that for most of the evening his face has been obscured by either his shades or his helmet or both. ‘Where to next?’

  Who knew? There were a lot of clubs in Shoreditch. Lots of cool people milling about; the girls wearing cut-off dungarees or weird sack-like cocoon dresses, the boys also wearing cut-off dungarees with pork pie hats and dodgy beards. It’s an older, hipper, way more up-itself vibe than I’m used to.

  I take out my phone as Jean-Luc appears in the distance with a forlorn toot on his horn. ‘Oh God, he’s going to be mad. His shoulders look mad,’ Vic says, but I can’t spare a look for Jean-Luc’s shoulders when I see that I have a text from Mark.

  Babe. @ Shoreditch Working Men’s Club. We got in, but massive queue. Ring me when u get here. Luv u xxx

  I call Mark but his phone goes straight to voicemail and I hang up because I know that if I leave a message it will just be more whining.

  ‘I can’t get hold of Mark but there’s probably no signal in the club,’ I say to Vic and I show him Mark’s text. ‘What do I do now? We’re never going to get in if the queue is that big.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I can get into any club. I laugh in the face of massive queues. I go, “Ha ha HA!” and then they unclip the rope and they let me walk in,’ Vic says loftily as Jean-Luc comes to a halt beside us.

  This isn’t as comforting as Vic seems to think it should be. ‘You’re not drunk, are you? Or have you taken too much hay fever medication?’

  ‘No, he always talks like that,’ Jean-Luc says. He has to squeeze his words out of the tight thin line that used to be his mouth. ‘Like, how do you say in English? A gigantic wanker.’

  ‘You’re so cruel,’ Vic says to him and I wonder what their deal is. Up close, they’re not identical like I first thought. They both have wild, dark hair and pale skin, but Vic’s eyes are a lighter blue and he’s altogether more twinkly. Maybe because he smiles so much, whereas Jean-Luc’s eyes are the dark blue of school uniforms and storm-tossed seas and he absolutely doesn’t twinkle. Mostly, he glowers. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such cruelty.’

  They are definitely related. ‘Are you two brothers, then?’

  It’s my turn to get the glower. ‘No. Quelle horreur! Cousins,’ Jean-Luc says shortly. ‘Not gay either, despite what people say. But yes, French. Or at least I’m French.’

  ‘Hey, I’m French too!’ Vic protests as he starts up his moped again.

  ‘À piene! You left France when you were eight. You support Arsenal. Back home we call you le rosbif !’ Jean-Luc grins a Vic-like grin and shoots off.

  ‘I’ll roast beef him,’ Vic grumbles as he pulls away, and when he catches up with Jean-Luc he gives him the finger so the scooter lurches wildly and I have to dig him in the ribs.

  ‘Please! Roast beef him later.’

  The Shoreditch Working Men’s Club is two minutes away and down a grimy alley hidden between a bookies and a kebab shop. I don’t think many working men hang out there any more, if the queue that snakes back down the alley and past the bookies is anything to go by. Although I do spot two girls in boiler suits and a boy wearing a Maccy D uniform, but I think it’s meant to be ironic.

  I don’t really understand irony.

  And Vic doesn’t understand the concept of queuing. ‘No time for this. Errant boyfriends to be found and all that.’ He grabs my hand and marches us to the front, Jean-Luc trailing behind and muttering about the British and how we love to queue.

  I would have much preferred to wait in line instead of pushing in and having everyone stare at us with eyes like razor blades. ‘Um, I can probably take it from here,’ I say, even though I probably can’t. ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Ce n’est rien,’ Jean-Luc murmurs and he actually smiles at me. It looks odd, like his face isn’t made for smiling. The angular lines of his face and his sulky lips are built for brooding, glaring and scowling. ‘I could not look at your mother ever again if you were found dead in a skip.’

  ‘Well, I suppose there’s that,’ I say and then walk smack into Vic’s back because he’s come to a sudden stop.

  ‘Oh shit!’ he says. ‘Change of plan. Let’s go! Away. Far away from here.’

  He backs up, almost trampling me in the process, and suddenly an ear-piercing voice chimes out, ‘Not so fast, French boy! You get your lanky arse over here, right now!’

  I look past Vic to see a Valkyrie of a girl on the door, flanked by two bouncers with rippling muscles and earpieces. She’s a Marvel superhero in a tight leopard-print dress. She has long red hair, sculpted and surprised eyebrows under a short fringe and a look of utter fury on her beautiful face as she points a red-tipped finger at Vic.

  ‘Me?’ Vic points at himself. ‘You want to talk to me?’

  ‘Don’t make me come and get you!’ I have visions of her stomping over to us in her spike heels, bashing Vic over the head with her clipboard, then seizing a handful of his hair and dragging him back to her doorstep eyrie.

  The huge queue of scenesters, club kids and fashion victims perk up no end. Everyone’s looking at Vic as he unwillingly stumbles towards the door as if he has no control over his own feet. It wouldn’t surprise me if this girl has put a hex on him.

  Jean-Luc and I follow behind. Jean-Luc’s smiling again. A slightly evil, gleeful smile as if he already knows the punchline. ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask him.

  He shakes his head. ‘You’ll see.’

  What I see is the girl leaning forward to snap her fingers in Vic’s face. He holds up his hands in surrender. ‘Now, Audrey, chérie, ma belle, mon amour, ma petite fleur, I can explain,’ he says, his accent suddenly very French as if he just stepped off the Eurostar that morning. ‘This is all a terrible misunderstanding.’

  ‘Don’t try and French-talk your way out of this,’ she snaps. ‘Someone told me that you’re not even French. Like, you support Arsenal!’

  ‘I am French!’ Vic again looks horrified at the suggestion that he isn’t. ‘For God’s sake! You can support Arsenal and still be French.’

  ‘Whatever!’ The girl whips her head back to quell the small group of people trying to reason with the bouncers and gain admittance while her attention is elsewhere. ‘Don’t even think about it! Get back in line or I’ll ban you for life. I never forget a face.’

  She makes being a badass into an art form. I totally want to be her when I grow up.

  She turns back to Vic. ‘And I never forget a no-good bastard who doesn’t call, doesn’t text …’

  ‘Oh chérie, I lost your number …’

  ‘I put my number in your phone. You watched me do it.’ She puts her hands on her hips. With her skyscraper heels and the step she’s on, she’s perfectly positioned to stare down at Vic like he’s some particularly disgusting form of mouth-breathing pond life.

  ‘I lost my phone!’

  ‘And I must have lost my mind to let you charm my pants off with those little chocolate tarts you whipped up and the way you kept saying stuff in French. You murmured in French. That shouldn’t be allowed.’

  ‘I can’t be blamed for speaking in my mother tongue.’ Vic lowers his eyes and places his hands in the prayer position as if he’s on the side of the angels. The effect is quite devastating. ‘Je suis vraiment désolé.’

  ‘Oh my God! You’re doing it again! You just can’t help yourself, can you, Jean-Luc? Stop saying words with your stupid sexy French accent.’

  There’s a strange hissing sound from where Jean-Luc stands next to me. ‘Incroyable!’ he suddenly explodes. ‘You’ve been using my name?
Again? Ça va pas la tête?’

  Vic cowers away from the double-pronged attack. ‘Of course I’m not crazy!’ He turns back to Audrey. ‘Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t understand much English. He hardly knows what he’s saying.’

  ‘I know how to say gigantic wanker!’

  ‘My God, just what kind of evil are you? You didn’t even give me your real name?’ Audrey holds up her clipboard. I think she might bash Vic over the head with it for real. To be honest, he kind of does deserve it but we’re running out of time.

  ‘Um, he’s no good. He has all sorts of emotional problems,’ I squeak, and suddenly I have Audrey and the whole queue’s attention. I have never been more aware of just how much my shorts keep riding up my thighs. ‘We’re getting him help. Medication, therapy, that sort of thing.’

  ‘If that doesn’t work, we plan to lock him up for a long time,’ Jean-Luc adds. ‘A very, very long time.’

  Vic spreads his hands wide. ‘Obviously I’m not to be trusted around beautiful women. My common sense, it just disappears, and –’

  ‘Mon dieu! Not another word!’ Jean-Luc steps forward, but he doesn’t try to do anything smarmy like smile winsomely at Audrey or take her hand, though chances are she’d smack him if he did. ‘I’m Jean-Luc. This … this imbecile is my cousin, Vic. Let’s pretend he doesn’t even exist. And this is …’ He ushers me forward.

  ‘I’m Sunny and I’m trying to find my boyfriend …’ I start to say but the door opens to let out some sweaty-looking clubbers and the queue surges forward. Audrey holds up her clipboard, like a shield.

  ‘Order! Order!’ she shouts. She has a very Khaleesi vibe about her. It wouldn’t surprise me to see three pet dragons circling above us. Audrey scans the hopeful, expectant faces lifted towards her. ‘You, you, you. No, not you, no beards. And definitely you in the green. Love your frock, darling.’

  The four chosen ones scurry quickly through the door as if they expect Audrey to change her mind at the last moment. Then she beckons me with one imperious finger. I trudge forward. It feels like a summons from my great-grandma who always used to make me come close enough that she could examine my hair or my clothes or my complexion and then give them a yay or a nay. Usually a nay. ‘Sunny, right?’ Audrey confirms. ‘Missing boyfriend, so you’re not … with either of them?’