London Belongs to Us

by Sarra Manning

  The bouncer gives me a hard ‘what the hell?’ stare, but then he glances down at his iPad (they don’t do clipboards in SW3 apparently) and my name must be on the list, because he opens the door for us too.

  The first thing that hits me is the noise. I’m bludgeoned by a wall of sound. There’s shrieking, shouting, laughing to the beat of the clink of glasses. A DJ in his booth high above the crowd spins what he probably calls ‘smooth grooves’.

  Vic has disappeared. I don’t know where to but Jean-Luc and I do a quick circuit. It’s quite hard as there are lots of little cubbyholes that lead off the main bar and they’re all reserved for private parties. The people in the invite-only cubbyholes look at us like we’ve just farted and they can smell it from where they’re sitting. I try to text Flick but using Google Maps has absolutely wiped what was left of my phone battery.

  Once we’re back in the main bar I realise that I’m the only brown person here. The only person wearing a crumpled T-shirt that proclaims that a city built on rock ‘n’ roll is structurally unsound. The only one wearing scuzzy Adidas trainers, which have greying tide marks on the white rubber bits from all the times that I’ve got caught in the rain and squelched my way home.

  But mostly I’m the only brown person in here.

  ‘Shall we get a drink, then?’ Vic is back. ‘Whose round is it?’

  Getting a round in is the least I can do. ‘Mine. As long as I can get served.’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’ I wonder if anything phases Vic apart from the girls he’s wooed and then shooed. ‘Just get me the cheapest lager they’ve got.’

  ‘What do you want?’ I ask Jean-Luc.

  Jean-Luc sniffs. ‘Lager, I suppose.’

  It takes me ages to get served. Again, I can’t help but wonder if it’s because I’m the only brown person in the place.

  That’s not why the barman gives me serious shade, though. It’s not to do with being under eighteen either, because he doesn’t even ask. He just tells me that the two cheapest bottles of lager will be twenty-one pounds and thirty-eight pence and when my eyes bulge and I shriek, ‘How bloody much?’ he says that one pound and thirty-eight pence of that is the service charge. One pound and thirty-eight pence for getting two bottles of lager out of a fridge and popping the tops off.

  And he gives me even more shade when I ask for a glass of water. ‘Tap water,’ I say, even though I die inside when I’m out with my mum and she orders tap water in a restaurant because she makes such a big deal out of it and I don’t see what difference it makes to order a two-pound bottle of fizzy water, but now I’m saying ‘tap water’ and, by God, I mean it.

  ‘We don’t serve tap water,’ he says. Ordinarily I’d be tongue-tied and unable to make eye contact because the barman is really fit. He looks like he models really tight T-shirts and sunglasses and hair products when he’s not a barman. It’s not even because I suddenly remember that I’m a warrior and I take shit from no one.

  No, the reason why I’m channelling my inner badass is because he’s just served me the two most expensive lagers in the world and so I look him right in his beautiful, soulful, shade-throwing eyes and I say, ‘You have to serve me tap water. It’s against the law if you refuse me. I could die of dehydration and my dad’s a barrister.’

  After that, he serves me tap water with a tight smile. Even puts ice and a lime wedge in it and I carefully carry my precious cargo back to Vic and Jean-Luc who are sitting on a sofa, legs crossed, pointy feet pointing in different directions. Jean-Luc looks like he wishes I’d got a side of razor blades with his lager.

  He takes it from me without a word of thanks, then sits and stares at it like he expects the bottle to share some Yoda-like wisdom with him. ‘Ah, young Jean-Luc, the force it is not strong in you.’

  Vic looks round eagerly. ‘So many beautiful women in here. I don’t know where to start.’

  There’s nowhere for me to sit because it’s a two-seater sofa, though it would probably be horrified to be called a sofa because it’s white and leather and so minimalist it doesn’t even have arms that I can perch on. So I lean against the wall with my dirty trainers, sipping at my tap water, being brown, and I’m glad Mark isn’t here. This is not how I wanted things to go down.

  ‘You know what? Should we just go home after you’ve drunk your lagers?’

  Jean-Luc’s eyes get very squinty. ‘We come all the way to Chelsea for nothing?’

  I lean further into the wall but it doesn’t swallow me whole, which would be helpful. ‘Er, yeah. Looks like it. Sorry.’

  ‘Are we going?’ Vic stops looking so chipper. ‘But we’ve only just got here. What a waste! Let’s stay for a little bit or at least until I’ve separated that blond girl over there in the jumpsuit away from the rest of her herd.’

  ‘I hope you give her your real name,’ Jean-Luc says as he levers himself up. ‘This lager tastes awful. That girl over there keeps sticking her tongue in her boyfriend’s ear but she keeps looking at me at the same time. C’est l’endroit le plus horrible du monde. Allons-y! ’

  He tries to stalk out but some guy in white jeans, loafers and a pastel-yellow shirt unbuttoned to show off far too much of his chest hair is in the way. They do this awkward dance until Jean-Luc leans in and says something to the guy, who immediately backs away, hands held up in surrender.

  ‘The thing about Jean-Luc, Sunny, is that he’s great until, all of a sudden, he’s not great,’ Vic says. He takes a casual swig of his lager. ‘Very moody. I keep telling him that he should get his blood-sugar levels checked.’

  ‘I’m sure that always lifts his spirits.’ I feel very moody myself. I’ve been up tonight, coasted all sorts of big feelings, but now I’m coming down. I’m broke. My feet hurt. I feel like I’ll never be clean again and the thought of having to get from Chelsea to Crouch End by public transport at gone four in the morning with a very moody Frenchman (I have a feeling from the way the blond girl in the jumpsuit keeps giving Vic these sultry looks that he won’t be coming back to North London with us) makes me want to lay down on the floor and cry. ‘I can’t believe we came all this way for nothing.’

  Vic takes one last gulp of his lager, then gets up. ‘I wouldn’t say it’s been a completely wasted trip. So, you’re all right to go home then, are you? I think it’s time I moved in for the kill.’

  I can’t see Vic’s face as he’s turned away from me but the blond in the jumpsuit can and she obviously likes what she sees because she licks her lips and tosses her hair back, and I hate to interrupt but needs must and all that.

  ‘Hang on. Let me do one more sweep.’ I know in my bones, that Mark isn’t here, but my bones are weary and aching so they might not be that reliable.

  I push my way around the bar again, peeking into all those private rooms, catching my breath each time I see a boy with floppy blond hair. I feel quite faint, because there are a lot of boys with floppy blond hair, but none of them is Mark.

  Until, suddenly, one of them is Mark.

  I’m at the back of the room when I see him heading towards the door. Just another floppy blond head in the crowd, but then he turns, raises his hand at someone out of my eye line and my heart suddenly slam-dunks against my breastbone.

  Mark says run and I run.

  Except he doesn’t even know I’m here, but I run anyway, hurdling over a footstool that’s in my way, grabbing hold of Vic, who’s mid-prowl towards the girl in the jumpsuit, by his sleeve and pulling him with me. He’s not very happy about it.

  ‘Sunny, what are you doing?’

  ‘He’s here!’ I say, my eyes locked on Mark, who’s now slipping out the door. ‘He’s getting away.’

  We bundle after him, picking up Jean-Luc, who’s loitering by the cloakroom until I yank his hand and pull him out of the door while Vic shouts something at him in French.

  Too late! We get outside just in time to see Mark climb into the back of a black cab and slam the door as it pulls away from the kerb.

  I don’t
dither. It’s obvious what I have to do. Another black cab is dropping off more posh kids and one of them very kindly keeps the door open for me as I jump in, still clutching a Godard in each hand so they have no choice but to jump in with me. And then I say three words that I never thought anyone said outside of movies. ‘Follow that cab!’

  FIVE MINUTES LATER

  We are in a cab. A black cab. I had no other choice.

  Even though black cabs are ruinously expensive. That’s what my mum says, but I think it’s because my dad always takes black cabs and it’s a dig at him. In the past, whenever he’s queried the cost of my Spanish exchange trip or my dance lessons or why I need new shoes for school when I only just got a pair (because I really wanted them and lied and said they fitted when they didn’t and then my feet were riddled with blisters and one of them got infected, hence new shoes, and really infected blisters were punishment enough), my mum always says bitterly, ‘Huh! And this from the man who takes black cabs like they’re bloody buses.’

  Now I’m in one and it’s lovely. Very comfy. Lots of leg room so Jean-Luc and Vic, who’s sitting on one of the tip-up seats opposite me, can stretch out their legs and the cabbie, Stan, says that he’s been cabbing for twenty-seven years and he’s always wanted to hear a passenger say, ‘Follow that cab!’

  The streets are just a shadowy blur of plane trees and big stucco-covered houses and Vic points out a pub where he was once thrown out for standing on a table and singing the Marseillaise when France won the rugby but Jean-Luc slumps in his seat, until his chin rests on his chest.

  ‘You can’t find a person who doesn’t want to be found,’ he says eventually. ‘We should go home. This Mark …’ He sniffs. It must be a Parisian thing, these sniffs that say so much. ‘Why must you chase him? He’s not chasing you.’

  ‘God, that’s a bit harsh,’ Vic says and Jean-Luc shakes his head.

  ‘No. I mean … all this energy, Sunny, all this effort, he doesn’t deserve it. He’s a … c’est un salaud. You’re too good for him, too good to be chasing after him, non?’

  ‘But I’m not chasing after him because I want him back. I’m chasing him down so I can tell him exactly what I think of him. I always let people walk all over me, squash me down until there’s nothing left. Even when I feel like I’m shouting no one hears me, so I don’t want to wait until I see Mark around. It could be days from now, and then it will seem like I’m being pathetic for not letting things go, but I’m not pathetic. I’m sick of people thinking that I am. Can’t you understand that?’

  Jean-Luc gives another Parisian sniff. ‘Ha! You’re the least pathetic person I’ve ever met.’ Somehow he makes it sound as if it isn’t a compliment. As if I’m as bossy as Jeane. Or as belligerent as Emmeline. I wish.

  ‘I haven’t had such a crazy Saturday night in ages. Maybe ever,’ Vic says cheerfully. ‘Such fun. Like a scavenger hunt but without a prize at the end …’

  I hold up my hand. ‘The prize will be my liberation!’

  They both pull matching identical expressions of not being impressed by my liberation, which is odd, what with them being French. The only bit of French that I properly know off by heart, after all, is ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou mort’. It’s their national motto. I know this because it came up in an episode of Pointless one time. ‘I’d rather have hard cash than liberation,’ Vic says.

  ‘Or alcohol. Or chocolate.’

  ‘Standing up for myself for once in my life is a fantastic prize. If I can stand up to Mark then I can stand up to anyone.’ It’s true. Once Mark starts on the ‘babes’, each one sounding more reproachful than the last, I begin to relent. Then he touches me on the arm and does this thing with his eyes; looks at me like I’m the reason that the sun came up and that he got out of bed in the morning and I’d forget all the promises I made to myself. I’d still be mad at him but he’d be standing there all golden and glowing and focused on me and I’d panic and get frightened that he’d slip from my grasp.

  Maybe that’s why Mark is so elusive, so hard to find – because he’s turned himself into a prize. A trophy boyfriend. But if Mark is a trophy it’s the kind that looks good when someone else stands on the winners’ podium and holds it up high so the sun glints off it.

  Then when you get to wrap your own hands around the trophy, at first you’re excited that you’ve won and dazzled by the way it shines. It takes a while before you notice that your trophy isn’t made of anything precious. It’s cheap metal that tarnishes quickly and the words you thought were engraved were just stamped on and are already starting to fade. This thing that you’d worked so hard to win is flimsy and cheap and it doesn’t take much to break it.

  ‘Really? So will you be able to stand up to la belle Hélène?’ Jean-Luc pulls another sceptical face. ‘C’est impossible.’

  ‘So impossible. The things she makes us do. She hasn’t paid for a cup of coffee in months,’ Vic tells me. ‘She’s robbing us blind!’

  That sounds like my mum. Obviously being a badass is in my genetic make-up; you only have to look at the women on both sides of my family to know that. Maybe my badassness was a dormant gene.

  Suddenly Jean-Luc is right up in my face, so close that if we both blinked at the same time then our eyelashes would brush against each other’s. So close that if we both pouted then our lips would brush against each other’s. He still smells of sweet things. ‘Sunny, I implore you. This is so silly. Let’s go home.’

  Home does sound kind of tempting but … ‘I’m a warrior and warriors don’t go home!’

  Jean-Luc subsides back in his seat and I’m sure he’d be muttering in his native tongue if he weren’t scowling so hard.

  Anyway, I have better things to do, like keeping a close eye on the cab in front (Stan helpfully tells us that the other driver is ‘going all round the houses, cheeky git’) and stare at the meter and wonder why it keeps going up another thirty pence in the time it takes to blink. No wonder my dad bitches about new school shoes. He must be on the verge of bankruptcy if he takes taxis everywhere.

  ‘Looks like our friends in front are stopping,’ Stan says as the cab we’ve been following pulls up outside a huge house and a gang of boys, all with low-slung jeans and blond hair, pile out. I’m keen to pile out too but we need to pay the fare. The journey has only taken five minutes but costs nearly thirteen quid. I fumble in my purse and think I might cry, but Vic swats my hand away and thrusts a twenty at the driver. ‘Make it up to fifteen, mate,’ he says. ‘You can buy me another drink, Sunny, some other Saturday night, then we’re even.’

  Vic helps me out of the cab and we’re on a residential street, wide and tree-lined, built in the days when houses had four storeys because people had staff, who’d slave away in the basement and sleep up in the attics, and needed a wide turning circle for their horse-drawn carriages.

  We’re standing outside one of those huge four-storey houses where a party is raging and disturbing the tranquillity of a sleepy Sunday morning. People and loud music spill out onto the street, cigarette butts and bottles adorn the flowerbeds and the door’s wide open. Normally I’d never go where I wasn’t invited but the boys from the cab have already disappeared through the open door and been swallowed up by the crowd. And it isn’t like there’s someone standing there ticking names off a list.

  ‘Shall we, then?’ I jerk my head in the direction of the door.

  ‘I’ll say!’ Vic is rubbing his hands together as his eyes sweep over a gang of girls sitting on the garden wall. ‘I have to hand it to you, Sun, you know where the pretty ladies hang out.’

  He offers his arm, which I take, but we haven’t taken a single step when there’s a small explosion behind us.

  ‘Non! Non! Non! Enough.’ I turn to see Jean-Luc hugging a lamp-post like it’s the only thing holding him up. ‘You can’t just disappear into a house. Anything could happen. You may run into an – an – er, meurtrier avec une hache …’

  ‘I doubt there’s any axe murdere
rs in there. Just a lot of pissed-up toffs,’ Vic says. ‘Plus some lucky young lady who’s going to enjoy the pleasure of my company.’

  ‘And Mark is in there,’ I remind Jean-Luc, who’s now clutching the lamp-post like it’s his only friend in the world and groaning like he’s in pain. ‘Look, this isn’t going to take long. I’ll go in, find Mark, destroy his entire belief system with my pithy character assassination, hopefully even make him cry, and then we’ll go home. It will take half an hour, tops.’

  It sounds so simple when I put it like that. The simplest thing ever. I’m getting fired up all over again for the – what? Ninth time that night. Jean-Luc isn’t fired up, though. He looks like he’s just been doused with a bucket of cold water. ‘Pffft! I don’t believe you.’

  That stings. ‘Oh Jean-Luc, don’t be like that!’

  ‘I’m going home,’ he insists. ‘I can take it no longer. Assez!’

  ‘Whatever. Go home then, Mr Buzzkill,’ Vic says. He makes a shooing motion with his hands. ‘Off you go. You’ve got that app I put on your phone. It will tell you what bus to get.’

  ‘Mon dieu! Apps!’ Jean-Luc seems like one exclamation away from a full meltdown. He launches himself off his lamp-post. ‘Fine. You keep chasing your hateful boyfriend and Vic, you go and have sex with some poor girl who doesn’t know that you’re un salaud. Ça va! Je peux prendre soin de moi-même!’

  Then he storms off. It’s such good storming-off that all Jean-Luc needs is a sweeping cape that he can swish behind him as he storms. But I can’t help feeling a little guilty. Well, actually, a lot guilty.

  ‘Vic, we can’t just abandon him!’

  Vic is climbing the steps. ‘You heard him; he’ll be fine. He’s a big boy. He can look after himself. Come on. Let’s go hunt for bad boyfriends.’

  First I make Vic give me Jean-Luc’s mobile number, but I don’t even have enough juice to send Jean-Luc a text.

  ‘Honestly, he’ll be all right,’ Vic assures me as we walk through the door. ‘I’ll text him your number so that once he’s got over himself, he can let you know that he’s still alive. If I had a pound for every time he’s gone home early on a night out …’