London Belongs to Us

by Sarra Manning

  ‘Technically it’s not night any more. It’s morning …’

  ‘Or stormed off in a huff, I’d be a rich man.’ Vic puts an arm round my shoulder and presses a kiss to my forehead, and I do have the faintest of stirrings as Vic’s leanness presses against me for a few blissful seconds. ‘Don’t worry, Sun. I’ve got your back.’

  I’m glad of Vic’s arm round me because the house is dimly lit and Jean-Luc was right: we don’t really know what we’re walking into. The only light is coming from these fancy spotlights embedded in the walls at ankle height and the gleam of pearly white, perfect teeth as we push our way through the other partygoers. They all have good hair too. Boys and girls. Blond and ripply and sunkissed from days spent lazing about on beaches and the decks of private yachts.

  I’ve noticed that before, that all posh people look the same. Sleek and rangy. They all sound the same too. Loud and entitled. This crowd are mostly wearing distressed vintage T-shirts of bands they’ve never heard of, because they might be posh but they’ll never really be cool.

  It’s the world’s way of restoring order, I suppose.

  It reminds me of the time Mark was wearing a Trojan Records T-shirt when we bumped into my uncle Dee in Notting Hill and Dee sat Mark down and grilled him about Lee Perry, The Cimarons and the Ska revival, until Mark was forced to admit that he didn’t even know what Trojan Records was.

  Uncle Dee had told me afterwards that Mark was no good and I should get rid of him as soon as possible.

  Better late than never, right?

  TEN MINUTES LATER

  Vic and I forget all about finding Mark. We walk through the house, goggling and marvelling at all the sights. Even the entrance hall looks like a really chic art gallery. There’s a huge ugly painting that takes up most of one wall. I couldn’t even say what it was meant to be because it’s all splodgy black lines on a murky grey background. The floor is marble and there’s a huge staircase that sweeps down it and a queue of people waiting patiently to slide down the banisters.

  There’s a state-of-the-art kitchen that looks like the interior of a spaceship, despite the bottles and teenagers that clutter every surface. The dining table is the size of an Olympic swimming pool, though a boy and girl are rolling about on top of it as they snog furiously.

  ‘Whose place is this?’ I ask and Vic shakes his head.

  ‘Someone very rich. Richer than God.’

  We don’t go upstairs because it seems kind of rude to wander in and out of bedrooms, even if we have gatecrashed a party that we haven’t been invited to, and anyway, the downstairs is entertaining enough.

  Our basement is a horrible, dank, cobwebby space at the bottom of a rickety flight of stairs where we and Max from the top-floor flat stash our bicycles and bulky items. This basement goes down three floors and has a gym, a cinema, a nightclub with a light-up dancefloor and a wine cellar.

  Vic’s eyes are practically bulging out of his head. Not from the house and all its grandeur but because there are so many girls milling about, all long of leg and tanned and with tousled hair that they toss back at every available opportunity. I get a mouthful of someone else’s hair twice and yet it’s still impossible to find Mark. The house is so big and there are so many boys who look similar to him and as we come up the stairs from the basement we run into another gang of them. They all have fair hair and they’re talking in loud voices like they’ve all got their earbuds in and one’s wearing a pink polo shirt with a popped collar and when someone calls out, ‘Giles?’ two of them turn round and – but wait!

  It’s coming back to me now. All those hours ago at The Lock Tavern when I was being given the lowdown on Mark’s Chelsea friends. Loud voices. Pink polo shirt. Popped collar. Giles times two.

  ‘Cover me,’ I hiss at Vic like we’re two cops on a stakeout and I don’t stop to think about the consequences – that’s been an overriding theme tonight – I march over with Vic at my heels.

  ‘Don’t do anything silly,’ he says. ‘There’s a lot of them and I’m too pretty to die.’

  I ignore him. ‘Where is he?’ I demand, tugging at a pink polo shirt. ‘Where’s Mark?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ one of the Gileses asks and all of them are suddenly surrounding me. Not in an aggro way, not exactly, but they’re not altogether friendly.

  His girlfriend wants to know, I’m about to say, but who can even guess what Mark might have told them? ‘I’m a friend. A North London friend,’ I hastily improvise. ‘We’re at school together.’

  ‘Right. So, do you know that Sunny girl?’ pink polo shirt asks. ‘What a home-wrecking little harpie she is. Made up shit about Mark. Made Tab cry. Flick seems to like her but really, Flick prefers horses to people anyway so how much does she –’

  ‘Enough!’ I hold up my hand for silence and I think it must be the murderous look on my face that gets him to shut up. ‘Are you even for real?’

  I’m on the verge of going into one. Going full Khaleesi on their arses. But in a split-second epiphany I realise that Mark can’t know that I know that he’s a dirty, dirty cheater. He also doesn’t know about my transformation from pushover to powerhouse, and if I give his Chelsea friends any hints then my plans for vengeance will all have been in vain, that crucial element of surprise ruined.

  ‘That really doesn’t sound like Sunny. She’s cool. Super cool,’ I say fondly. ‘We have a saying in North London. WWSD. What would Sunny do? And she’s totally going out with Mark so I don’t know what the deal is with this Tabitha girl.’

  One of the boys pushes forward slightly. I would have said that I was the brownest person present but he has such a deep tan that actually I think he might be browner than I am. ‘Tab and Mark are a thing. Were a thing.’ He frowns. ‘It’s so complicated. Because they just broke up. Not sure who dumped who but Tab threw a drink over him. So, were you in The Lock Tavern earlier? What are you even doing here?’

  He doesn’t sound hostile but perplexed that someone from North London might be partying in his hood. ‘Yeah, I was in The Lock earlier – it’s how I recognised you – and then I headed over here because I’m Poodle’s cousin,’ I say vaguely because, I mean, there’s bound to be someone here called something ridiculous like Poodle and I must be right because the Gileses are both nodding. ‘Anyway, Poodle’s gone home and I need to get back to North London and I was hoping that Mark could lend me some money for a cab.’

  They shake their heads. No can do. ‘Mark isn’t with us,’ Giles One says. ‘He was with us, but then he had to go back to the club we were in earlier because he’d left his phone behind.’

  That makes me feel better about Mark’s phone silence but then I feel worse because Mark’s friends are offering to give me money or order me a car on account (‘Like, seriously, it’s OK, my dad never even checks the bill’) and they’re actually really sweet. Not the arseholes that Mark said they were and they might be posh but that doesn’t make them bad people and when I insist that I can sleep over at Poodle’s because my mythical cousin doesn’t live that far away, they offer to walk me over.

  ‘Oh no, you’re all right,’ I say.

  ‘We’re going now anyway,’ Giles Two says. ‘But we should all totally meet up before school goes back, yeah? That George guy said that come the revolution, he’d see us all hang. He’s freaking hilarious!’

  I snort with delighted glee. We all hug. Who’da thunk it? Then they all leave and I turn to Vic who was absolutely meant to have my back and he’s not there. He’s gone, leaving no trace.

  I can’t find him anywhere. I even go upstairs, cringing as I have to open doors that I really wish I’d left shut because some of the sights I see are not for my innocent young eyes.

  As I’m coming down the stairs, I see Vic standing by the front door, foot tapping impatiently, a girl draped all over him.

  ‘Sunny!’ he calls out as he catches sight of me. ‘At last! Time we called it a night, don’t you think?’

  ‘But what about …’
>
  He’s not even listening to me because the girl, I can’t see that much of her face because her long brown hair obscures most of it, is whispering in Vic’s ear.

  ‘What was that, chérie?’ he purrs. She whispers again. ‘Oh, you really are a very naughty girl.’

  Then he turns back to me, all brisk and business-like. ‘You’ll be fine. It’ll be light soon.’ He dips his hand into his jacket. ‘Here’s twenty quid to get you home.’

  I trip down the stairs. ‘I thought you had my back.’

  ‘Oh, but you don’t need me to have your back,’ Vic says as he tries to thrust the twenty at me. ‘You’re a powerful woman. A warrior.’

  He was quoting my own words back at me and it was infuriating. ‘Now, I have to see this young lady home because she’s not a warrior.’ He waggles his eyebrows at the girl and judging from the way she’s still clinging to Vic, it does look like she’s incapable of walking unaided. ‘But we’ve had fun, Sun. It’s been real. Let’s do it again sometime.’

  He shoves the twenty at me again and I take it because it wasn’t just a line when I said I needed some money to get home.

  ‘Well, bye then,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe you’re bailing on me.’

  Vic cuffs me under the chin while the girl he’s picked up pushes back her long curtain of hair so she can shoot me evils. At least I don’t have split ends. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he says again and then he’s gone.

  And I had been fine except now I’m not. My phone’s dead. I’ve rowed with Emmeline and I’ve rowed with Jean-Luc and driven them away with my obsessive, blinkered search for Mark who’s disappeared into the ether yet again, Flick is MIA and now Vic’s deserted me too.

  I’m on my own on the other side of London, though actually I don’t even know my exact location and I’m tired and my legs ache and I’m coming down fast. So all I want to do is curl up on the floor in the foetal position. I sit on the stairs because instead of being fierce and taking no prisoners, I’m now that girl who always sits on the stairs and cries at parties. I’m not actually crying but it feels as if the tears aren’t too far away, and then I hear a voice say, ‘Sunny?’

  I look up to see a blond girl standing there. Pretty. Wearing a tight white vest and black short shorts. Nibbling her bottom lip as she sees my eyes do a quick up and down. I know her from somewhere, I just can’t think where that somewhere is.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s you. Here.’ She’s got one of those voices that is so la-di-dah, the words so clipped, that it’s almost like she’s talking another language. Then her face hardens as if someone’s poured wax over her features. ‘You called me a skank!’

  ‘Sorry. Who are you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’m not. I’m not a skank,’ she says furiously and it’s all starting to make sense now. ‘I was just kissing my boyfriend. I just didn’t know he was your boyfriend as well.’

  TWO SECONDS LATER

  I cringe and then I look again, just to be sure. At those long legs in those short shorts and it’s not until I mentally superimpose a hand sliding into the waistband that I figure out who she is. I’m seized by an urge to stroke my chin in a pensive manner and say, ‘So, we meet at last,’ like a Bond villain, but I manage to restrain myself. Instead I come out with a tentative, ‘Tabitha?’

  ‘Who else would I be?’ She puts her hands on her hips. ‘And for your information, the reason I wear short shorts is because my legs are my only good bit. If I play them up, then no one notices the rest of me.’

  ‘Are you kidding? You’re beautiful. Do you not have mirrors in your house?’ I look round the entrance hall. It’s getting light now and surely Tabitha can see how she looks in the many shiny surfaces. I never noticed when I was looking at the photos because all I could see was Mark’s hand on her arse, the kiss, his other hand caught in her super-shiny, long blond hair, but Tabitha’s beautiful. Big eyes, tiny nose, a pouty little mouth – I bet she never has to take selfie after selfie, tilting her face this way and that, until one’s acceptable enough to post. I bet every selfie she takes is perfect.

  ‘I’m really not. Two of my friends at school are models and Mummy was a Bond girl. I know pretty and it doesn’t look like this.’ Tabitha points to her incredibly aesthetically pleasing face. ‘But I thought that maybe I was a little bit pretty when Mark kept wanting to hook up with me. He is pretty.’

  She sounds wistful. Like, despite everything, she still loves him. I can kind of understand where she’s coming from.

  I pat the stair next to me and Tabitha sits down. ‘Mark rocks up at our school and he’s instantly popular and everyone likes him and when I realised he was interested in me, it made me feel popular and cool too,’ I tell Tabitha, though it’s something that I haven’t even told Emmeline. ‘It’s this thing I do, right: I always latch on to people that are cool and hope it will rub off on me a little.’

  ‘But you are cool!’ Tabitha flings out a hand, which I suppose is meant to encompass my alleged coolness. ‘I’ve been hating on you all night. Not just because I thought you were trying to steal Mark and you called me a skank but because after I dumped Mark, I met up with Flick and she was all, like, “Oh, Sunny’s so cool,” and then she showed me that video of you dancing the Charleston in a supermarket. I mean, that’s peak cool. And you’re mixed race or whatever, so that automatically makes you cooler than most other people.’

  ‘You can’t say stuff like that. It’s actually quite racist,’ I snap.

  She holds her hands up in protest. ‘But I was complimenting you! How’s that racist?’

  ‘You can’t make sweeping generalisations about people based on their race or their skin colour. It’s like me saying all white people can’t dance. Anyway, not all black people are cool. My grandma isn’t, that’s for sure.’

  We’re both bristling. ‘I’m sorry,’ Tabitha says with a little huff. ‘But I think you’re cool and Mark’s cool so it makes sense that he’d be into you, with his DJing and everything.’

  I snort so hard that a bit of snot flies out of my nose but I don’t think Tabitha notices. ‘Let me tell you something about Mark’s so-called DJing. He downloads DJ playlists off of the internet, and when he gets a so-called gig he just hooks his iPad up to the PA system and double clicks. He doesn’t even own any decks. DJ, my arse!’

  ‘So, you’re not still, like, having feelings for him?’ Tabitha asks.

  I do a quick check on my heart. It’s still there. It’s beating quite fast because it’s had one shock after another tonight, but it’s not aching in my chest like it did before. ‘I have feelings for Mark but they’re more murderous than anything.’ There isn’t even a trace amount of love for Mark left in my system. Maybe it never had been real love if I’d fallen out of it so quickly. But how could I call it love if the boy I’d loved had been lying to me with every kiss, every compliment, every time he’d taken my hand?

  I look at Tabitha. ‘What about you, then?’

  ‘No. We had a furious row when Flick sent me that text about his two Facebook accounts. He tried to deny everything.’ She reddens and picks at her cuticles. ‘Then when it was obvious I was seconds away from dumping him, he dumped me.’ She sniffs, like the tears aren’t far off and I know what that feels like. ‘It’s all come out of the blue. I thought me and Mark were solid, yah? And now suddenly we’re over, finished, like, even if he begged me to take him back. You can’t stay with a boy who treats people like he’s treated us. Mummy’s on her fourth husband. I really don’t want to be like Mummy.’

  I’m about to empathise with Tabitha and maybe pile into Mark a little bit more, but then a disembodied voice comes out of nowhere and shouts, ‘Everyone out! The po-po are coming!’

  It scares the crap out of both of us. I clutch my heart, which is now racing at dangerous speeds. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Tabitha gasps, with a hand to her heart as well. ‘Their house intercom must be hooked up to a hidden speaker system,’ she says at a less shrie
ky volume. ‘We have one at home too, but it’s not so terrifyingly loud.’

  ‘The police are coming, that’s terrifying enough,’ I say as I press my elbows in and try to make myself as small as possible so I don’t get mown down by the hordes of people suddenly streaming down the stairs. They’re joined by yet more masses coming from every direction, all heading for the door and pushing and shoving each other out of the way. Everyone’s panicking and there’s a lot of shouting and screaming and honestly it’s about the most exciting thing to happen since I arrived at the party.

  I stand up, all set to join the bottleneck that’s formed at the front door – things wouldn’t end well if the police turned up and I was the only member of the ethnic minorities represented – but Tabitha grabs my hand.

  ‘This way,’ she says, pulling me through a little side door and down a small corridor. ‘Servants’ quarters.’ We come to another door, which leads into a second, smaller, grottier kitchen and out the back door into a little yard. Tabitha unlatches the gate that opens on a mews at the side of the house. We’re out of danger.

  ‘Cool moves, Tabitha,’ I say and she grins.

  ‘My best friend from prep school used to live there. Not sure who lives there now, or even whose party that was, but I live a few streets away. You can crash at mine.’

  ‘Oh I can’t.’ It would be too weird. The whole night had been stuffed full of weird, but crashing at the house of my boyfriend’s other girlfriend (technically she was his ex-girlfriend, but only as of a couple of hours ago) was next-level weird.

  ‘But you must. I mean, you’re miles away from home,’ she says as we start walking. ‘What’s it like to live in North London anyway?’

  She says it like North London is some kind of dystopian wasteland. I tell her about Crouch End. About our street with the secret field at the end of it and the cakes from Dunns, the bakers, and that the dude who plays Doctor Who used to live on Archie’s road, but Tabitha just gulps and says, ‘So, you live in a flat. Not a house?’