London Belongs to Us

by Sarra Manning

  Also her black lace dress.

  Do one final sweep.

  Text Mum and ask what time they’ll be back.

  Set alarm clock for half an hour before ETA.

  Go to sleep.

  6.25 a.m.

  SOUTH BANK

  The sun has always shone on the north bank of the Thames, which was why St Paul’s Cathedral was built on that side of the river. But the south bank, shunned by the sun, has always been a darker place.

  In the Middle Ages, its shadowy shores were the perfect location for entertainment that was frowned upon by genteel folk. Bear-baiting, prostitution and theatricals were all popular with the poors. But by the eighteenth century, even the aristos liked to slum it at the famous Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, where many a young maiden was totally ruined by sneaking down one of its tree-lined paths with a pompadoured rake and without her chaperone.

  In 1951, the Festival of Britain (exactly one hundred years after the Great Exhibition, which saw the creation of Crystal Palace) was held on the south bank, after a huge project of slum clearance and development. The Royal Festival Hall was the centrepiece of the new exhibition and was later joined by the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Hayward Gallery and the National Theatre.

  These days the south bank is no longer the poor relation to the north bank, which might have Cleopatra’s Needle, but it doesn’t have two cinemas, the London Eye and a skate park, so it can just get over itself.

  Working out how to get from Ladbroke Grove to Waterloo is more than my brain can handle. I stare at the tube map outside Ladbroke Grove station but it’s just a squiggly collection of brightly coloured lines doing all these weird fandangos that don’t make any sense.

  Finally, I decide to take the tube to Baker Street, then change onto the Bakerloo line (the Bakerpoo line as we call it because it’s brown and even this morning I laugh when I think about the word ‘Bakerpoo’. But I laugh to myself in my head. Not out loud. Well, only for a little bit).

  As the tube rattles through tunnels, I keep catching sight of my blurry reflection in the window opposite. I’m all sunken eye sockets and drooping mouth.

  Across from me is a man in TfL uniform and a grey-faced girl wearing a Subway T-shirt, who looks even more exhausted than I feel. People going to work. Normally I can’t even think of getting out of bed until at least ten on a Sunday – if Mum isn’t there to wake me I’ve been known not to get up until Terry’s taking the Yorkshire puddings out of the oven for lunch.

  I’m beyond tired now. Tired has ceased to have any real meaning. It’s just a word that doesn’t come close to describing my gummy eyes and the way my jaw is locked and how, even though I just had a shower, I still feel like I have gunge collecting in all my crevices. Then I think of how Emmeline calls the fetid-smelling grey gunk that collects between your toes if you don’t take your trainers off after cross country but spend the rest of the day wearing them along with the same sweaty socks toe jam. Once we saw this film where a man kissed a woman’s feet, really went to town on them, and we discussed for a long time afterwards which would be worse: blow jobs or toe jobs. We never did decide.

  And that’s another thing about my new state of next-level tiredness. I can’t hold on to my thoughts. Each time a new one comes along, it slips from my grasp like when you’re trying to eat penne pasta. My grandmother says that the only polite way to eat it is to slide the tine of your fork through the tube, instead of stabbing at the pasta. It’s very hard to do, especially if you’ve overdone it with the pesto.

  I have to stop my thoughts rambling. I need something to distract me – and then I remember the texts from Mark. I should read them before I see him. So I know exactly what I’m getting myself into. Because, for all my fighting talk, the thought of seeing Mark makes my insides feel as if they’ve been hollowed out.

  Babe. Guess you’re asleep, but just wanted 2 say I love u. We cool, right?

  Then another text, sent ten minutes later.

  Sunny, going 2 my grans 2day. Shall we hang 2 morrow so I can make it up 2 u, cause we’re cool now, innit?

  And finally.

  Babe! We cool? xxx

  Get him! He is unreal. Acting like we’d just had a silly disagreement. Thinking he’s totally got away with it, even as he was texting Tab at the same time. Playing us both for a fool because he still thought he could play us both. That we’d fall for it because he’s such a prize.

  I’m so blind with fury that I don’t realise that we’re at Waterloo until the carriage doors close and I have to stay on until Lambeth North, then go back one stop.

  Then I get out the wrong exit at Waterloo, though it’s a miracle at this point that I’m actually, like, able to put one foot in front of the other and walk. Going down stairs is really tricky. I keep freezing up because my brain has forgotten how to process the instructions on going down stairs and pass them on to my legs. Exhaustion and fury are not a good combination.

  It’s way past the hour since I agreed to meet Mark. Or rather that ‘Tabitha’ agreed to meet him, but as I stagger up the steps at the side of the Royal Festival Hall, then round the corner, there he is, sitting on a bench.

  He’s posed just so. In profile. Shades on. Hand pushing through the utter floppy blondness of his hair.

  I last saw him yesterday lunchtime when he went home to shower after we’d painted the shed. But yesterday lunchtime was a lifetime ago. Yesterday lunchtime, I was still loved-up.

  The Sunny of yesterday lunchtime – someone needs to give her a stern talking-to. And the Sunny of this morning suddenly gets this jolt at the sight of Mark. Not a good, heart-skippy, skin-singing, nerve-ends-tingling sort of jolt. It’s more like I’m going into anaphylactic shock from a nut allergy and someone’s just stabbed me with an EpiPen.

  Adrenalin floods my system. It’s fight or flight – the body’s natural response to acute stress. Yesterday lunchtime Sunny might have fled but Sunday-morning Sunny is spoiling for a fight.

  It’s easy now to make my feet march over to Mark and when he looks up and does a really good impersonation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream painting, I know exactly what to say.

  ‘I know you prefer vanilla, but tough. You’ve got chocolate, which is actually a kind of racist way to describe your mixed-race girlfriend. Correction. Your mixed-race ex-girlfriend.’ I sit on the bench and I go down hard, banging him with my elbow, crowding him, forcing him to shrink, to take up less space. ‘Tab says hi, by the way, and that you’re still dumped. And just in case you didn’t pick up on the subtle way I brought it up, I’m here to dump you too. You’re dumped.’

  Mark lurches forward, then lurches back. He’s tanned, always ruddy-faced like he’s been racing across a field or surfing or doing something that a boy in an Abercrombie & Fitch advert might do, but now he’s pale. Not even pale, but grey. It doesn’t suit him. ‘Look, Sunny …’

  ‘I know! I got those three texts you sent me. I can’t tell you how special that made me feel. Just after you sent Tab those texts asking to get back with her. Get your hand off me.’

  Mark is touching my arm. Like he’s still allowed to touch me when he isn’t, not any more. And suddenly I’m glad that I’ve had no sleep and I feel like I’m wearing my skin the wrong way round because I don’t care any more. Not about my stupid clothes or that I might cry or what Mark might think of me.

  Not caring what people think of me is amazing. I wish I’d figured this out years ago.

  It means I can look at Mark, whose mouth is clamped shut but who is watching me warily, and say what I really feel in my heart; deep down, past the ventricles and veins, at its thudding epicentre. ‘I know it’s not the answer to anything but, God, I’d love to punch you in the face,’ I say viciously.

  I’ve never said anything viciously before. It doesn’t feel as amazing as not caring, but whatever. I’m still feeling it.

  ‘Sunny.’ Mark whispers my name. His hands are curled against the edge the bench seat like he’s about to launch himself up off
it and go far, far away. ‘Don’t be like this. It’s not you.’

  ‘You know nothing about me. You only got, like, sixty per cent of me. I was always on my best behaviour, because I was scared that if I was anything less than perfect you wouldn’t like me. You didn’t like me anyway! I needn’t have bothered.’

  ‘It’s not that. Of course I liked you. I loved you. I still do. Oh, what’s the point?’ Mark sighs heavily. ‘Can I just get my phone back?’

  ‘You mean your other phone?’ and then I don’t say anything because I’m so angry, I can’t even speak.

  Mark pulls an agonised ouch face but says nothing. Then, ‘I am sorry, Sun.’

  ‘You’re sorry that you got found out. You’re not sorry about how you cheated on me. Lied to me. Like, for months. Are you even a little bit sorry about that?’

  ‘Well, I’m trying to apologise, aren’t I?’

  ‘Try harder. A lot harder.’

  ‘I can’t do anything right, can I?’ Mark folds his arms with a little huff like he’s the injured party. Like I’m the one in the wrong. Like I’m goading him to the very edge of his nerves with my utter unreasonableness. Now, this is the bit where I usually apologise for my sins. For complaining when Mark’s late. For being upset that he tells me how the film ended. When he says my new trainers make my feet look huge. When we’re out and his eyes settle on other girls. So many different ways I let him make me feel less and each time I’m the one who says sorry.

  Not any more.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you can do anything right when you’re a lying, cheating, two-faced, evil, cheating, deceitf—’

  ‘You already said cheating once and I wouldn’t say I was evil. Not per se.’ Mark pulls his brows together and sticks out his bottom lip. Not in an exaggerated way but a subtle way that hints of great sensitivity. That look has always done for me, but something has changed. I don’t think it has anything do with sleep deprivation either.

  It’s more than that. It’s like my cells and molecules and all the science bits that you can never see have rearranged themselves as I’ve travelled through the night. I look the same and I talk the same but somehow I don’t feel the same and Mark’s look of reproach isn’t doing anything for me any more.

  ‘Tab said …’ I swallow hard as I remember exactly what Tab told me. ‘You’ve lied about everything, even about what football team you support, so don’t give me that “I’m actually a nice guy really” bullshit. You’re not.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mutters, and though it’s quiet and a bit resentful, this time he sounds like he means it. ‘It was just Saturday-night banter, you know, and, well, no one understands how hard it is for me.’ He’s relaxing now as he explains things. Unfolds his arms and angles his body towards me. Mark looks much better than I do for staying up all night, though I can smell the stale alcohol fumes rolling off his skin and wafting towards me on the breeze carried by the river.

  ‘OK. How hard is it for you, then?’ I put my legs up on the bench, so I’m resting my chin on my knees.

  ‘Well, the thing is that I live in, like, two different worlds now. My Chelsea world and my North London world and I don’t … I’ve never told anyone this before …’ Mark covers my hand like now he’s got permission to touch me, even though I don’t remember giving it. ‘But I don’t feel like I fit into either world now … I know it was wrong what I did, but you and Tab, you were like passports to each world, so when I was with you I felt like I belonged. It sounds crazy but …’

  ‘It sounds like total rubbish. You don’t fit in? Cry me a river.’ Mum is always saying that to me when I’m moaning about something. It’s really annoying, except that when I snap it out now, it’s actually deeply satisfying. ‘You’re telling the mixed-race girl that you don’t fit in. You don’t know shit about not fitting in. You’re a white, straight, fit dude. You’re always going to fit in, Mark, no matter that your parents split up or your dad lost all his money so, like, just … just … check your privilege.’

  There’s no comeback once you’ve told someone to check their privilege. Especially when that someone is a white, straight, fit dude. It’s game over. End of.

  Mark doesn’t say anything. I think his privilege checker is still loading.

  I open my bag and hold out his other phone and immediately he’s all grabby hands. ‘Give me it!’

  ‘Not so fast.’ I hold it just out of reach. ‘I’m not finished yet.’

  Mark screws his face up into something ugly. ‘What else is there to say?’

  ‘Plenty. You need to think about how you treat people. How you talk about them when they’re not there. Like, I met your Chelsea friends last night, the two Gileses and the rest of them, and they weren’t arseholes at all. They were all right and …’

  ‘You did what?’ I really think Mark might cry.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. They didn’t know I was the infamous Sunny, your “stalker”.’ I make air quotes and Mark’s face is red. So very, very red. Redder than post boxes and Beefeater uniforms and the Central line.

  ‘Look, about that, I only said that …’

  ‘Stop lying! Just. Stop. It.’ I’m sick of talking to Mark. Of trying to get through to him. To make him see the error of his ways. Of even trying to devastate him. He’s not worth the effort that would take. ‘I could destroy you at school, you know. Make your last year a living hell just by telling everyone what you’ve been doing.’

  ‘You’re behaving like a total psycho,’ Mark snaps, but he doesn’t snap it that hard because suddenly I’m dangerous.

  I’ve never been dangerous before. It feels like a badge of honour. Mark’s had to admit that I’m unpredictable, an unknown quantity, that I’ve got him on the ropes. Not a pushover any longer. ‘Whatever.’ I say it slowly so that Mark knows that even though I’m wearing shades, I’m rolling my eyes. ‘I’m not giving you a pass because your dad lost his job and your parents got divorced and your world got turned upside down. Not when you picked on two girls who didn’t have much self-confidence and played them without even thinking about their feelings. God, I almost had sex with you! You know how big of a deal that was to me, how much trust that took. And all the time, everything you said was bullshit!’

  ‘Not everything. I did … I do really care about you, Sun,’ Mark says. He tilts his head. ‘I know I’ve acted like a twat tonight but I did have a lot to drink and …’

  ‘You’ve been acting like a twat for months, I just didn’t realise it.’ There’s no point in listing all the ways that Mark has been a twat. He’s probably been a twat in ways that I haven’t even begun to figure out yet. ‘Anyway, I’m not going to destroy you because, unlike you, I’m not a twat, but then I can’t speak for Emmeline. She doesn’t try so hard to be good.’

  Mark puts his head in his hands, then gives me that old imploring, sideways look, like he hasn’t heard a single word I’ve said. ‘Hey, Sunny, can’t you talk to her?’

  ‘I could but I’m not going to. Anyway, here’s your phone. You’re lucky I don’t chuck it in the river.’

  Mark stands up. For so long, he took top spot in my thoughts but now I just want him gone, want this to be over. I hand him the phone, careful that we don’t touch each other during the exchange. He’s more worried about scanning for scratches or noxious fluids, then stuffs it into his shirt pocket. He shakes his head. Looks sad. ‘It’s like I don’t even know who you are any more, Sunny,’ he says. ‘Come on, we can move past this.’

  ‘Oh my God, are you joking?’ He’s not. He looks deadly serious. ‘I don’t want to move past this. In fact, let’s never do this again.’

  ‘I’m not a bad person, Sunny. Well, OK, I admit I’ve done some bad things, but I do love you.’

  I look up at Mark. Really look at him. At his hair, his deep blue eyes, his mouth, which I used to think was made just for my kisses; all the parts that added up to the boy I loved. There are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of boys in London, and now Mark’s j
ust another one of them. He isn’t all that. I just let him think he was.

  ‘You know what? I can do so much better than you.’ I make a flapping motion with my hands. ‘Go on, boi, walk away.’

  Mark isn’t expecting that. He doesn’t walk away but stands there opening and shutting his mouth so he looks completely gormless, and then he shakes his head and starts to walk away. I sit there and watch him go. I’m pretty sure his last words are a muttered, ‘Stupid bitch!’ but I still don’t care.

  Bitch is just a word that boys say when they don’t have the power to hurt you any more.

  If this were a film, there’d be a panoramic shot of the Thames, sun already sparkling on the water, the London skyline magnificent in the background. A muted, melodic lo-fi track would play softly as I’d say, ‘But I’m not a bitch. I’m a strong, independent woman.’ The camera would stay on my face for a significant moment as I pondered the emotional journey I’d been on.

  But that stuff was for Richard Curtis movies. Being a strong, independent woman is all well and good but it sounds like the tagline for an anti-perspirant. I’d rather just be Sunny, who can be quite the badass when she needs to.

  Now I lace my fingers together, crack my knuckles, then wait for the guilt and regret to creep in.

  Except it doesn’t. I feel fine. Good, even. I stood up for myself. I triumphed over evil. I feel good. I’ve been the angry black girl, and look! The world didn’t end because of it.

  But then I think of the massive to-do list on my phone and how my world really will end if I don’t get through it before Mum and Terry get back, and then I feel totally not good.

  Instead of gloating I should be getting up, getting on, but I just sit there, adrenalin all gone now, and it seems like a good idea to cosy up in Vivvy’s outsized khaki hoodie and sleep.

  It’s very quiet. Someone’s walking a tiny fluffy dog. A man and a woman in matching fluoro green lycra jog past – there’s nothing more smug than a Sunday-morning runner. I watch a boat pootle past and a man in a hi-vis vest standing on the deck or the stern or whatever waves at me. Lifting my arm to wave back requires superhuman effort.