London Belongs to Us Read online

  I sigh. ‘Her mum and dad. And yes, I also remember that she had to ask them to stop at a chemist on the way home so she could get the morning-after pill.’

  Emmeline shoots me a prim look. ‘She said that losing her virginity was the worst experience of her life.’

  ‘Yeah but … but it’s completely different because Mark isn’t a random. We’ve been seeing each other for eight months and we love each other.’

  ‘Love!’ Emmeline really struggles with sentiment. ‘Anyway, how much do we even know about him? He just rocks up out of the blue to do his A levels with his posh voice and his posh floppy hair and he’ll only go out with you every other weekend, which is deeply, deeply suspicious.’

  I don’t say anything for a bit because the path is now so steep it’s pretty much vertical and all I can do is puff. Then it levels out a bit and I can defend Mark. ‘His parents divorced and he had to leave boarding school and move to the other side of London. There’s nothing sinister about that. You should feel sorry for him.’

  ‘Look, I’m not saying that he’s evil or anything. I’m just saying that he gets my spider sense tingling,’ Emmeline insists. ‘I’m an excellent judge of character. You know I am.’

  ‘I think you’re being a little harsh.’ I have to steel myself to say that much, because now Emmeline is flaring her nostrils like an angry little bull. ‘He’s always been really nice to you. What about when you got locked out and he shinned up the side of your house to get in the bathroom window? Or when you spent your lunch money on a lottery ticket …’

  ‘It was a quadruple rollover!’

  ‘Quadruple whatever. You’d have starved if Mark hadn’t bought you a sandwich and –’

  ‘Shut up!’ That’s really, really harsh, even for Emmeline, especially as she also grabs a handful of my T-shirt. ‘Shut up and look at that!’

  We’re at the crest of the hill now and I follow the direction of Emmeline’s pointed finger and there’s London. The whole of London. Not the London we’re used to when we’re high up on Primrose Hill or at Ally Pally. We’ve only ever seen the London skyline from the north before and now it’s the wrong way round. The other way round.

  There’s the Gherkin. The funny building that looks like a cheese grater. The Shard and far, far over to our left is the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. In between are churches and high-rise blocks of flats. Cranes and scaffolding. It doesn’t matter what side I see the skyline from; it always feels like home. It’s London.

  As we stand there, Emmeline slings her arm around my neck. It’s too hot and sticky for arms slung around necks, but no matter how much we argue, being with Emmeline feels like home too. ‘I love this place,’ she suddenly says. ‘When I see it like this, all big and impressive, I think of how small my life is in comparison, but I’m still a part of it, right, Sun?’

  ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner that I love London town,’ I sing in a trembly, ridiculous Cockney accent.

  Emmeline unslings her arm and gives me a gentle shove. ‘Don’t do that. It’s horrible,’ she says with a shudder. ‘You sound like Dick Van Dyke.’

  ‘Gawd bless ya, Mary Poppins!’ we both shout as we have done so many times before, and just like that we’re over our argument. They always blow up out of nowhere and then melt away because of a shared look, a joke, some tiny remark that reminds us of how our friendship is old and deep and can withstand anything – even Emmeline’s bossiness and my inability to form an opinion and stick with it.

  Emmeline tucks her arm through mine, we start walking again and she asks quietly, ‘Are you scared?’

  I’m scared of so many things. Sometimes at night I can’t sleep as I catalogue all the things that scare me, and I have a new sub-list of scares solely dedicated to what I’ll be doing with Mark in a few hours.

  I’m scared that it will hurt.

  I’m scared that it will be awful and then I won’t even want to kiss Mark and that will be the end of us.

  I’m scared that it will be really good and I’ll want to do it all the time and everyone will think I’m a total slut.

  I’m scared that I’ll do something wrong. Oh God, there are so many things that I could do wrong. When I think about sex, of what goes where and for how long, it just seems ridiculously, needlessly complicated.

  I’m scared that when I get naked, Mark will look at all the bits of me from boobs to knobbly knees to the faint silvering of stretchmarks on my hips to there (and no one has ever looked at my there before) and be so repulsed that he literally won’t be able to get it up.

  I’m scared that I’m already hot and sweaty and that I’ll be even hotter and sweatier if I don’t have a shower first.

  I’m scared that Mark might think it would be sexy to shower together and I might be ready for sex but I am not ready to get in the shower with him.

  ‘Terrified,’ I say in answer to Emmeline’s question. ‘But then I’m scared of everything, aren’t I?’

  Emmeline nods. ‘Except, weirdly, you’re the one person I know who isn’t scared of spiders.’

  That immediately makes me feel better. I can handle spiders. If I ever found myself airlifted into the jungle on some awful reality show, I might have a screaming fit about having to walk across a frayed rope bridge or swim alligator-infested rivers, but I could happily deal with creepy crawlies. ‘Yeah, well there’s that.’

  ‘Maybe you should just picture Mark as a gigantic spider and then you won’t be so nervous,’ Emmeline says. ‘Lots of furry legs scurrying all over you. Urgh! I’m scaring myself.’

  ‘Please don’t picture my boyfriend as an outsized arachnid …’

  ‘Em! Emmy! Over here!’

  On the grassy slope below us is a sprawling group of people, girls mostly, and one girl in particular, Charlie, who’s waving to get Emmeline’s attention.

  Emmeline licks her lips and frantically finger-combs her fringe, which has gone clumpy in the heat. ‘Do I look all right?’ she asks anxiously. ‘Do my legs look unbelievably chunky in these shorts?’

  ‘No! You look great.’ I’m already teetering down the slope, while Emmeline just stands there. ‘Get a move on! I’ve only got an hour!’

  TEN MINUTES LATER

  Another thing I’m scared of are Emmeline’s new friends. But I don’t think that’s a me thing. I think that’s a normal thing when you’re an old friend hanging out with the new friends that Emmeline’s made since she joined the London Roller Derby Recreational League, where she’s kind of like a roller derby girl in training.

  I didn’t think it was possible for Emmeline to be even more shouty or competitive than she already was (I will never play Monopoly with her ever again after the time she hurled the board across the room when I built hotels on Bond Street, Regent Street, Oxford Street and Park Lane), but then she discovered roller derby. Now she straps on a pair of skates and scores points for being shouty and competitive at anyone who dares to get in her way.

  Emmeline wanted me to sign up too but I couldn’t take the risk that I might fall over and break some essential body part that couldn’t be mended. Mostly, though, it was because of the helmet. What it would do to my hair doesn’t even bear thinking about.

  Still, Emmeline’s roller derby friends are really nice when they’re not maiming each other, and I’m not the only brown person present, which tends to happen quite a lot when I dare to leave the racially diverse London Borough of Haringey (the People’s Republic of Haringey, my dad sneeringly calls it), so even though I’m on a clock, I lean back on my elbows and try to enjoy myself.

  We’re at a birthday picnic for one of the girls on the London Roller Derby B team. Emmeline and I made cheese straws and rock cakes this afternoon, which we only slightly burned. They’re now arranged in all their slightly blackened glory on a paper plate, next to quiches and salads, sausage rolls, veggie sausage rolls, vegan sausage rolls, some very limp sandwiches and a bewildering number of home-made cakes all laid out on a tartan rug and wilting in the
heat.

  Emmeline chats to her friends and I let their words float over my head like the tiny dark wisps of cloud in the deepening blue sky above me. I take an occasional sip from one of the bottles of lager we bought, though I don’t really like the taste – but Emmeline said that if we turned up with bottles of Bacardi Breezer it would create the wrong impression.

  Another group of girls arrives with two sandy-coloured pugs. The pugs, Fred and Ginger, try to make a sneak foray on the sausage rolls. Then they see me looking at them and plod over, trails of drool hanging from their mouths, press against me on either side and promptly roll over, displaying two portly bellies that I guess I’m meant to rub.

  Even two pugs who I haven’t been formally introduced to think I’m a soft touch.

  ‘Hey, Sunny. You all right?’ Charlie sits down next to me with a sagging paper plate heaped with food. This means she’s also sitting much nearer to Emmeline. ‘Did they ask for your passport as you crossed the border into South London?’

  Charlie’s really nice. She’s super nice. Emmeline thinks so anyway, but for all her badassery Emmeline is rubbish at making a move on someone that she’s had a crush on for months. It’s why I’m here – to be Emmeline’s wingman.

  Wingwoman.

  Whatever. It turns out I’m not that good at talking Emmeline up, then gradually including her in the conversation. All I can do is launch into a detailed and very boring account of our journey from Crouch End. ‘… and then we changed at Highbury and Islington, even though I told Ems that we should have got the bus to Dalston Junction and just got the Overground all the way, but she said her way was quicker so then we changed again at Victoria and we were still on the train for ages before we got to Penge West.’ I snag a delicate goat’s cheese and tomato tartlet that looks like it’s come from a fancy deli rather than a roller girl’s kitchen and shove the whole thing in my gob so I can’t talk any more. Best decision I’ve made all day.

  ‘You have to try one of these, Ems,’ I mumble around the savoury taste explosion that’s happening in my mouth.

  It’s the cue she’s been desperately waiting for. Emmeline shuffles over on her knees. ‘What’s up?’ she says. ‘Oh, hey, Charlie …’

  ‘Hey, Ems.’

  They look at each other, then both look away like they’d never ended up snogging at the party after a roller derby bout in Cardiff.

  ‘Those blueberry tarts look amazing,’ I mumble and Charlie grins at me gratefully.

  ‘Yeah, Chloe said that she only invited them because she knew they’d turn up with awesome pastries.’

  I stretch out my legs. When I get up I know I’ll have a fetching grass pattern embedded in the backs of my thighs. ‘Who makes awesome pastries?’

  ‘Those French boys, the Godards.’

  Immediately I sit up. ‘They’re here! Really?’

  I look around wildly and on the far edge of the raggedy circle of people gathered by the food are two pale, skinny boys, side by side. It might be hot, but they’re wearing black suits, skinny cut to match their skinny bodies, and shades. Their dark hair is almost as big as mine.

  Emmeline forgets that she’s being shy. ‘Oh my God! It’s them!’ She clutches my hand. ‘I thought they were an urban myth!’

  The Godards. French boys. First there was just one of them. For the longest time we’d see him pootling about North London on his moped, then suddenly, about a year ago, there were two of them. Like Godard v.01 had had himself cloned. Nobody knows if they’re twins or best mates or boyfriend and boyfriend. There’s even a rumour going round that they’re not even French. Everyone has an opinion on them. There’s even a Tumblr, FuckYeah!TheGodards where people can post sightings and pictures of them.

  The only person I know who actually knows them is, surprisingly, my mum. They run a coffee bar out of an ancient Citroën van and pitch up two days a week in Spitalfields where she has her antiques shop.

  ‘Lovely boys,’ she always says. ‘Lovely coffee. Lovely patisserie. Such lovely manners.’

  Once, she’d even got one of them to write a stroppy email in French to an antiques dealer in Toulouse who’d sold her a bedroom set riddled with woodworm.

  ‘Apparently, they’re not actually gay,’ Charlie says. ‘I saw them in a club once and they were both trying to get with the same girl.’

  ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay,’ I say, because I’m meant to be wingwoman-ing. ‘Nothing wrong at all.’

  ‘Yes, thanks for that, Sunny.’ Emmeline manages to stretch out her leg and kick me and I can’t see what the point is of me being her wingwoman if she’s not going to make a move – instead she’s stealing sly little looks at Charlie and then, when she’s not looking, Charlie is making googly eyes right back at her.

  I have to leave in twenty minutes. I haven’t got time for this.

  ‘Go and talk to her. Properly. Go on!’ I hiss.

  ‘I can’t just suddenly start talking to her.’

  ‘Yes, you can. It’s what people do when they like other people. Do you want me to make myself scarce? I could go and get some more tartlets.’ I’m not just offering out of the goodness of my heart. I want to get a closer look at the Godards. ‘I could give Charlie one of our rock cakes. One of the ones that isn’t mostly charcoal. To showcase your mad baking skills.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Emmeline growls. ‘I can handle it myself.’

  ‘By handling it, you mean not actually doing anything?’

  ‘I could kick you again. Would that count as doing something?’

  It’s too hot and I’m too comfy to tell Emmeline that it really doesn’t. ‘So, Charlie, Em needs to replace the wheels on her skates. Where do you get yours from?’

  It turns out that those are the magic words to get Emmeline and Charlie talking and I’m quite content to sit there and spend some of my Saturday night eating tartlets and stroking fat pug bellies.

  Then my phone beeps and, just like that, I’m not content any more.

  It will be Mark telling me my hour’s up. The fear is back. It’s bitter and chases away the sweetness of the pastry and the salty taste of goat’s cheese. I pick up my phone and I’m relieved and only a tiny bit disappointed that it’s a text from Martha.

  Emmeline and I secretly call her OMG!Martha because the first words out of her mouth are always ‘Oh my God, you’ll never believe what I just found out!’ She’s Crouch End’s answer to TMZ.

  I have to give Martha her due, though – her sources are usually impeccable. ‘Incoming from Martha,’ I tell Emmeline. ‘There’s a picture attachment, this should be good.’

  ‘Oh, let me see!’ I hold my phone up so Emmeline has a perfect view of my screen and … then we both say, ‘Oh my God!’

  I shut my eyes. I can’t look. I can’t not look. I open them again and all I can see is the photo of a boy who looks like Mark, my Mark, with his mouth attached to the mouth of a girl who isn’t me. One of his hands rests on her arse, most of which is displayed in all its pert glory by her short shorts.

  OMG! Mark is with this girl in Lock Tavern. Have u broken up? :( Hugs M xxx

  ‘Why would she even think that? She knows we’re not broken up. She was at my barbecue two days ago when I was with Mark. Very much together. Anyway, that doesn’t even look like Mark.’ I sit up and squint at the screen. ‘It’s not him.’

  ‘Well … that does look like the red friendship bracelet you gave him, and that does kind of look like the blue check shirt that you nicked from Terry that Mark then borrowed off you and never gave back,’ Emmeline points out.

  ‘Loads of people have red friendship bracelets and blue check shirts. Loads.’

  My phone beeps again. It’s OMG!Martha again.

  Here’s another pic. Thought u should see it. :( Luv u M xxx

  It’s the same shiny-haired girl kissing a boy who can only be Mark. It’s taken from a slightly different angle so there’s no mistaking his floppy blond hair or the mole on his jawline that I’ve
kissed so many times I’ve lost count. I even recognise his navy-blue pants because he wears his jeans slung so low that seeing Mark’s pants before we’ve even had sex was inevitable.

  The pain is sudden and overwhelming. Like stubbing your toe or trapping your finger in a door. Before I even know it, tears smart and run down my face. I hunch over and take deep breaths. Emmeline lets her hand rest on my back.

  There has to be a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Mark is sucking serious face, with a hint of tongue, with another girl, but I can’t come up with one.

  ‘What shall I do?’ I ask Emmeline. ‘Should I call him?’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t call him. Not while you’re so upset,’ Emmeline says, but I’ve already stabbed at the call button.

  There’s a static buzz and then it rolls right over to voicemail and I hear Mark’s voice, his stupid voice. ‘Yo! You know what to do.’ I open my mouth and take a big, choked breath, but before I can say anything Emmeline snatches the phone away from me.

  ‘No. You don’t leave a message. He shouldn’t get off that easy. Kissing another girl and then getting dumped by voicemail. He deserves worse than that and you, you deserve much better!’

  ‘But it might be an innocent kiss. OK, it doesn’t look like one, but it might be,’ I protest.

  Then I burst into tears.

  There’s a pain in my chest and I’m clammy and cold and I’m crying in front of a bunch of people I don’t know that well.

  ‘Sunny, please don’t.’ Emmeline’s not much of a hugger so she punches me gently on the arm instead. ‘I hate it when you cry. And anyway, it’ll ruin your make-up.’

  It takes a huge effort but I come to a shuddering halt. I haven’t even taken off my sunglasses and when I swipe a finger under each eye, they’re smeared black with my mascara.

  ‘Bad news, Sunny?’ Charlie’s watching us with an uncomfortable expression; she’s an unwilling witness to my sudden plunge into despair. ‘Do you want a tissue? Shall I go and get some napkins?’

  ‘Boyfriend stuff,’ I mutter. ‘Got tissues in my bag, but thanks.’

  ‘Ex-boyfriend stuff,’ Emmeline says firmly. ‘Emphasis on the ex. There’s no coming back from this. That is proper evidence on your phone. Those pictures could be used in court as proof that Mark is no good. I knew it! I just didn’t know that he was a cheater too.’