Incendiary

Autumn

Dear Osama I could of been Petra Sutherland.

I looked at myself in Petra’s dressing table mirror. I was putting her Sisley Lychee Glossy Gloss on my lips. I pressed my lips together mmm mmm. I am Petra Sutherland I said. I wouldn’t need to work if I didn’t simply adore my job. I can do whatever the hell I please.

I looked at myself and I tried to think what earrings she’d wear with those lips. I was watching the clock. 7:45 a.m. There was still an hour before I had to head off to Scotland Yard. I opened the drawer and I took out Petra’s pearl earrings. I hooked them into my ears and they felt heavy and perfect. I turned my head to the side and the earrings followed like well-trained money.

I held my chin up just the way she did. I was almost there. Just my eyes to do and I was her. It was still half dark outside and there was rain beating against the window. I took her mascara. Yves Saint Laurent False Lash Effect mascara. It came in a lovely thin gold bottle. It was cold and heavy in your hand like the barrel of the gun the hit man screws together in spy films. I put it on my lashes and blinked at myself. My heart was racing. I was her. I was her. I am Petra Sutherland I said into the mirror and I smiled just so.

The real Petra was in New York. It was just me and Jasper in the house and he wouldn’t be awake for hours. The poor chap was dead to the world on their bed behind me. I was all alone in Petra’s life and I was thinking wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t ever have to give it back. I was pretending if I could just get ever so good at being Petra then one day she’d come back from her week with American Vogue and I’d be all like WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING LETTING YOURSELF INTO MY FLAT LIKE THAT? and I’d send her packing to the Wellington Estate.

I looked back in the mirror. I am Petra Sutherland I said. This season’s colours are jade and tan and burgundy. I had one of Petra’s Sunday Telegraph articles on the table in front of me. I was practicing talking posh. Talking posh is like anything else Osama you can get used to it pretty quick. The trick is to read one of Petra’s sentences aloud and then straight away say something of your own. It’s an effort but you can trick your brain into doing it. Like when me and my husband used to bump start the Astra. I picked up Petra’s article and I read aloud.

—At a basic level the democratisation of high fashion is demonstrated by the hipster boot-cut pant, which is now the most common trouser shape.

I watched my lips in the mirror.

—At a basic level the democratisation of Petra Sutherland is demonstrated by the fact that I am her.

I smiled. The more I practiced the better I got. You should try it yourself Osama. This season’s bloodbaths will be crimson and carmine and scarlet.

—I am Petra Sutherland. It is September now and the faces on the balloons of the Shield of Hope have faded. The summer sun turned them pale and now one has the impression that London is defended by ghosts.

I shook Petra’s head at myself in the mirror. She wouldn’t of said ghosts she would of said spectres. There’s a difference. I tried again.

—I am Petra Sutherland and my city is protected by spectres.

There it was. I smiled.

—I am Petra Sutherland and my city is protected by spectres and my boyfriend is on a cocaine-fuelled downward spiral but I must remain cheerful.

I tried a cheerful smile in the mirror. I almost fooled myself.

—I am Petra Sutherland. I am wearing chestnut corduroys. I am wearing a bolero jacket with frilly ruffs. I am wearing myself out through overwork. I set off for the paper at the crack of dawn and I don’t come back until late. I find I am happiest in the office up to my neck in fabric swatches and freelancers’ copy. I have started to rather dread coming home. Jasper has turned into something ghastly. He neglects himself. He has to be goaded into the bath like a sheep reluctant to be dipped. His behaviour is monstrous and unpredictable. The morning after a really big night he cowers in bed with the pillows over his head crying like a baby. When he has sufficiently recovered he will get up and mooch around the house. He will smash crockery and guzzle coffee and sometimes even make an appearance at the paper. Where he is increasingly unwelcome. His column has followed him downhill. His words are not words any more they are 800 bared teeth. His column is a snarl against anything and anyone that is not Jasper Black. It can’t be long before the paper drops him.

—I am Petra Sutherland. People at the paper have started to talk. Or more exactly they have stopped. Conversations falter when I join them. Subjects are changed. The weather has taken a turn for the worse lately hasn’t it?

My lip gloss was smudged. It was the way her mouth twisted when she talked about Jasper. I wiped off the smudge with a cotton ball and started again.

—I am Petra Sutherland and the girl hasn’t helped. I don’t know what I was thinking. I remember hoping that once he had her up close Jasper would see how dreadfully bloody ordinary she was. But she has failed to bore either one of us. Jasper paws at her bedroom door at night. She won’t let him in because she’s mooning over some policeman. And then one night I walked in on her in the bathroom. On the edge of the tub her candles were burning down to stumps and she was lying quite still in the water. When she heard the door open she just stared up at me. I should have left. I stepped inside and locked the bathroom door behind me.

I had my eyes closed. I was remembering Petra forgetting herself. I heard a noise and I opened my eyes and gasped. Jasper was standing behind me. His reflection was watching mine in Petra’s dressing table mirror. His stubble was thick and black and his eyes were very small in their puffy white rings of skin. He looked like a dying panda. He was wearing grey boxer shorts and black socks. Nothing else. He was starting to get a bit of a gut I noticed. When he spoke his voice was empty like a toy without batteries.

—Hello Petra, he said. I’d have thought you’d have been on your way to work by now.

I froze. I couldn’t think what to say so I didn’t say anything. Jasper came closer. He put his hands on my shoulders and I jumped. He smelled of nightmares and stale smoke from Camel Lights.

—Oh come on Petra, he said. Don’t I even get a hello?

I looked at him in the mirror. He looked straight back at me and his eyes were as empty as his voice. You could tell he was mainly thinking about finding the Neurofen. I took a deep breath. I made sure I got Petra’s voice just right. Cold and hurt.

—Hello Jasper. I imagined you wouldn’t be awake for hours.

—Uh, said Jasper.

He walked into the bathroom and started going through the medicine cabinet. I heard him throwing packets of stuff on the floor. I stood up from Petra’s dressing table and followed him into the bathroom.

—Oh darling I can’t bear to watch you suffer.

I found the Neurofen and passed him the shiny silver box. He closed his hand over mine and he looked at me.

—Have you done your hair or something? he said.

I shook my head no.

—You look different, he said.

—It’s your hangover. I’m just the same.

Jasper screwed up his eyes.

—Hangover, he said. That’s what I have. It feels as if the world is ending. It feels as if mice have got into my neurons and chewed off all the electrical insulation.

He rubbed his chin.

—Oh god, he said. I was a total cunt again last night wasn’t I?

—No Jasper last night you were just ordinarily awful. You’ve been high for 3 days. The night you really were a total cunt was Saturday.

—What did I do? he said.

—You wouldn’t believe me even if I showed you the bruises.

Jasper groaned and sat down on the floor.

—Jesus Petra, he said. I’m sorry. I’m completely fucked.

—We’ll talk about it when I get home from work.

—Talk about it? he said. I know what that means. You’re going to leave me aren’t you? Please don’t. If you leave me Petra I think I’ll go mad I really do.

His eyes were darting about all panicked and I wished I hadn’t pretended in the first place now. I put my real voice back on.

—It’s alright Jasper it’s only me.

Jasper looked up at me and blinked.

—Petra’s gone to New York. Remember?

He opened his eyes wide then closed them quick. I suppose the light hurt them.

—Oh, he said. You.

—Yeah. Come on. Get up.

—Jesus Christ.

He stood up and went to the sink and ran the cold tap and popped 4 Neurofens out of the pack and swallowed them. He stood there with the tap still running and looked at himself in the mirror above the basin.

—Bad Jasper, he said.

He stood there looking at himself a long time. I don’t know what he was looking for. Maybe something funny to say but he seemed so sad. I went up behind him and I turned the tap off. I put my arms around his tummy and I put the side of my face against his back. He didn’t move he just started crying. It wasn’t much. Just some tiny sobs. He wasn’t making a fuss. I stroked his tummy.

—Thanks, he said.

—You’re alright. You’ll feel better in a minute.

—There you go again, he said. Why can’t Petra be more like that?

—I reckon she’s too busy earning the money you’re putting up your nose.

—Petra doesn’t give a shit about me, he said. She doesn’t care. I wish she’d just go.

I smiled at him in the mirror.

—No you don’t. Who’d have you then?

—You would, said Jasper.

—Don’t be daft.

—Why not?

—Listen Jasper you’re an alright bloke but you’ve got to pull yourself together and let me make a new start.

Jasper turned round and put his hand on my bum and started stroking my neck with his other hand.

—So why not make a new start with me? he said.

—Cause you smell of death and I’m late for work.

He took a step back and stood there scowling at me in his socks and boxers.

—You’re still seeing that policeman aren’t you? he said. Mr. Timberlands.

—Yeah. I’m seeing him today.

—Isn’t he married?

—We go to a hotel. Monday lunchtimes.

—How romantic.

—Says Prince Charming.

I looked Jasper up and down and Jasper looked at the floor.

—It’s this godforsaken world, he said. It’s brought me down.

—Nah Jasper it’s the coke bringing you down. You ought to try looking on the bright side.

—Ah yes, he said. The bright side. Every week I have to write 800 words about a world that’s turning to rat shit but never fear dear Telegraph readers because the bright side is that we can all watch the world turning to rat shit on our plasma TVs while we enjoy our ebullient housing market and our preemptive action against tyranny.

Jasper spun round and smashed the side of his hand into the mirror above the basin. A big ugly star of cracks spread across it.

—Oi! Calm down will you?

—How exactly am I meant to calm down? he said. There is no fucking bright side. Barrage balloons go up over the city? Let’s do DIY! Curfew keeping us cooped up indoors? Big Brother’s ratings soar! How do we react when they intern the Muslims? Who cares when this year’s hot new thing is threesomes!

—Jasper. Listen to yourself.

Jasper stared at me and suddenly laughed. It was a horrible laugh.

—God I’m sorry, he said. You’re right. I’m ranting again. Listen you don’t have any coke do you?

—You know I don’t.

—No, he said. Of course you don’t. Still. No harm in asking.

He sniffed. He wiped his nose with his hand all cut from the mirror. Blood dripped down onto his lips. It was real blood. It wasn’t just in my head for once I didn’t know whether to be sad or happy about that. The blood ran down onto his teeth while he talked.

—People have forgotten the horror, he said. Do you remember the noise of the explosion?

—Don’t.

—It rattled the windows, said Jasper. It echoed and echoed through the streets. I can still hear it in my head. And then there was your face. Your poor little face when you started to realise. That’s horror. You realising you had no one left to grill fish fingers for. That’s what it all boils down to after all the politicking and the posturing and the 800 balanced words from pompous cunts like me. Horror.

Jasper turned round and held on to both sides of the basin. He dropped his head and blood dripped on the white enamel. I took him by the wrists and I led him out of the bathroom into the bedroom. He was muttering.

—Sleep Jasper. Try to get some sleep now there’s a good boy.

I wrapped a towel round his cut hand and I tucked the duvet in around him. I stroked his hair.

—Hush now my darling boy. Hush.

He closed his eyes and I sat with him for the longest time till he seemed to sleep. His eyeballs rolled under the eyelids. His fingers twitched. There were broken things in his dreams and they were after him. I went and fetched Mr. Rabbit out of my bag and I tucked him in next to Jasper. Mr. Rabbit always was good for nightmares. I sat there for a long time stroking Jasper’s hair. You never really lose the habit of looking after a boy I suppose it’s like riding a bicycle. Or cleaning a Kalashnikov if that rings more of a bell Osama I mean who the hell knows what a boy like you got up to after school?

When Jasper was calm and still I went back to Petra’s dressing table. I put her earrings back in the drawer. I used her makeup remover and a cotton pad and I scrubbed her face off mine. I took her clothes off and hung them in her wardrobe. I took off her bra and her knickers and I put them back in her drawers and I stood there naked and shivering. The clock said 8:45 a.m. It was time to put my own life back on.

I was late in at work that morning and I wasn’t the only one. The buses weren’t running properly and mine just didn’t turn up at all. Something to do with bomb scares left a hundred of us waiting in the cold grey rain on Bethnal Green Road. There are so many bomb scares now. You can’t leave a ciggie butt unattended these days without someone coming and doing a controlled explosion on it.

Everyone was late for work and complaining to people on their mobiles. Loudly so that the rest of us could all get an earful. People took it in turns. That’s how the English have a good moan these days Osama. Heaven forbid we should actually grumble to our neighbours in the bus queue. We’re not like you hot-blooded Arab types. That’s what Terence would of said. It’s the climate you see. It’s the rain on Bethnal Green Road that makes Britain great and I stood in it for half an hour before I gave up and walked to the tube and the tube was closed too so it was your typical bloody London good morning.

There was nothing for it I had to walk to work 5 miles through the rain and the 3 million other people whose buses hadn’t come. It was a struggle I don’t mind telling you. I don’t know what it is with London and umbrellas it’s like everyone’s trying to have your eye out. Rain makes us vicious. People were bumping into each other and giving it the old lip and stepping into puddles and all the traffic was jammed and as if all that wasn’t enough it was effing Monday wasn’t it.

Halfway along the Embankment I saw this man lose it. He was crossing too close in front of a bus and the bus driver hit the horn. The man jumped back and dropped his briefcase and it burst open. His computer and his papers and all his little gadgets fell out into a puddle. The man crouched down and started trying to grab all his stuff up but the crowds didn’t give him a chance they just carried on walking on his papers and his iPod and his fingers. OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE the man was shouting. CAN’T YOU FUCKING ROBOTS GIVE ME A CHANCE HERE? HAVEN’T YOU HEARD THIS IS MEANT TO BE A CIVILISED FUCKING COUNTRY?

A few of the crowd gave him this look like civilisation was one thing and Monday morning was another. OH BOLLOCKS TO ALL OF YOU THEN shouted the man. He stood up and he was holding the one thing he’d managed to pick up off the road and it was his biro. The end of it was smashed and black ink was running down his hand and spreading down his white shirtsleeve with the rain. The man lifted his face up into the sky then and just screamed BOLLOCKS TO THIS! BOLLOCKS TO BOMB SCARES! BOLLOCKS TO THE TERRORISTS AND BOLLOCKS TO THE POLICE AND BOLLOCKS TO COMMUTING!

The crowd around him started laughing and clapping. It was a little miracle in the middle of a great wet misery like when the English and the German soldiers played footie in No Man’s Land. The man was still angry at first but then he started smiling too and bowing to the crowd and waving his smashed-up biro like a conductor’s baton. You might think I was smiling too Osama but I wasn’t. The whole thing made me feel a bit poorly. One minute that crowd was robots and the next minute it was human beings and the next minute it’d be something else again. Ever since May Day people’s moods could change faster than the traffic lights.

When I finally got to work the sky above Scotland Yard was low and grey and moody. You couldn’t see a thing. You couldn’t even see the balloons in the Shield of Hope. You just saw the cables disappearing up into the clouds like the weather was bolted onto them.

Up in the office it was a long grey morning and one of the striplights was flashing and buzzing like an electric chair. I was getting a headache but you can put up with a lot when you’re wearing new red knickers. Terence kept giving me these looks I don’t think either of us could wait for 1 o’clock.

At lunchtime Terence said not to meet him at our usual hotel he said he wanted to go for a walk instead. I said alright but it wasn’t much of a walk at first on account of it was still drizzling and I had to follow 10 yards behind him in case anyone saw us together out of work. I nearly lost sight of him crossing Westminster Bridge there were so many people. Everyone was using the bridge because the tube was still out after the bomb scare. It always takes London Underground hours to get all the trains back to their proper sidings and all the buskers back in their right places at the bottom of the escalators singing ENGLAND’S HEART IS BLEEDING with their scratched-up old guitars. It’s like an anthill the tube I mean you can stamp on it and watch the ants charge around going mental for a bit like my boy after 3 glasses of Tizer but after a while the ants will calm down and start to fix the anthill up again and dig all the muck out of the tunnels and make everything good as new or almost. Only don’t expect them to do it in 5 mins that’s all.

Anyway at the other end of Westminster Bridge Terence slowed down and went off left down the steps onto the South Bank. I went down 10 yards behind him good as gold. At the bottom of the steps he stopped and turned I suppose he reckoned we’d gone far enough not to be spotted. I came and stood next to him. I leaned forward over the wall so I could look down at the Thames. It was low tide and the sides of the river were mud. Dirty gulls were paddling round the shopping trolleys and the old tampons sticking out of the slime.

—Our glamorous capital, said Terence. Not a pretty sight is it?

—Nah. Well. Best keep my eyes on you then.

I looked up at him and he smiled. You could see the London Eye behind him turning round very slow with its big glass bubbles rising up till they disappeared into the cloud about 3-quarters of the way to the top of the wheel and then popping back down out of the cloud when they were 3-quarters of the way down again. There were streaks of brown rust running down the white tubes of the Eye it looked like it could of done with a good lick of paint. I suppose there wasn’t the money now there weren’t so many tourists any more. The London Eye was empty as the river.

Terence followed where my eyes were looking.

—Have you ever been on it? he said.

—Nah.

—Let’s go for a ride.

—Nah you’re alright. I mean if I want vertigo I’ll just go up on the top deck of the bus it’s a lot cheaper.

—Oh come on, said Terence. Where’s your sense of adventure?

—In ashes in a small cardboard box Terence they had to identify my sense of adventure from his dental records.

Terence sighed and shook his head.

—Then let’s just go on it to get out of this pissing rain, he said. Please. I want to talk to you.

I said alright and Terence grabbed hold of my hand and we walked off past the Aquarium and the Dal Museum and we bought tickets there wasn’t a queue. We walked straight onto the Eye and we got a bubble all to ourselves. A guide tried to come into our bubble with us but Terence showed him an official pass and he cleared off.

—There, said Terence. Emergency police powers. They don’t hand them out to just anyone you know. A year of basic training. 3 years on the beat. 20 years rising up through the ranks. I knew it would all come in handy one day.

Our bubble started to rise up into the air. It was amazing it gave me goose bumps. I wish my boy could of been there. He’d of said IS THIS THE BIGGEST WHEEL IN THE UNIVERSE? and I’d of said No darling it’s not quite as big as the steering wheel on god’s Astra and he’d of said HOW COME IT TURNS ROUND? and I’d of said It turns round because Harry Potter put a spell on it. My boy’s eyes would of gone all wide then and he’d of been quiet for at least 8 seconds.

Me and Terence were quiet too at first. We held hands and there was just the sound of the drizzle tapping against the glass and the electric humming noise of the magic spell making the thing turn round. The people down on Westminster Bridge started to shrink.

—Tessa asked me to move out, said Terence. I’m staying in a Travelodge.

—I’m sorry.

—Don’t be, he said. Travelodges aren’t that bad.

—You know what I meant.

—Yes, he said.

He sighed and a little patch of mist appeared on the glass in front of his mouth and wiped out a good chunk of the Embankment.

—Is it permanent?

—Don’t know yet, he said. We’ll see.

—Is it me?

Terence shook his head.

—She doesn’t know about you, he said. It’s the job she can’t stand. She says I’m married to it.

—Well she does have a point you know.

—Yes, said Terence. But that’s just me isn’t it? Me without the job would be like England without the penalty curse. You can’t have one without the other.

I squeezed Terence’s hand and he squeezed mine back and I just tried to think about that and nothing else.

The wheel carried on turning. After a while you could see over the tops of the buildings on both sides of the river and look out over North London all white stone and money and South London all dirty brown high-rise bricks. From up where we were you could see how many cables there were rising up from the north side of the river compared to the south. It was like the people who built the Shield of Hope weren’t really all that hopeful about Brixton and Camberwell and Lewisham.

I held on tight and looked out east. I was trying to see those places I always lived in. I looked for my old school and the Nelson’s Head and the Wellington Estate and all those streets I kissed my husband and walked my boy and let the both of them down. I looked very hard through the drizzle I was hoping my life might make a bit more sense from a great height. I squinted and stared but after a bit I had to give up because the truth was you couldn’t see the East End behind all the famous landmarks.

Our bubble was rising up towards the clouds now and you could see the bubbles above us disappearing into it. Terence was just staring out over London with his sad eyes full of the endless city. He shook his head.

—There’s just so much of it, he said. There’s so many people. You can’t put a fence around all of them.

—Yeah well it looks like you’re giving it a good go.

—Yes, said Terence. We’ve pulled up the drawbridge. But the bastards are already inside. That’s the thing. I could tell you a hundred ways they could butcher us like cattle. They could topple those office blocks like dominoes. They could make that river run red.

We looked down at the Thames all brown and muddy starting to disappear underneath us in the first edges of the clouds.

—So do your best. That’s all you can do isn’t it.

—I’m just so stupidly bloody tired, said Terence. It’s like the powers that be are poking sticks into the wasps’ nests and my job is to run around and stop the wasps stinging us. It’s never going to happen. We’ve simply got to stop doing just a few of the things that make these people want to murder us.

Then everything went grey. London disappeared underneath us like the whole place had been a bad dream. Our bubble had risen up into the clouds.

—Terence?

—Yes?

—Can’t we just forget about it for a while?

Terence turned towards me he looked so sick and miserable I just wanted to hold him so I did. He held me very gentle with his hands round my shoulders and then his hands started to slide down my sides and I reached up to kiss him and suddenly there were tears on my face and they weren’t my tears they were his. I kissed him and kissed him and I reached down to unbuckle his belt and he pushed my skirt up and it was very quiet and lonely up there in our bubble in the clouds and the light was very sad and grey and it came from everywhere and there weren’t any shadows. There was a long wooden bench in our bubble and I lay down on it and I was trembling and when he was inside me I sighed and closed my eyes and breathed in his smell.

With my eyes closed I could see right through the landmarks and right through the East End I could see my boy playing in the long grass in his yellow wellies I could see everything very clearly.

—Oh god Terence oh god we can start again you and me. We can start again like new.

Afterwards I felt sad and a bit sore and we sat next to each other on the bench and smoked Terence’s Marlboro Reds. We didn’t look at each other we just looked out at the big grey nothing on the outside of the glass.

—This is the closest I’ve been to heaven, said Terence Butcher.

—You’re joking aren’t you? Are you telling me you’ve never been in a plane?

—I don’t mean the height, he said. I mean the feeling.

—Oh.

I thought about heaven.

—Didn’t there ought to be angels and nice food and all your old family back from the dead?

—That’s Hollywood heaven.

—Oh.

—This is British heaven. It’s low cost. This is EasyHeaven.

I smiled and stretched up and kissed him and when I next looked out we were out of the clouds again and we were going back down. You could see the Houses of Parliament small enough so you could of picked it up and cut your fingers on its sharp little spines.

Terence put his hand under my chin and turned my face up so I was looking at him.

—There’s something I have to tell you, he said. About May Day.

—Oh Terence love let’s not talk about May Day. We’re in heaven remember? Just you and me. Don’t spoil it.

I stubbed out my ciggie on the underneath of the bench. The ground was getting closer now. You could see the lampposts of the South Bank coming up to meet us like slow cold missiles through the rain.

—I have to tell you, said Terence. If we’re going to see each other like this I can’t keep it to myself.

I lit another ciggie. Terence put his hand on my shoulder but I shrugged it off.

—What are you on about?

—Decisions, he said. In my line of work you run up against some terrible decisions. But you have to go through with it. It’s your duty.

—What does this have to do with May Day?

—Your husband understood duty, said Terence Butcher.

—My boy was 4 years and 3 months old. He understood eff-all. What is your point exactly?

Terence took the cigarette out of my hand and took a drag. He sucked the smoke right down into his lungs and held the cigarette up in front of him and looked at it like he was hoping it would kill him before he had to answer. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down.

—We knew about May Day, he said. 2 hours before it happened.

—Nah. Anyway. Look. We’re nearly back down. Look my lipstick isn’t too smudged is it?

I stood up and started smoothing my skirt down but Terence pulled me back to the bench.

—Sit down, he said. Listen. We knew.

—You knew? How?

—We’ve got a mole, he said. An agent in the May Day cell. He got a message to us while the bombers were still on their way to the match.

—Nah. Cause if you had 2 hours warning you could of stopped

it.

—Yes, said Terence Butcher. But the decision was taken not to stop it.

I just stared at him.

—This is going to be so hard for you to hear, he said. If we’d acted to stop May Day then the terrorists would have known something was up. They’d have changed everything. All their people. All their places. Everything. We’d have lost all insight into what they were planning. And we couldn’t let that happen. The stakes are too high. We know the May Day cell are planning another attack. A hundred times worse than May Day.

—I can’t believe I’m hearing this Terence Butcher. You knew? You personally?

—Yes, he said.

—And you decided not to do anything?

—I didn’t decide, he said. The decision was taken at the very highest level.

—Bollocks to the very highest level. YOU knew.

—Yes, he said. Of course I could have broken ranks and stopped it. And the reason I didn’t was because I agreed with the decision. And I still do. We couldn’t have known the casualties would be so high.

I stared at the glowing orange end of his cigarette and watched my boy burning to death in it. He was screaming MUMMY SAVE ME only I couldn’t come and save him could I? Because I was stuck in a glass bubble with the man that killed him and I was still aching from where I’d had him inside me. I wonder Osama if you are starting to get how it feels yet?

I grabbed Terence Butcher’s hair and twisted his head round so he was looking in my eyes.

—You miserable fucking bastard.

AT THE VERY HIGHEST LEVEL. That was the moment Osama. When he said those words I stopped blaming you for my husband and my boy and I started blaming Terence Butcher. He murdered them. He just used your Semtex to do it with.

—I’m sorry, said Terence Butcher. I shouldn’t have told you. I thought you’d understand.

I started crying and Terence held my face and he wiped away my tears with those same fingers he used to stroke my back in cheap hotel rooms and hold mugs of tea and dial the number of the phone call that killed my boy. I took the ciggie back off him and I sat there with it. I was just crying a bit and trembling and thinking nothing much till the ciggie burned down into the skin between my fingers. Then the pain hit me and I screamed and screamed like my boy must of screamed when the flames cut into him and then I puked up all over London and the puke ran down the inside of the glass down over St. Paul’s Cathedral and down towards the Thames and when our bubble reached the ground again and the door slid open I ran out and I ran along the South Bank in the rain shouting THEY KNEW THEY KNEW THEY KNEW and people were gawping at me like I was a madwoman and I suppose they did have a point Osama because they were just standing under the London drizzle but I was running screaming through falling drops of phosphorus with my little boy running after me shouting MUMMY WAIT FOR ME!

I didn’t go back to Jasper and Petra’s place I went home to the Wellington Estate instead. I just turned up like a homing pigeon I didn’t really know how I got there. Up in the flat I sat very still in the lounge looking out the window. The sun went down and the sun went up the way it does. After a day or 2 the phone started ringing I suppose it must of been work wondering where I was. I just listened to the sound of the phone it never occurred to me to go and pick it up.

I’d still be sitting there now with my bones turned to dust on our old Ikea sofa but it was the hunger drove me out of the flat. There’s only so much nothing your body will put up with I suppose and so one day I just sort of woke up in the corner shop on Columbia Road eating pink iced buns straight off the shelves. The woman came out from behind the till and put her hands on her hips and stood there in her dark-grey hijab watching me stuffing my face.

—You are going to pay for all that aren’t you? she said.

I just looked at her with my mouth jammed full and icing dribbling down my chin I couldn’t work out what she was on about. She smiled and shook her head.

—Tea? she said.

—Tea.

I knew that word it was solid it was a great comfort like the noise the handbrake makes when you pull it on at the end of a long trip. The woman took me through a curtain made of plastic rainbow strips into the back room of the shop. It was nice in there it smelled of old bits and bobs and there was a little stereo playing Radio 1. I sat on a green sofa with the arms worn through and an orange cat came and gawped at me. The woman made me strong tea with sugar and we sat there till I felt better. It was a small room and there were all kinds of posters on the walls. There was Wayne Rooney and Mecca and Medina and Avril Lavigne. I swear to god Osama that woman’s head was all over the shop you could only of bombed parts of her.

—Why are you being so nice to me?

—Your husband bought the Sun and 20 Benson & Hedges here every day for 4 years, she said. I owe you a cup of tea.

She still made me pay for the iced buns though.

When I left the shop I went round Petra and Jasper’s place and no one said anything about where’d I been for the last 3 days. Maybe they were being polite or maybe they just never noticed and after a couple of drinks I wasn’t bothered anyway it was just nice not to be sitting on my sofa.

It was cannelloni for dinner that night but none of us touched a bite of it on account of I was full of pink iced buns Jasper was on coke and Petra was on the Atkins diet.

We sat round the table and drank ros wine and watched the cannelloni going cold. There was a power cut and the fridge wasn’t working so the ros was lukewarm. Petra lit some candles but she needn’t of bothered because some Bengali street gang was lighting motors in the street outside and this harsh orange light was coming in through the windows. No coppers or fire engines turned up. I suppose they must of had their hands full somewhere.

There was nothing else for it I drank 5 glasses of ros and told them what Terence told me.

—I don’t believe it, said Petra. It stretches credulity that they knew about May Day and did nothing to prevent it.

—Oh come on Petra, said Jasper. Don’t be naive. They had a source to protect so they let a few football fans die. I don’t see what’s so incredible.

—1 thousand dead souls Jasper, said Petra. That’s what’s not credible.

Jasper laughed.

—1 thousand souls is pocket change, he said.

—Oh please, said Petra.

—More died at Coventry, said Jasper. November 1940. The Germans blitzed it with incendiaries. Churchill knew in advance from Ultra decrypts. Decided not to act. We couldn’t let the Germans know we’d broken their code.

—Oh nonsense, said Petra. That’s been totally discredited. It’s a myth.

—But doesn’t it ring so true? said Jasper. Don’t you believe they’d do anything to protect their precious City boys?

—You’re high, said Petra.

—Sure, said Jasper. But I’m right.

Another motor went up whump in the street outside and Jasper and Petra just sat there glaring at each other in the vicious orange light coming off it.

—Listen, said Jasper. It’s the attack on the City they’re really trying to stop. A thousand City suits die and it’s good-bye global economy. A thousand blokes in Gunners T-shirts die and you just sell a bit less lager.

I was drunk now on the bloody ros and I should of stayed out of it but there you go.

—Jasper’s right. The government doesn’t give a monkey’s about people like my husband and my boy.

Petra shook her head.

—That’s just paranoid, she said.

—I am not paranoid I’m working-class there’s a difference.

—Oh please, said Petra. Don’t make this into a class war. It’s the war against terror.

—Yeah and it’s no different from any other war. You ever wondered why an East End girl like me hasn’t got much in the way of family? Well here’s the reasons Petra. World War 1. World War 2. Falklands War. Gulf War 1. Gulf War 2 and the War on Drugs. You can take your pick because I lost whole bloody chunks of my family in all of them. That’s war Petra. This one’s no different. The people who die are people like me. And the people who survive. Well I’m sorry Petra but the people who survive are people like you. And you’re so used to surviving you don’t even notice you’re bloody well doing it.

Petra stared at me.

—You know what? she said. Sod you.

—Petra, said Jasper. Please.

—No Jasper, she said. Sod you too. Sod you both. You’re as bad as each other. You simply refuse to move on don’t you? Hiding behind your cocaine and your conspiracy theories like sulky children. You know what I’ve been doing this week? Moving on. Everyone is. London is moving on. Paris is refusing to be intimidated. And New York was all about vibrant colours. Defiant colours. Thanks to New York there will still be a spring season next year and thanks to me you can still read all about it in next Sunday’s paper. Helmut Lang is moving on. John Galliano is moving on. The entire Western world is able to move on apparently with the sole exception of you. What the hell have you both been up to while I’ve been working my arse off in New York? Moping and fucking each other? I thought you’d be good for each other but look at you. You’re just dragging all 3 of us down.

She stood up from the table and went over to the window and stared out at the street. I went up to her and touched the back of her hand.

—I’m sorry Petra I shouldn’t of had a go at you.

She turned to me and she was going to say something but I moved my hand around hers so I was holding it. She closed her mouth again.

—I’m sorry Petra.

Petra looked down at my hand around hers and then slowly she moved her other hand up to touch the back of mine with the tips of her fingers. Her rings sparkled orange in the light of the flames coming in off the street. Her face changed then and she looked up from our hands into my eyes.

—Oh Jesus Christ, she said. What if you’re right?

Jasper laughed and leaned back in his chair.

—It wouldn’t bother Helmut Lang, he said. He’s moved on you see.

—Shut up Jasper, said Petra. What if she’s right about May Day?

Jasper shook his head.

—Don’t even go there, he said. I know what you’re thinking.

Petra came forward and leaned into the table and the light from the candles made black shadows where her eyes should of been.

—Listen Jasper, she said. You should do this story.

—Petra, said Jasper. You don’t believe this story. Remember?

—Well I’m beginning to change my mind, said Petra. If it’s true it’s the biggest scoop since the Kelly thing. Bring it in and you’ll be back in favour before you can blink.

—Darling, said Jasper. You’re a fashion journalist. Don’t tell me what’s news and what’s not. Stick to hemlines and fanny waxing.

—Fuck you, said Petra. Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t do this story.

—I’ll give you 3, said Jasper. 1 the untold damage it would do to national security. 2 the fact that I’ve been fucking the principal source and 3 now let me see. Oooh yes. That pesky libel thingy that says you oughtn’t to print wild accusations in the absence of any proof. Yeah. Apart from all that this story would be a great career move for me.

—Fuck you, said Petra.

—Not tonight darling, said Jasper. I’m powdering my nose.

He took a paper wrap out of his trouser pocket and opened it up on the table.

—Look at you, said Petra. You’re a fucking disgrace. We work on a national newspaper Jasper. We’re 2 of the very few people in this country with the power to change things. If people like us won’t do the right thing with the truth what hope is there for civilisation?

Jasper laughed and shoved a rolled-up tenner into his nostril. He pointed at himself with both thumbs.

—Petra darling, he said. Do I look like the guardian of Western civilisation to you?

He grinned at Petra and a new orange flash from the window lit up his face. Outside on the street the kids had torched another motor. I’d been forgotten about. I might as well not of been there for all anyone cared. I just sat back down good as gold at the table thinking to myself Oh dear I wish my boy was here now I wish I could just hold him for one minute and smell that lovely smell of his hair and hear him say MUMMY WHY ARE YOU CRYING? and say back to him Mummy’s not crying darling Mummy’s fine she’s just got something in her eye. I looked at Petra being furious because Jasper wouldn’t do what she said and I looked at Jasper sticking powder up his nose while the cars burned in the street outside and I think that might of been the very first time Osama that I began to see your point.

The autumn dragged on Osama with filthy grey skies and rain every day. I moved back to the Wellington Estate for good once Jasper and Petra starting fighting about the newspaper story I couldn’t handle them banging away at each other it made me nervous. I went back to work on account of I needed the money but sometimes when Terence Butcher wasn’t looking I spat in his tea.

Out in the streets they started to take down some of the roadblocks and if you weren’t concentrating you might of thought things were slowly getting back to normal again. People didn’t talk much about May Day any more. It was like the rain was washing the memories down the drains along with the old ciggie butts and the run-over conkers.

—Oh come on, said Terence Butcher. Don’t look at me like that. It’s been weeks. Aren’t you ever going to forgive me?

—Depends. Are you ever going to bring my husband and my boy back?

I put his tea down on his desk and not too careful either. Some of it slopped out on his files I didn’t care. I was thinking Ha you should of thought of that Terence Butcher shouldn’t you when you left my chaps to burn.

—I did what I thought was best, said Terence. I thought you’d understand.

—Yeah well you thought wrong didn’t you. You should of told me straight away. I wouldn’t of come near you I’d never of let you touch me you should be ashamed.

—I’m not ashamed, he said. It was beautiful.

He spun round in his chair and looked up at me. I was still standing there in front of his desk my whole body was trembling. He smiled a little sad smile.

—Listen to me, he said. Tired old copper going on about beauty. What would I know about it eh?

I didn’t say anything Osama I mean what would you or me know about it either?

—But it was beautiful, said Terence. When we were up in the clouds alone. Me and you and none of the reasons why not. No job. No Tessa. No May Day. No London. It was beautiful.

—It was a bloody lie.

—Yes, said Terence. That’s when I saw I had to tell you. I couldn’t have that secret between us. Not if we were going to have something together.

—Oh Terence we were never going to have something together. Not after what you did to my chaps. You should of known that. You should of never got us started I mean what the hell were you THINKING?

—I’m sorry, he said. I know. I know. I hadn’t been sleeping. I wasn’t rational. I thought if we loved each other that would be enough.

—Love. You said love.

—Yes. I’m sorry. But that’s how I feel.

I looked right at him. His eyes were exactly the same grey as the clouds behind him it looked like someone had put 2 gloomy holes right through his head.

—Listen Terence Butcher I make your tea and I do your filing and that’s all it is now right? Don’t you ever get that confused with love.

He looked at me for a very long time and then he looked down at his desk. It was an empty desk apart from his 3 phones. The photo of his wife and kids was gone I suppose he might of had it by his bed in the Travelodge.

It was a long afternoon after that and when 5 o’clock came I just put on my anorak and walked home head down in the gloom. In England on a cloudy day in autumn it gets dark by 4 in the afternoon. A few weeks of that Osama and believe me you start to feel like topping yourself. A lot of poor bastards do. I swear to god Osama the English climate’s done in more people than you ever have. If you tried living here for just 10 days in October your Kalashnikov would rust and your sandals would rot and your GP would stick you on Prozac and you couldn’t hate us any more you’d just feel ever so sorry for us instead.

When I got back home to the Wellington Estate there was a power cut again so I took a couple of candles into the bathroom and ran myself a bath and lay in it and talked with my boy till the water went cold and it was time to go to bed. My boy sat on the edge of the bath. He liked the tap end best. He dangled his feet in the water and we had the nicest conversation me and him.

I got out of the bath and took my pink dressing gown off the hook next to my husband’s black one. I still hadn’t slung it out yet I mean it’s never the right moment is it? I put on my dressing gown and wrapped a towel round my hair and my boy followed me into the kitchen making little wet boy footprints on the lino. We nattered away in the kitchen for a bit while I had a couple of glasses of vodka and a couple of some new pills the doctor put me on it was all very nice. After a while my boy went a bit quiet. I looked up from my glass and his face was very pale and I was about to say Right then bedtime for you young man but someone started banging on the front door. I turned round to check the bolt was on and when I turned back my boy was gone so I thought I might as well answer it.

I took one of the candles with me into the hallway and I didn’t put the chain on before I opened the front door I mean I didn’t much care what happened any more. It was Jasper Black standing there he came straight in he was all overexcited.

—Can you come over? he said. Petra’s pregnant.

I just looked at him he wasn’t making sense.

—Pregnant you say?

—Yes, he said. Can you come immediately?

—Um well Jasper I don’t know if Mummy ever explained girls’ things to you but when a woman is pregnant there isn’t any hurry I mean just the opposite really you have to wait about 9 months while the baby gets bigger in Mummy’s tummy first.

—Petra’s frantic, said Jasper. I think you might be able to calm her down.

—Listen Jasper it wouldn’t surprise me if Petra was born frantic and I hate to be the one to tell you this but if she’s pregnant then it’s only going to make her worse so you might as well get used to it eh? I mean why don’t you go and calm her down yourself?

—She’s asking for you, he said.

—Yeah well she can’t have me can she? It’s a bit late for all that. I mean I haven’t heard a squeak out of either of you for weeks and I can’t say I’ve missed you.

Jasper blinked.

—Christ, he said. This isn’t like you. Bitter.

—Yeah well what did you expect? I wasn’t put on this earth for your benefit Jasper Black I’m not some CD you can forget about down the back of a drawer and pull it out when it suits you and it still sounds just the same.

I turned and walked away from him to the kitchen. I didn’t actually make it through the kitchen door on the first go. I banged into the door frame and I had to back up and have another go like something off Robot Wars on the telly.

—Have you been drinking? said Jasper.

—Nah. They moved the door. You been doing coke?

—No, said Jasper Black. Haven’t touched it since we found out Petra was pregnant. 3 days.

I sat down at the kitchen table and Jasper came in and sat down opposite. It was hard to say in the candlelight but he looked thinner and his hands were shaking a bit.

—Drink? I said.

—Yes alright.

I poured him a big vodka it was the end of the bottle. He drank it down like it was nothing. The lights flickered on for half a minute and then they went off again and it was just the candles glowing in the middle of the kitchen table and every now and then a white flash through the window from the helicopter searchlights. I never even heard the choppers any more I was used to them now. We sat there looking at each other.

—You the father you reckon?

—Yes, said Jasper. Yes I think so.

—Good for you.

—Thanks.

More silence.

—She sick in the mornings is she?

—Yes, said Jasper. In the mornings she’s sick and moody. In the evenings she’s tired and moody. In between times she’s moody and off at work. Thank god.

—Tell her to try a teaspoon of cider vinegar after meals.

—Alright, said Jasper.

—And tell her it helps to go for a walk in the evenings before bed.

—I will, he said.

—And tell her to. Tell her to. Oh bollocks to it I’ll come over and tell her myself.

Jasper grinned and I stood up from the table and went into the bedroom and took off my dressing gown and put on my grey trackie bottoms and a grey Nike T-shirt. I mean maybe Petra was right maybe Helmut Lang had moved on but we never saw much of him down Barnet Grove anyway.

When we were leaving the flat I shouted at my boy to be good and I slammed the front door behind us. Jasper gave me a look.

Over at Jasper and Petra’s place they were having the same power cut we were having in the Wellington Estate I mean you can talk as posh as you like it doesn’t bother electricity. Petra was sitting on the floor in front of their sofa and she looked the way you’d love us all to look Osama. Black-eyed. Hollow. Knackered.

I knelt down and I put my hand on her tummy like you do even though there wasn’t anything to feel yet. I closed my eyes and I did try so hard to feel happy for her. I mean you’re meant to feel pleased aren’t you? You’re supposed to pretend those babies are coming into a world where no one’s trying to burn them. That’s the trick that lets you be pleased they’re going to be born. That’s the trick that lets you stop worrying and start knitting tiny boots isn’t it?

Well I tried ever so hard but it wasn’t any good I just couldn’t do that trick any more. With my eyes closed I saw the unborn life in Petra’s tummy. I felt like you knew its name before it was even born Osama. The child was doomed it floated there very lonely in the dark. It didn’t know London yet but you could tell it was already nervous. It heard its mum’s heart beating and each beat made it flinch like a nail bomb going off in the distance. Its little fists were closed tight and the umbilical cord was pumping it full of petrol. It was an incendiary child and when it dreamed it dreamed of sparks. I saw its face and it was my dead boy’s face. It spoke with my dead boy’s voice. Mummy it said. Mummy they knew. MUMMY THEY KNEW. I stood up very quick and went over to the end of the sofa and looked down at the floor till I got my head together.

—How you feeling?

—Awful, said Petra. I’m just so bloody tired all the time.

—Yeah well you better get used to it. When your baby’s a toddler you’ll think these were the good old days.

—Oh thanks, said Petra. Very encouraging.

—Sorry. Don’t listen to me. Honestly. It’s all worth it.

Petra just sat there and stared at me. It went on too long I didn’t know what to do with myself.

—Listen is there anything I can do to help?

—Yes, said Petra. You can get us some hard evidence that the authorities knew about May Day before it happened.

I looked at her.

—Actually what I meant was I’ve got a book on pregnancy if you want and lots of maternity clothes I don’t know if they’d be your style but they’re all clean and folded and then for when the baby comes I can give you all the bottles and sterilisers and that sort of thing I mean it’s all up in the flat in boxes you’re welcome to it.

—An audio tape would do, said Petra. But a video would be better. Get your little policeman to confess to you again. It has to be something we can show as evidence.

Jasper stepped right up to Petra and yanked her up to her feet and talked right into her face.

—Petra, he said. Bloody well stop it. We discussed this and you promised not to do it like this. I’d never have got her over if I’d known you were going to do this.

—Ha, said Petra. If you were the kind of father who did a little less coke and a little more investigative journalism then maybe I wouldn’t have to do this.

—That’s not fair, said Jasper.

—Fuck fair, said Petra.

She turned to me. I was leaning hard on the arm of the sofa. My brain felt like the icing on those buns all soft and pink from the booze and the pills.

—Jasper and I have had a little talk, said Petra. We think it might be best if I took the story to the paper. After all Jasper’s a bit low on credibility right now. I want you to help me do the story.

—Why?

Petra shrugged.

—Because Jasper’s too craven to do it. Because they’ll promote me if I do it.

—I don’t mean why do you want to do the story I mean why should I help you?

Petra didn’t stop for a second.

—Because I’ll pay you, she said. Or rather the paper will. For your collaboration. It could change your life. It could be as much as 50K.

—Nah.

—100K even.

—Petra. Listen. You’re pregnant. It’s always a shock. Why don’t you get some rest and we’ll pretend this never happened?

—Oh come on, said Petra. Don’t tell me a woman in your position can turn down that kind of money.

—Listen Petra a woman in my position could wallpaper her flat with money it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s all just pictures of the queen to me. Without my boy to spend it on that’s all your precious money is Petra. Crappy little pictures of the queen.

I turned to go but Jasper took hold of my arm very gentle.

—Then you should do it for yourself, he said.

—You what?

Jasper put his mouth close to my ear and spoke very soft.

—You still see your boy don’t you? he said.

I looked at him I shook my head I made these big eyes that said WHO? ME? I mean I was in a state Osama I’ll give you that but I wasn’t mad enough to forget they lock you up when you start seeing people they can’t.

—It’s alright, said Jasper. I understand. I see things too since May Day. It’s normal. It’s called post-traumatic shock.

I shook my head again I was terrified. I whispered back to Jasper.

—Nah. I’m fine honestly don’t worry about me I’m right as rain.

—In your kitchen just now, said Jasper. I saw the way your eyes flicked over into the corner of the room while we talked. And then when we left you actually told him to be good.

—What are you saying to her? said Petra.

—You be quiet please Petra, said Jasper.

He leaned closer to my ear.

—You’re going to keep on having these troubles, he said. Until you do something to lay the boy to rest.

—I can’t lay him to rest I don’t have his body there’s just his teeth and I’m not going to bury his little teeth am I? I mean there isn’t a grave small enough.

—So do this thing Petra’s asking you for, said Jasper. But don’t do it for her. Do it for you. It’ll help.

—Why?

—Because you need to get the truth out, said Jasper. Because if you keep it inside it’s going to finish you off. I mean look at yourself.

I looked back at Jasper staring into my eyes very close and I looked at Petra watching me over his shoulder and I looked at my boy lying on his tummy trying to fish an ashtray or something out from under their coffee table. I didn’t know what to think I was holding on to my head with both hands to stop it falling apart. I stepped back from Jasper I went to the corner of the room farthest from them both.

—I don’t know. I don’t effing well know do I? Why doesn’t this thing ever just stop? Why won’t you two ever leave me in peace?

—Because you know you have to do this, said Jasper. It’s vital for you and it’s vital for the country.

—Oh you care about the country suddenly do you?

Jasper shrugged.

—I’m going to be a father, he said. It changes everything. I don’t want my child to live in a place where politicians decide who dies.

I shook my head.

—I don’t know. I don’t know. What about Terence Butcher?

—What about him? said Petra.

—If I do this thing won’t he be in a lot of trouble?

—Do you even care? said Petra.

—I don’t know. I don’t know. He says he loves me.

—Loves you, said Petra. As much as you loved your boy?

—Well it’s not the same thing is it? It’s not the same thing at all.

Petra smiled and Jasper looked down at the floor.

—Ah, said Petra. Finally she gets it.

The Travelodge was near Liverpool Street and I sat in the bar waiting for Terence Butcher to come in from work. I was waiting for hours but that was alright. It was cosy and dark in the bar and they left me alone except when I asked them for drinks. I must of had 5 or 6 G&Ts and it was nice just sitting there in a bit of a fog while my boy scampered around in the lobby up to mischief I shouldn’t wonder. The girl at the reception desk was very helpful when I asked her to check if Terence Butcher was staying there and the barman was very helpful when I asked him to only serve me doubles in fact all the staff were very helpful Osama so if you ever find yourself needing to break a long journey in between massacres I reckon you could do a lot worse than a Travelodge.

It was nearly 11 when Terence Butcher finally showed up. I’d chosen a seat at one of those low tables where I could see when he came in the front entrance but I needn’t of bothered because he went straight to the bar and ordered a double Scotch. I got up and I went over to him. It wasn’t a long way but things weren’t too steady and I had to hold on to the backs of the chairs to stop the Travelodge from wobbling. I tapped Terence on the shoulder and he turned round from the bar looking tired and ill but he smiled when he saw me. It wasn’t your ordinary smile it was sort of laughing and lost at the same time like when someone makes a good joke at a funeral.

—What are you doing here? he said.

—I thought you might need tea or filing.

Terence smiled and held on to my arm like he was worried I might keel over and I suppose he did have a point.

—You shouldn’t have come, he said. Why did you?

—I’m not sure yet.

It was true Osama my head was in pieces from pills and gin I didn’t know what I was going to do. Mr. Rabbit was in my bag and he had Jasper’s video camera sewn in his tummy with this tiny lens sticking out. All I had to do was sit the little feller somewhere he could see what was going on and press RECORD and get Terence Butcher to talk. But there was a bunch of old photos in my bag too. They were of my husband and my boy and me mucking around in the flat and in Victoria Park and one of us all with ice creams on the beach at Brighton. I looked up at Terence and I held on to his arm and I giggled on account of I couldn’t work out if I was there to stitch him up or talk him through the family album.

—Are you alright? said Terence.

—Nah. Are you going to take me to bed?

—Bed? he said. Last time I checked you were never going to speak to me again.

—Yeah well I’m not promising I’ll speak in bed.

Terence laughed then and drained his Scotch and signalled at the barman for another.

—You’re drunk, he said. Maybe you should just go home.

I blinked and rocked back and forward on my pins for a second I mean I wasn’t expecting that.

—Listen Terence Butcher I’m drunk cause I’ve been waiting here 5 hours for you and I haven’t waited 5 hours so you can tell me you don’t even care.

The barman brought the new Scotch and Terence looked down into it and swirled the glass round in his hand so the ice cubes rattled. Then he looked at me and those grey eyes were flashing pink with the neon from the bar.

—I do care, he said. More than you know. That’s why I think it might be best if you just went home.

—Yeah but I want to be with you.

—No you don’t, he said. You told me so.

Terence Butcher put his hand under my chin and turned my face round very gentle so I was looking straight up in his eyes.

—There, he said. Look right at me and tell me you don’t see a murderer.

I opened my mouth but I couldn’t say anything all I could see was fire in his eyes from all those neon reflections and I gasped.

—There, he said. Tell me it wouldn’t always be like that. Over coffee. Over drinks. Every night in the bathroom mirror brushing our teeth.

My legs went to rubber and I could feel the strength of him under his shirt and I knew if I kept hold of him I’d do us both wrong but I knew if I let go I’d fall down flat on the floor.

—Oh I don’t know Terence I’m lost. Please won’t you just hold me I’m completely lost.

There’s a lot of things we’ve got in common these days Osama but here’s one thing you’ll never do. I bet you’ll never let yourself be done in a Travelodge by the man who left your chaps to die. I bit my lip in case the pain would take my mind off the shivers that were racing up my back. I bit until the blood came but it wasn’t any use. In my head I was hating Terence but my body was still in love. I wanted to say I hate you you vicious lying coward YOU KNEW but you still left my chaps to die. YOU KNEW in that time we had together in the clouds. For months and months YOU KNEW. I was trying to make my mouth say all that Osama I swear to you but all that came out was moans.

I gasped and I twisted my head on the pillow and my eyes were rolling back in my head and then nothing. I lay on the bed with Terence on top of me and the flames flickered out in his eyes and there was nothing. Just grey smoke smouldering and my boy sitting on the edge of the empty bath next door and kicking his heels on the enamel bang bang bang.

Afterwards I let Terence lie inside me for a little while. Nice and quiet with his head on my shoulder while I stroked the back of his neck. Mr. Rabbit sitting watching us from the chair beside my bag.

—Lovely Terence. I missed you so much.

—Mmm, he said.

Silence.

—Terence. I’ve been thinking. If you had another chance to decide what to do on May Day. Would you make the same choice again?

Terence sighed and I felt his muscles go all tight again.

—Do you really want to think about it now? he said.

—I have to know.

Terence Butcher pulled out of me and rolled on his back. He reached over for his Marlboro Reds and he lit one and I lit one too.

—It’s hard to say if I’d do the same again, he said. There were so many factors.

—Tell me all about it.

He nodded and gave a little smile and took a drag of his ciggie and blew smoke out very slowly up towards the ceiling. He turned towards me and gave me such a sad look then. I think he knew what was going on. He looked at me like our old dog looked at me and my husband the day we reckoned the kindest thing we could do for him was give him his favourite food and wrap him up in his favourite blanket and drive him one last time to the vet in the boot of our old Astra.

—Do I have to? he said.

I couldn’t look at him and my voice came out very quiet.

—I have to.

Terence Butcher nodded. Then he lit another ciggie and sat up in the bed and told me everything very slow and careful and clear like his voice was typed in capital letters. When he’d finished he didn’t even look at me he just lay down and slept like I reckon he hadn’t slept since May Day and there was this strange expression on his face while he slept very sad and calm like the stone men you see in churchyards.

It was 5 a.m. when I left it was still dark. The courier was waiting outside the Travelodge just like Jasper and Petra said he would be. I gave him Mr. Rabbit with his camera inside and the courier got on his bike and I got on the number 23 bus. I got off at Piccadilly Circus and I checked in at the Golden Square Hotel. I chose it because I saw it once when I took my boy to the Trocadero and I thought it looked quite fancy. Actually it’s a filthy place Osama but it is cheap. I stayed there for 4 days just waiting for Sunday and no one knew where I was not even Petra and Jasper. Jasper said it’d be best that way.

I stayed in my room and ate crisps and sandwiches and drank the rusty water from the hand basin. It was weird just stuck there doing nothing. Knowing I could never go back to Scotland Yard again. I tried to sleep as much as I could so I didn’t have to think about it all. Every day I dozed on the bed and watched flames licking up the wallpaper and every night I lay awake listening to the backpackers laughing and shouting in the corridor. In the early mornings when there wasn’t anyone about to watch I crept out of the room and walked through the piles of cold puke to the bathroom at the end of the hall. It was a lonely 4 days Osama but I didn’t mind because after a while my boy turned up and we had a good talk.

—Mummy, he said. Where are we?

—We’re in a hotel darling.

—Why are we? he said.

—We’re hiding.

My boy’s eyes went wide.

—Why? he said.

—Because it’s safest that way. Mummy helped Petra to write a story for the newspaper where she works. The story is going to be published on Sunday. When that story comes out it’s going to be very bad for the men that hurt you and Daddy. Lots of people are going to want to talk to your mum.

—So we’re hiding! he said.

I smiled at my boy. It was so nice to have him there. He was beautiful with his bright ginger hair and his stubby little teeth. There wasn’t a scratch on him. I said he could eat all the crisps he wanted but he wasn’t very hungry.

On Sunday morning very early I checked out of the hotel and walked out onto Piccadilly Circus. I had one of those travelling suitcases on wheels that Petra lent me. I was dragging it behind me with the boy riding on top of it. He looked up at the huge electric billboards with his eyes all wide and his mouth open and his breath steaming in the cold morning air. The poor chap was only wearing his jeans and his Arsenal away shirt.

—Aren’t you cold? Don’t you want Mummy to find you a jumper?

The boy shook his head. He was too excited to be cold and I was just the same. At the first newsagent’s I found we were going to buy our copy of the Sunday Telegraph. I couldn’t wait to see our story splashed across that big front page under those nice gothic letters. I was so nervous I had the shakes and my tummy was going mad. I wondered what the headline was going to be. How I’d of done it was I’d of had a huge photo of that vicious tower of smoke above the Emirates Stadium with just 2 words over the top THEY KNEW. That’s how I’d of done it but then what would I know? Like I say Osama we always had the Sun in my family.

There were a few other people walking round Piccadilly Circus. I watched everyone’s faces to see if they’d heard the news yet but none of them looked like they had. We walked past a group of girls giggling on their way home from the clubs. Then there was a pair of tourists videoing the big electric Coca-Cola sign and the huge barrage balloon floating above with the faces of the dead Arsenal players on it. Then we went past a traffic warden. He looked more like he would of known what was going on.

—Morning. You heard the news yet?

The traffic warden stared at me.

—What? he said.

—About May Day.

—What about it? he said.

—You haven’t seen the papers yet?

—No, he said. What’s in them?

—They knew. They knew May Day was going to happen but they didn’t do anything to stop it.

The traffic warden looked at me for a moment with my Adidas trackies and my suitcase and then he shook his head and smiled.

—You look after yourself alright love? he said.

—I’m not bonkers or anything. It’s the truth.

—Of course it is, he said. You take care now alright?

The traffic warden turned away and walked off towards Regent Street. My boy looked up at me.

—That man didn’t believe you Mummy, he said.

—No love. You can’t blame him. He will when he has a sit-down with the papers.

I smiled at him and we headed off up into Soho. On Warwick Street I took a deep breath and I went into a newsagent’s.

I stood there looking at the front page of the Sunday Telegraph for quite a while. There was something wrong with it you see Osama. The picture on the front was a row of houses all with For Sale signs on them. The headline was HOUSE PRICES SLUMP AS BUYERS FEEL THE PINCH. I shook my head. I didn’t see what that had to do with May Day. I checked the date on the top of the paper. Then I opened it up and looked on every page. Nothing about May Day. I felt sick. I kept wishing I’d wake up and still be in the hotel. Only once I’d started thinking like that I thought if this really was a nightmare then I might as well wake up in bed with my husband before May Day ever happened. When I thought about my husband I wanted to scream and I started to pull all the other papers off the racks to see what was in them. They were all the same. It was all HOUSE PRICES PLUMMET except for the Sunday Mirror. The Sunday Mirror said MILLIONS IN OUR LIFE-CHANGING GIVEAWAY and it had a photo of a family on the front page lounging around on deck chairs by a pool. There was a mum and a dad in the photo and it looked like they’d spent some of their MILLIONS on fancy cocktails and instead of faces they had shiny silver foil so you could see your own face there. THIS COULD BY YOU IN THE MIRROR the paper said and there was a little boy with ginger hair larking about in the pool. I suppose he must have been about 4 years and 3 months old. I threw the Sunday Mirror down on the floor and I screamed and the newsagent came out from behind his counter.

—Oi darling, he said. You pay for them papers or you put them back.

I fell on my knees and looked at the headlines laid out on the floor all around me and I just went off on one I don’t know if I was screaming or laughing.

—Oh for fuck’s sake, said the newsagent. This is a newsagent’s not a nuthouse. Go on piss off.

I stood up and ran out of the shop dragging my suitcase behind me. My boy was hanging on for dear life while the suitcase banged up and down on the pavement.

—Mummy! he shouted. What’s wrong?

I stopped running and looked at my boy and then I put my hands up to my mouth and screamed. It was his face you see Osama. His lovely ginger hair was burned to thick black tar dripping down his face. His skin was raw with burns and one of his eyes was boiled white as an egg. I screamed again and left the suitcase where it was and ran up Warwick Street with my boy running after me and all the cardboard boxes and the homeless in their cheap nylon sleeping bags going up in flames as he brushed past them.

I stopped at the first phone box I came to and jammed 30p in the slot and called Jasper and Petra’s flat but it was just the answering machine and the phone ate my money. Both their mobiles were off too. I tried again and again all through that day to call Jasper and Petra. I spent all the money I had in phones. I should of still had the wad of cash Petra and Jasper gave me only that all went on drinks in the Travelodge and the Regent Palace Hotel. They told me not to use my bank card so that was still under my mattress. I was too scared to go back to Bethnal Green till I knew what was going on so I just wandered round Soho. You wouldn’t like Soho Osama I reckon there can’t be one single place in it that isn’t forbidden by your prophets for one thing or another except maybe Soho Square and the trouble with that is it gets pretty crowded. It was the longest day.

By the time it got dark I was hungry and my boy was so starving he’d given up howling and he was just sitting there on the pavement very quiet and pale. Even the flames on him were starved. It was just his fingertips burning with flickering little flames like candles. I had to get some food for him but I was skint. So we just sat there for a while in some doorway or other getting hungrier and colder and just hoping something would turn up. But nothing did turn up and when my boy started to shiver I started to beg. I wonder if you know what that felt like Osama to have my poor boy’s eyes on me while he watched his mummy kneel down on the pavement on Wardour Street with a McDonald’s cup in front of her to beg spare change off the old pervs coming out of the sex shops.

People must of taken pity because I scraped together a fiver. I spent it on a Happy Meal for my boy and an extra-large Fanta and we sat at a table in the corner of McDonald’s. My boy was sulking and I couldn’t blame him Osama I mean no boy should have to see his mum on the cadge like that. He wouldn’t touch his Happy Meal and in the end I had to eat it for him.

We spent the night in a doorway in Berwick Street. I found a big sheet of bubble wrap and tucked it round us but it didn’t do any good against the cold. I didn’t sleep much. My boy sparked and smouldered all night but somehow there wasn’t any heat coming off him.

In that doorway tucked up in my bubble wrap I had a dream where the terror was over. In my dream Osama I wrote you this letter and you read it and then you went off behind a rock where your men couldn’t see you and you cried and you wished you hadn’t killed my boy. It made you too sad now. You didn’t feel angry any more you just felt very tired. I wrote to the others too Osama like I promised you at the beginning. I wrote to the president and the prime minister and now they felt sick and tired too. None of you wanted any more small boys to die 4 years and 3 months old who still slept with their rabbit whose name was Mr. Rabbit. So all you men just told your people to pack it in and go home. And that was it. It was over. There was just a load of old foxholes filling up with rain and empty basements with the jihad graffiti slowly going black with mildew. There were a million old chewing gum wrappers and fag butts where the terror used to be.

They untied all the balloons in the Shield of Hope and let them float away. I held on to the cable of my boy’s balloon and I hung there under his smiling face getting carried higher and higher in the night sky. It was lovely looking down on London shrinking till it was just a tiny spark in the darkness. It looked like all you had to do was spit and you could of put the whole city out. In my dream I smiled and I wondered where my boy would carry me. We floated very high above the world and the moon was very bright and I saw it all. All the rivers and the mountains were lit up with silver and the forests were full of creatures hunting and hiding and thinking nothing much. There was a warm wind pushing us and we swooped down low into the valleys and there were little villages there where the windows were lit up and all the colours glowed and you could smell food cooking. And from inside all the houses you heard mums singing their children to sleep and their love was stronger than bombs.

When I woke up it was raining and I sat in that doorway just shivering. I watched everyone in the Monday morning rush to work I was thinking how last Monday I’d been one of them. After I’d watched for a bit I got up and walked to a phone box. My boy followed along after me with the tarmac of the road melting under his feet.

I stuck my last coins into the phone box and dialled Jasper’s mobile. It was the longest time before he picked up.

—Jasper! It’s me. What’s going on? Can I come back to the flat yet?

—Wouldn’t be wise, said Jasper. There are people looking for you.

—I looked at the paper. I looked at all the papers. Where’s our story?

—Our story is nowhere, he said. Our story is dead. Petra killed it.

—What do you mean?

—Petra claims she changed her mind, said Jasper. She called me from the office late on Saturday night. Said she no longer believed the story was in the national interest. Bless. As if Petra’s ever given a fuck about the national interest.

—Look Jasper I haven’t got much time my money’s going to run out. If Petra doesn’t want to go with the story then you’ll just have to do it yourself.

—No, said Jasper. I’ll tell you what’s happened. The paper’s sold out to the government and Petra’s sold out to the paper. Now the government has your videotape and the paper has first dibs on the next big Downing Street leak. God knows what deal Petra’s cut for herself. I’m guessing she’ll come back from maternity leave as deputy editor. Everyone’s a winner. Oh. Except you. And me. And the British public of course. You do have to hand it to Petra Sutherland. She’s fucked an entire nation.

I couldn’t get my head round it. I leaned back on the wall of the telephone kiosk and watched the glass melting where my boy was pressing his nose against it.

—Are you still there? said Jasper.

—Yeah. What happens now?

—Oh, said Jasper. Now the fun really starts. I get sacked from the paper and blacklisted as a drug addict. No one else hires me. Petra moves to one of her family’s charming homes in Primrose Hill and has my baby and gets a court order barring me from seeing it. I fester. My cocaine dealer and my local off-licence garner a modest living from me for a short period of time. One day my neighbours ring up to complain about a nasty smell and the fire brigade turn up to remove my rotting corpse from the flat.

—You’re high aren’t you?

—Very very high sweetness, said Jasper. It’s 8 in the morning and good old Jasper Black is high as a motherfucking kite.

—I need to come back Jasper. I need my bank card and my clothes. Who are these people looking for me? What do they want?

—Nothing good, said Jasper. But maybe nothing too bad either. You’re small fry. They’ll probably just threaten you. Tell you what’ll happen if you try taking the story elsewhere. If it’s any consolation anything they can do to you and me is small beer compared to what they’ll do to Terence Butcher. They’ll chain that poor fucker down a well so deep you could throw a packet of fags down it and he still wouldn’t have anything to smoke till Christmas.

—Listen Jasper we’ve got to be quick this phone’s flashing at me. What are you going to do now?

Jasper laughed down the phone. It was a sharp and vicious laugh and it hurt my ear through the receiver.

—I’m going to do what any self-respecting Englishman would do in my position, he said. I’m going to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

—Please Jasper this isn’t the time to muck about I—

—Want to watch? he said. Meet me in an hour on Parliament Square. Do you want me to bring your—

The phone went dead.

I didn’t have the bus fare so I walked down to Westminster. It was only a couple of miles. It was raining a bit and the sky was so black and heavy it gave you a headache but it felt good to be going somewhere finally. I couldn’t wait to see Jasper even if he was off his rocker. My boy was feeling better too. When we walked through Trafalgar Square he laughed and chased the pigeons and singed their wet tail feathers with his hands.

Jasper got to Parliament Square before me. He was sitting on a pink suitcase under the big black statue of Churchill. There was a little dry patch there sheltered from the drizzle. I ran across the road and Jasper stood up and we hugged for a long time while the traffic roared past on the wet roads. He smelled of whisky. After a bit we stepped apart and looked at each other. Jasper got out his Camel Lights and we both lit one and I stood there smoking with my hand shaking like a sewing machine.

—You look like fucking shit, said Jasper.

—Thanks.

—So, said Jasper. Petra stitched us up.

I shrugged.

—Yeah.

—I’ll miss her you know, said Jasper. I’m surprised. What with me being heartless and everything.

—You’ve always been kind to me.

—Not always, said Jasper. I’ve always fancied you but don’t mistake it for kindness.

I smiled at him.

—I didn’t bring your bank card, he said.

—Oh.

—I brought you my bank card instead, he said. I won’t be needing it. Pin number’s scratched into the back of it. It’s good for a few grand. Not a king’s ransom but it should get you back on your feet.

He reached in his pocket and handed me his card. I just stared at him.

—What’s going on?

—I’m not ecstatic with how I’ve lived my life, he said. I was born with a certain amount of talent and I’ve snorted it away. I let the system absorb me. But even a man like me has a point beyond which his pride will not allow him to go. I will not let them screw us like this. I’ve decided to make a stand.

He looked down at the suitcase by our feet.

—See this? he said. This is what the authorities are scared shitless of. This is six sticks of dynamite packed around a jam jar full of Strontium-90 and Caesium-137 painstakingly stolen from hospitals and factories across the Middle East by Al Qaeda operatives.

—No it isn’t Jasper. It’s Petra’s Louis Vuitton suitcase.

—You know that, said Jasper. And I know that. But as far as the rest of the world is concerned it’s a dirty bomb. If this thing goes off the whole of Westminster will glow in the dark until well into the next ice age. I’m about to call the police and tell them. And they’ll believe me because I’ll use the code word the May Day cell used. The one Terence told you about in your little pillow chat. And as soon as I get off the phone with the police I’ll call the BBC. That should get everyone’s attention.

—You’re off your nut. What do you want to do all that for?

—I’ll threaten to set off my nasty little bomb unless they bring me a camera crew. And then on live unexpurgated TV I’ll tell the world what really happened on May Day.

—No Jasper. Please no. You know what they’ll do to you.

—Oh yes, said Jasper. I’m hoping they kill me outright. I’ve never been much tempted by prison.

I stepped up close to Jasper and put my hand on his cheek.

—Why are you really doing this?

Jasper grinned.

—Well, he said. Would you believe me if I said I think you’ve been through enough and you deserve some kind of justice?

—No.

—No, said Jasper. Must be your tits then.

I started laughing then and so did he. It must of been on account of he was on coke and I’d had no sleep but we were in hysterics.

—Oh Jasper. We’re fucked aren’t we?

—Oooh yes, he said. Petra’s really done a number on us. We’re as fucked as it’s possible for two individuals to be in Great Britain at the start of the 21st century. We have finally done it. We have achieved terminal fuckedocity.

He hugged me. We were having a right old time of it there under good old Winston Churchill with the morning rush hour roaring on all round us but it didn’t last long because soon Jasper stopped laughing. He reached down and unzipped the suitcase. It wasn’t a dirty bomb in there it was Mr. Rabbit.

—Here, he said. I thought you’d want him back. Take care of him now won’t you?

Seeing Mr. Rabbit reminded me it was all real what was happening to us. The rain felt cold again and I shivered.

—Jasper. That’s enough silliness now. Let’s just get out of here. Let’s disappear. We’ll get on a train and just go.

—Where to? said Jasper.

—I don’t know. Anywhere that isn’t London.

Jasper stroked my cheek.

—Everywhere is London, he said. For us. Don’t you see? We are London. Anywhere we could go you’d always be grieving and I’d always be. Well.

—What?

Jasper looked down at the rainy pavement and the pigeon shit and the old black discs of chewing gum.

—Disappointed, he said.

The roar of the traffic was quieter now. Rush hour was nearly over. Anyone who had work to go to was either there already or hoping their boss wasn’t. I reached up and kissed Jasper very quick on the mouth.

—Jasper?

—Yes? he said.

—My boy would of liked you.

—Go on, he said. You’d better get out of here.

Then he got out his mobile and dialled the Metropolitan Police. I walked off down St. Margaret Street and I didn’t look back.

Jasper Black never did get to say his piece on camera and I never saw him again except for the TV pictures of that moment when he’s climbed up with that silly pink suitcase onto the statue of Churchill and the police sharpshooter gets him in the back. I expect you’ve seen those pictures too Osama they’re pretty famous. It’s the way that great big smile comes over his face as he’s falling.

I hadn’t got far when the panic started. I don’t blame people for panicking with the telly reporting a dirty bomb in Parliament Square. If I’d been them I’d of legged it too. I was on Millbank halfway down the Victoria Tower Gardens when people started running out of their offices. Once it started everything happened so quick. The panic was like a living thing Osama it had a smell and a voice. The smell hit me in the guts it was the smell of bodies sweating and struggling. Then there was the horrible noise. It was grown men screaming and sirens going berserk and the crunch of cars reversing into legs and bollards and railings. It was a panic like the darkest dream and the more people ran out onto the streets the bigger the panic got like a monster made of human beings.

I lost my boy and I was running in all directions screaming and looking for him but then the crowd got too thick and I couldn’t choose my direction any more. I was in the middle of all these young blokes in office suits and they were shouting and barging everyone out of their way so I just had to run with them. Then I couldn’t keep up any more and I fell. I lay on the streaming wet tarmac and they all ran over me in their hard leather shoes. I curled up into a ball and when it was finished I got up and walked on down towards Lambeth Bridge.

When I got to the Horseferry roundabout there was this woman in a green Range Rover and there were 2 blokes in suits trying to take it off her. She’d locked all the doors and she was gripping on to the steering wheel and screaming at these blokes to go away but you couldn’t hear her. You could just see her face white and terrified behind the windscreen like a telly with the sound turned off. These blokes wouldn’t let go of the door handles and the woman couldn’t drive off because there were people all around. The 2 blokes started rocking the Range Rover. They were screaming at the woman to let them in.

—My wife! shouted one of the blokes. My wife is stuck at home! I have to get to her. Let us in you bitch you’ve got 4 empty seats in there.

The woman collapsed over the wheel. She was holding her head in her hands and wailing at the pedals by her feet. The poor cow probably didn’t have a clue what was going on. One minute she’d been worrying about house prices and the next minute she was in the middle of a panic. Then one of the blokes lost it. I saw this expression come over his face.

—Right then, he shouted. I’ll show you you fucking bitch.

You could see the spit coming out with each word and splattering across the windscreen. He went round the back of the Range Rover and opened the petrol cap.

—Oh Jesus oh please god no.

The bloke took a Zippo out of his pocket and looked at me and there wasn’t anything in his eyes at all. He flicked the Zippo on and shoved it down the fuel pipe of the Range Rover.

—There you go bitch, he shouted.

The flames shot out of the fuel pipe in a jet and they blew the bloke off his feet. He went down with his suit in flames. It was soaked in petrol it burned white and fierce. It was shocking and the crowd pulled back and made a circle around him. You could see everyone’s faces very white against the grey rainy sky and their eyes glistened with the flames and the shadows of their noses were very sharp and black.

The other bloke who’d been trying to get into the Range Rover just ran off. I smelled my hair singeing and I pushed myself back away from the heat. The woman got out of her driver’s seat and stood with the crowd watching the man burn. The flames went 10 feet up in the air with the bloke twisting and flailing at the bottom. He was screaming for his mum and after a while he was just screaming and if you looked carefully towards the end you could see him lifting his head up and thumping it down on the tarmac again and again. He was trying to knock himself out and I hope he did.

After the longest time the bloke stopped moving and then someone shouted for us to get away before the Range Rover went up. There was another rush then and everyone was kicking and punching each other to get out of the way. I didn’t see the Range Rover go I just heard the whump and I felt the heat of it on my back. There were more screams and then I was running again. A hard black line of riot vans was keeping us from turning west up the Horseferry Road and they were laying into us with water cannons and teargas. One of the canisters exploded by my feet and then I was running blind and choking.

Every breath with teargas is like dying the shock is horrible. The crowd streamed onto Lambeth Bridge and I ran with the snot pouring down my face. Then things got worse because there were too many people for how narrow the bridge was. You could tell we weren’t all going to get across at that speed but there was no stopping on account of there must of been 10,000 people coming along behind us and there was no way they were slowing down. There was a lot of fighting and shoving and when my eyes cleared from the teargas I saw a lot of people getting trampled. The bridge got more and more jammed. I was pushed towards the edge and I started to see people going over into the river. I fought and kicked like everyone else but I was getting nearer and nearer to the edge. When I finally went over myself it was quite a relief because there was no more screaming and crushing. Just the rush of air while I fell and then the sharp cold splash of the Thames.

I went in feet first and I went very far down. I can’t swim Osama I never learned. I mean there wasn’t much call for it in the East End. We never saw more water than you needed to pour on tea bags. The Thames was cold and it was the colour of the dishwater at the end of the washing up. I remember looking up through it and seeing the light pale brown and far above and wondering if I would sink farther or float up to it. I stayed down for the longest time Osama. I wouldn’t of minded drowning but I did float up in the end. Somehow I always seem to.

When I came up I was right next to one of the pillars of the bridge and I hung on to the stones while people fell from far above me and splashed down all around. The ones that could swim took themselves off to the banks and the others were either lucky like me and found something to hang on to or else they just thrashed around for a bit and went under.

I hung on to the stones for god knows how long. There were gaps between them maybe half an inch wide. It was just enough so you could push your fingers in and wedge your toes and cling on with just your head out of the water and the current trying to suck you away. It was so cold my head hurt and my arms and legs went dead. I don’t know how I hung on but I did and I wasn’t the only one there were lots of us hanging there. A girl with curly red hair was next to me. She was wearing a pinstripe office suit and a white shirt with big collars. She wasn’t wearing a bra and you could see her tits through the wet shirt. She had a tattoo on her left tit. One of those Chinese letters. I remember thinking how strange love I’ve seen your tattoo when all the people you worked with for years probably had no idea. It’s funny the things you think about when you should be thinking about dying.

—I can’t hold on much longer, the red-haired girl said.

—Well you’re going to have to.

—I can’t, she said.

—Yes you can.

She looked right at me and her eyes were furious and exhausted.

—And how the fuck would you know? she said.

She lost her grip and I saw her go under. Her bright red hair sank last of all like a clown’s wig. I was getting so cold I couldn’t feel my fingers it felt like I was holding on with little dead sticks. There was green slime on the stones and you had to keep forcing your fingers and your toes back into the gaps and they kept on slipping out again. When I did think about dying I got so angry. The only thing going through my head was my boy screaming with Mr. Rabbit in his pocket and his Arsenal shirt in flames.

I was so angry Osama I was shouting THEY KNEW THEY KNEW and the other people were staring at me. My shouts were echoing all under the arches of the bridge. That’s when the police boat came. I suppose someone must of heard me shouting. It was only a small boat with one copper driving. I don’t suppose he realised how many of us were under there. You could see the expression on his face when his boat swung round the pillar of the bridge and he clapped eyes on us all. His mouth opened wide and he spun the wheel to turn away but it was no good. The current swept him nearer to the pillar and then the people closest to the boat grabbed hold of it and pulled themselves in. There must of been 20 of us hanging on to those stones and I reckon nearly everyone grabbed on to the boat. The only reason I didn’t was I couldn’t make my fingers let go of the bridge. The police boat started to lean under all that weight. You could see the sides of it dipping close to the water. The driver was shouting no more please no more. He had a long pole with a hook on the end of it and he jabbed it at the people who tried to get in. It was no good. People just kept climbing on and the sides of the boat went lower and lower until the water started to pour in all quiet and brown and deadly.

When the boat flipped over nearly everyone was trapped under it. I didn’t see many people come back up. Maybe just 2 or 3 and they went straight back down again. And then that was that. There was just me clinging to the arch all alone with the police boat floating upside down next to me. The underneath of it was orange and glossy and I suppose it stuck up from the water maybe 6 inches in the middle. There were waves breaking over the boat and it was starting to drift away in the current.

The roar of the crowd was getting louder from the bridge above me now and more people were starting to splash down into the water very nearby. I reckoned if I didn’t do anything now I was finished. I smashed at my hands with my forehead till my fingers let go of the bridge and I pushed myself out through the water to the upside-down boat. I was already starting to sink when I grabbed hold of it. My hands slid and I thought Right that’s it then but I was lucky because my fingers hooked round the propeller. I pulled myself right out of the water and I lay on my tummy on the underside of the boat with the Thames slopping all around me.

I drifted all day till it got dark and no one came to help me. I suppose everyone had their hands full. I was so cold it was agony. I kept my eyes closed most of the time on account of I couldn’t bear to watch all the bodies floating down the river with me.

Once when I did open my eyes it was hours later and I was going under Southwark Bridge with the sun setting very sick and yellow through the Shield of Hope. It was a seagull squawking that made me open my eyes. There was an Asian boy maybe 16 or 17 years old floating in between my boat and the sunset. The boy was 2 feet from me he was floating face up in a McDonald’s uniform. Grey polyester trousers maroon short-sleeved shirt and a maroon baseball cap. The seagull was sticking his head in under the peak of the baseball cap to eat the boy’s left eye. The boy had a name badge it said HI MY NAME IS NICK HOW CAN I HELP YOU TODAY? He had 2 out of 5 merit stars on his badge and they glistened in the sunset.

I think I fell asleep after that. It was a miserable sleep because every time I drifted off I felt my fingers lose their grip on the boat and I snapped back awake. That must of gone on for hours until I opened my eyes for good because my boat hit something and I felt a bump. It was dark and there was a huge thing looming over me. I screamed and put up my hand to push the dark thing away from me till I realised it was Tower Bridge. It was low tide and my boat was stuck on a mud bank on the north side of the river.

I let myself slide off the boat into the soft sucking mud. It was a disgrace that mud. It was as old as London and I swear it stank of diseases people forgot the names of 500 years ago. This whole city is built on plague pits and murder holes and I sank into it right up to my thighs and I puked and cried and puked again. When I couldn’t puke any more I struggled through the mud up to the stone wall of the bank. There was a ladder there made of rusty iron hoops and I pulled myself up it. I had to keep stopping. I was so cold and tired and I never was what you’d call sporty.

I came up right under the Tower of London. Everything was quiet. There was no one about at all. I’d lost my shoes in the river and I walked with my arms hugged round me and my bare feet on the cobblestones. I was so cold I was shaking like our washing machine on a spin cycle. I walked past the high walls of the Tower with the stinking mud all over me. Black rats were scuttling and squeaking around my feet. The streetlights were out and it was dark as you like. It had stopped raining. There were gaps in the clouds where you could see a new moon and the stars very bright.

I kept on walking quick as I could to get warm. I kept my head down. You couldn’t see where your feet were going and I was trying not to tread on anything nasty. The churches started chiming 10 o’clock. You could hear their big bells booming through the sound of helicopters. Those choppers were all over the sky and one came down low over the Tower. It came along the street towards me with its searchlight flashing off the wet cobbles. I pushed myself right up against the Tower wall and I watched the circle of light move over the spot where I’d been walking. It carried on down the street and then it stopped because there was a bloke caught in the beam.

This bloke was naked and his skin shone blue white in the searchlight. He was a young chap maybe 20 years old and there was blood pouring down him. The blood was coming out of his mouth and you could see why because he’d bitten his tongue half off and he was still chewing away at it. With one hand he was holding a butcher’s knife and with his other hand he was playing with himself. When he saw he was caught in the searchlight he looked right at the place where I was hiding in the darkness and he screamed with rage. Then I suppose someone in the chopper shot him. I didn’t hear the shot over the racket of the rotors but I saw the chap’s neck explode in a burst of red and I saw his body sit down on the cobblestones. He sat down very neatly on his dead bum with the one hand still holding on to his thing. The searchlight stayed steady on him till the first of the rats started to move in through the edges of the beam. Then the helicopter pulled back up into the night.

Nowadays I suppose that chap was just some lunatic who escaped in the panic but at the time I didn’t know what was going on. I thought maybe everyone had gone like him. So I went very careful after that Osama and you can’t blame me. It took me 2 whole hours to walk back to Bethnal Green. I didn’t take the streets I took the footpaths and the back alleys and I went across gardens like a fox. When I did catch a glimpse of the main streets there were soldiers standing all along them. The soldiers had machine guns and armoured cars and I even saw some tanks though god knows what they were in aid of.

There were a few other people in the alleys on the way home but this time none of them was trying to rape me or eat me thank god. I started to feel a bit better because they were just ordinary people like me in Nikes and Pumas trying to get home through the curfew. We looked at one another in the half-light from the helicopters and you could see this same expression on everyone’s face. It was the look of people who’d woken up expecting one sort of day and got something completely else.

Barnet Grove when I got there was dead quiet. No people out on account of the curfew and no lights anywhere because the electric was off. Half a dozen cars were burning and there was no one to put them out. Melted rubber from the car tyres was running down the gutter at the side of the kerb. It boiled and bubbled like the lava when a volcano erupts and it disappeared hissing down the storm drains. The stink was horrible.

My boy was waiting for me in the street outside the Wellington Estate. He waved hello to me.

—Oh my boy oh my poor little boy are you alright?

My boy grinned and climbed into one of the burning cars and sat down on the bare white-hot springs of the passenger seat. He smiled out at me while the flames licked around him and the windscreen popped and shattered.

A helicopter was hovering low at the far end of the street. It was coming our way. Its rotors whipped the orange flames of the burning cars into this roaring white. My boy looked up. He was excited. The helicopter was getting closer. You could hear its rotors over the roar of the flames. My boy twisted his head out through the melted glass of the passenger window to look at it. Chopper he said. Chopper chopper chopper. He always loved that word.

The searchlight came onto us and it stayed there. It was a bright white light like a camera flash and you couldn’t look up into it. A megaphone voice came down out of the sky. STAY WHERE YOU ARE it said. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF CURFEW. DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT MOVE. Yeah right. Like I was just going to hold still while the coppers got a good steady aim. I just legged it and ran into the Wellington Estate with my poor boy screaming LEAVE MY MUMMY ALONE up into the burning sky.

I sat down in the stairwell of our tower block to get my breath back. I sat there for half an hour shivering till I found the strength to climb the stairs to our flat.

Someone had shoved a letter under the front door and I picked it up after I let myself in. I put the letter down on the kitchen table and lit a couple of candles and they started flickering on account of there was a nasty breeze in the flat coming from the windows which were all smashed in. There was broken glass all over the floor and the smell of burning tyres coming in from the street. I went into the bathroom and turned the battery radio on. THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM it was saying. I started the bath running and I went back into the kitchen and popped 4 of my pills out of their packet and drank them down with vodka. Then I opened the letter.

My brave friend, what can I say, except let us remember the happier times? I did so enjoy choosing those clothes with you and I will never forget how stunning you were in them. Please wear them sometimes and remember I wasn’t always a bitch to you. You must loathe me for the choice I had to make. I searched my heart and decided it would not have been helpful to the country for us to run the story. The paper has been very supportive of me as I made this difficult choice and they have offered me some wonderful opportunities, which will mean security for my son when he is born. I hope you will find it in your warm heart to understand and forgive me one day. As someone who has been a mother I know you will understand that we must always do what is best for our children. Your friend, Petra Sutherland.

I burned the note and dropped the ashes on the kitchen floor. I took the candles into the bathroom. The radio was saying INITIAL ESTIMATES PUT CASUALTIES AT 100 TO 120. A HOTLINE FOR CONCERNED FRIENDS AND RELATIVES HAS BEEN—

I turned the radio off and got into the bath and lay back with my ears underwater listening to the sound of helicopters rumbling through the plumbing. I lay there till the water went cold and the candles went out.