The City's son

CHAPTER 2

‘Beth, come on,’ Pencil whispered, ‘we need to go.’

Beth studied the picture she’d sprayed on the tarmac of the playground. She flipped her aerosol over a couple of times in her hand.

‘ Beth…’

‘It’s not finished yet, Pen,’ Beth said. In the dim backwash from the lights nearby she could just make out the Pakistani girl’s fingers worrying at her headscarf. ‘Don’t be chicken.’

Pencil paced fretfully back and forth. ‘ Chicken? What are we, like ten? Have you been sniffing your own paints? I’m not kidding, B. If someone comes, this will get us expelled. ’

Beth started shaking the spray can up. ‘Pen,’ she said, ‘it’s four a.m. School’s locked up. Even the rats have given up and gone home. We covered our faces from the cameras when we jumped the wall, but there’s sod all light there anyway. There’s no one around and we can’t be ID’d so what exactly are you worried about?’ Beth kept her voice calm, but there was a taut knot of excitement in her chest. She swept her torch over the picture at her feet. Her portrait of Dr Julian Salt, Frostfield High’s Head of Maths, was coming out well, better than she’d expected, especially for a rush job in the dark. She’d got his frowning eyebrows down perfectly, and the hollow cheeks and the opaque, threatening glasses. The weeds bursting through the tarmac added to the effect, looking like unkempt nasal hair.

In fairness, Beth had also given him necrotic peeling skin and a twelve-foot-long forked tongue, so she was obviously using some artistic licence, but still…

It’s unmistakably you, you shit.

‘Beth, look!’ Pen hissed, making Beth jump.

‘What?’

‘Up there-’ Pen pointed. ‘A light…’

Beth glanced up. One of the windows in the estate overlooking the school was glowing a soft, menacing orange. She exhaled irritably. ‘It’s probably just some old biddy going for a midnight wizz.’

‘We can be seen from there,’ Pen insisted.

‘Why would anyone even care?’ Beth muttered. She turned back to the picture. Everyone in year 12 at Frostfield knew she and Salt were enemies, but that was just the usual teacher-versus-student aggro, and it wasn’t why she was here. It was the way Salt treated Pen that demanded this retribution.

She didn’t know why, but he seemed to derive this vicious delight from humiliating her best friend. Salt had put Pen in half the number of detentions he’d sentenced Beth to, but she was always on the verge of tears when she came out of them. And in Monday’s maths lesson, when Pen had asked to go to the toilet, Salt had point-blank refused. He’d gone on talking about quadratic equations, but he hadn’t taken his eyes from Pen. There’d been this smile on his face as though he was daring her to defy him — as though he knew that she couldn’t. Pen’d kept her hand raised, but after a while her arm had started to shake. When she’d doubled-over with the pain of holding it in, Beth had dragged her bodily her from her chair and bundled her out of the room. As they ran down the corridor, they’d heard the laughter start.

Afterwards, standing behind the science block, Beth had asked, ‘Why didn’t you just leave? He couldn’t have stopped you, why not just walk out?’

Pen’s face was fixed in the clown-smile that meant she was panicking inside. ‘I just…’ She’d half swallowed the words, and kept her eyes fixed on her shoes. ‘I just thought every second that went by, if I could hold on just one more second, one more, it would be okay. And I wouldn’t have to… you know.’

Cross him. Beth had filled in the end of the sentence.

She’d hugged her friend close. Beth knew there was strength in Pen, she saw it every day, but it was a strength that withstood without ever resisting. Pen could soak up the blows but she never hit back.

It was then that Beth had decided that something needed to be done. And this — this was something.

She trained the beam of her torch onto the painting and the tension in her chest was replaced by a warm glow of satisfaction. A nightmare in neon, she thought. Ugly suits you, Doc.

‘Beth Bradley,’ Pen whispered. She still sounded scared, but this time she also sounded a little reverential. ‘You are a proper grade-A nutcase.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Beth said, a smile creeping onto her face. ‘But I am really good-’

A high-pitched whine cut through the night: police sirens, fast approaching. Instinctively Beth dropped to a crouch and yanked her hood up over her short, messy hair.

‘ Bloody hell,’ Pen whispered, her voice panicky, ‘I told you they’d seen us! They must have called it in — they probably think we’re here to steal something.’

‘Like what?’ Beth muttered back. ‘The canteen’s secret recipe for mouse-turd pie? It’s not like the school’s got anything worth nicking.’

Pen tugged Beth’s sleeve. ‘Whatever — we need to get out of here.’

Beth yanked her sleeve away and dropped to both knees, frantically adding extra shading to the jaw-line. This had to be just right.

‘B, we need to go!’ Pen was hopping from foot to foot in agitation.

‘Then go,’ Beth hissed.

‘I’m not going without you.’ Pen sounded offended.

Beth didn’t look up. ‘Pen, if you don’t get running, and I mean right now, I’ll tell Leon Butler it was you who Tipp-Exed that poem on his desk.’

There was a moment’s shocked silence, then, ‘ Bitch,’ Pen breathed.

‘ Leon, my lion, I would be all your pride. And not merely in it… ’ Beth quoted in a sing-song whisper. She couldn’t help grinning as Pen took off, swearing under her breath.

Beth got her feet up under her, ready to run even while she drew. The sirens were really close now. Waaaoooh — The whine soared once more, then cut off in mid-cycle. She heard car doors open and then slam. There was a rattling on the gates behind her. The school was locked up and the cops were climbing in just like she and Pen had. Beth sprayed colour into a fat cluster of warts under one eye.

‘Oi!’

The shout sent a jolt of fear down her spine. Gross enough, she thought. She stuffed her stencils and paints back into her rucksack, snapped off the torch and ran. Heavy boots thudded on the tarmac behind her, but she didn’t look back, there was no point in showing them her face. She sprinted with her head down, the wind rushing in her ears, praying that the police behind would be laden down with stab vests and truncheons, praying she’d be faster.

She looked up, and panic clutched at her gut. The cops were chasing her into a dead end. The highest wall in the school reared in front of her. It backed onto the dense tangle of scrub and trees around the train tracks: ten smooth, unclimbable feet of it. She drove her legs harder, trying desperately to build momentum, and jumped.

Her fingers scrabbled at concrete, inches short of the top, and she fell back.

Shit.

Again she threw herself at it; again she came up short. Breathlessness and despair made her chest ache.

‘B.’ A whispered syllable. Beth whirled around. Pen was running along the base of the wall towards her, her headscarf pulled bandit-style over her mouth.

‘ I told you to go,’ Beth hissed, both furious and relieved.

‘As if. The minute I clocked this I knew you were too short for it.’ She dropped to one knee and cupped her hands.

Beth flashed her a quick grin and stepped into the boost; a moment later she dragged Pen up after her.

‘Split,’ Beth whispered as she hit the ground on the other side. She winced as pain spread over her hands; she’d landed them in a bed of nettles. ‘I’ll catch you up at the usual.’

They could hear their pursuers huffing and swearing on the other side of the wall.

One of the men panted, ‘Give us a boost!’

Pen veered to the right and Beth ran left, zigzagging between the trees. Her breath wheezed in and out, staccato in her ears. Twigs and discarded bottles crunched under her feet. A fence blocked her way, but she saw a ragged hole at the base and she dived for it, wriggling through into a looming concrete estate. She ducked down behind a rusting old car with broken windows, gasping for breath. A train rushed over a nearby bridge, angled slabs of light rocketing though the darkness. She tried to listen past its dying clatter and her own slamming heartbeat, but she could hear no sounds of pursuit.

She rooted in her backpack for a crumpled leather jacket, slipped off her hoodie and shoved it in on top of the paint cans. Adrenalin made her legs wobble so much she staggered and nearly fell.

Nice, Beth, she thought sarkily, very cool. Now if you can just stop walking like a concussed turkey you might actually get halfway down the street before the Filth pick you up.

Pulling her jacket closed, she walked on, casual as she could.

Pen was waiting at the corner of Withersham and Shakespeare Roads, where redbrick terraces with fussy front gardens stretched away on both sides. As she always did when she was nervous, Pen was checking and rechecking her reflection in her compact mirror, studying for the tiniest flaw.

Beth smiled despite herself: only Pen Khan would apply mascara for a night of criminal vandalism.

The postbox Pen was standing next to was probably the most graffiti’d piece of square footage in all of London: a rainbow-riot of obscenities, slogans, cartoon animals and grotesque monsters. It was local graffiti tradition to make a contribution to the Withersham box, so last year Pen and Beth had painted themselves on in ‘Wanted’ posters, pulling stupid faces. Those mugshots had long since been buried beneath the work of the neighbourhood’s other artists.

Beth flipped a lazy salute as she approached. Pen just stared back. ‘One of these days, Elizabeth Bradley,’ she said slowly, ‘you’re going to get me expelled. My parents will bloody disown me.’

Beth grinned at her. ‘Oh well, I’ll have done you a favour, then. You could come tagging without having to sneak around.’

‘Thanks: when I’m a homeless, starving disgrace to my family, that’s the thought that will keep me warm, I’m sure.’

Beth scuffed her trainer along the tarmac and smirked at Pen’s sarcasm. ‘So come live with me,’ she offered. ‘At least you could marry whoever you like.’

Pen’s lips thinned and tension crept into her voice. ‘And your grand total of two boyfriends makes you the world’s wedding guru how, exactly?’

‘Two more than you,’ Beth muttered, but Pen ignored the interruption.

‘My folks will help me find the right person,’ she said. ‘It’s about experience, that’s all. They know marriage, they know me, they-’

Beth interrupted, ‘Pen, they don’t even know you’re here.’

Pen flushed and looked away.

Suddenly ashamed, Beth stepped forward and hugged her best friend close. ‘Ignore me, okay?’ she murmured quietly into Pen’s headscarf. ‘I’m being a cow, I know I am. I’m just scared your folks will hitch you to some accountant with a beige suit and beige underwear and a beige bleeding soul and I’ll have to redecorate the walls of East London all by myself.’

‘Never happen,’ Pen whispered back, and Beth knew it was true. Pen would never walk away from her. She looked over Pen’s shoulder. The sky was growing light. Telephone poles stretched down the street, their cables like reins drawing in the sunrise. When day broke, this day, and every day after it, Beth knew it would break over the two of them, side by side.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

Pen gave a fragile little laugh. ‘Yeah. Only- That was all a bit bloody hairy, you know?’

‘I know,’ said Beth. ‘That was backbone, hardcore — proud of you, Pencil Khan.’ She hugged her tighter for a second, then let go. ‘We won’t get much sleep tonight, though.’ Her neck muscles were taut and her eyes wanted to close, but still she felt restless. ‘I don’t suppose I could persuade you to skip the first couple of classes with me tomorrow morning?’

Pen nibbled her lower lip carefully, not smudging her lip-gloss. ‘You don’t think that’d make us a leetle bit conspicuous?’

Obvious when you thought about it, Beth conceded, but as always, it took Pen to see it. She was like a small animal, always finding exactly the right spot for camouflage: she had an instinct for anything that wouldn’t blend in.

‘How’s about we tag the rest of the night, then?’ Beth countered. ‘Push on through — I’m feeling inspired.’

Pen had told her mum she was staying at Beth’s tonight. Beth hadn’t needed to clear anything with anyone, of course. Out here in the streets it was easy to forget that she belonged anywhere else.

Pen shook her head at her own foolishness, but she unzipped her hoodie and pulled out her own spraycan. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve got some game tonight.’

They ran west into the heart of the city, ahead of the dawn, dodging between hoardings with peeling posters and boarded-up shop windows.

Beth crouched beside a pile of broken concrete next to some roadworks and sprayed a few black lines. To most people they’d look like tar or shadows; you had to be in exactly the right spot to see the rhino, formed by paint and the edges of the concrete itself, charging out at you. Beth smiled to herself. The city’s a dangerous place if you don’t pay attention.

She’d left pieces of her mind like this all over London, and no one else knew where. No one, except maybe Pen.

She glanced over at the taller girl. When the two of them swapped secrets it wasn’t like the hostage-exchange Beth sometimes saw with other girls. Pen genuinely cared, and that meant Beth could risk enough to care, too. Pen was like a bottomless well: you could drop any number of little fears into her, knowing they would never come back to haunt you.

It started to rain: a thin, constant, soaking drizzle.

Pen wrote her poems on kerbs and inside phone boxes, romantic counterpoints to the pink-and-black business cards with their adverts for bargain-basement sex, carnal specialties listed after their names like academic degrees:

CALL KARA FOR A WICKED TIME: D/s, T/V, NO S, P OR B

‘… you might be the puzzle-piece of me,

I’ve never seen.’

‘That’s gorgeous, Pen,’ Beth murmured, reading over her shoulder.

‘Think so?’ Pen eyed the verse worriedly.

‘Yeah.’ Beth knew eight-tenths of sod-all about poetry, but Pen’s calligraphy was beautiful.

The sun slowly bleached the buildings from the colour of smoke to the colour of old bone. More and more cars passed them by.

‘We should head,’ Pen said at last, tapping her watch. She frowned, considering something, then added, ‘Maybe we should catch separate buses. We don’t normally arrive at school together — it might attract attention.’

Beth laughed. ‘Isn’t that a little paranoid?’

Pen gave her a shy, almost proud smile. ‘You know me, B. Paranoid’s where I excel.’ She led the way out of the narrow alley and they slipped into the hustling crowd.

Pen took the first bus.

Beth felt like a spy or a superhero, sliding back into her secret identity as she waited for the next.