Stitch-Up (10 page)

He took some worry beads from his overalls, and started working them across his knuckles. So he'd had his suspicions about my story all along. The clack of the beads was calming, and the way he made them dance across his knuckles mesmerised me.

He looked up when I didn't say anything. “I need to
know exactly what you're up to. The full picture, get me? Then I'll decide if I'm gonna help or not.” He turned the full force of his gaze onto me. “You're hiding something, Dash. Swear down!”

I felt myself colouring up. The flush started at the base of my neck and spread across my cheeks.
The full picture?
I still wasn't up for mentioning my parents by name. Not yet. I didn't want him to leave me, not in the middle of the night. I promised myself I'd tell him everything in the morning, but for now I settled with more partial truths.

“It's big. Being adopted is only part of it.” I spun the boat's wheel again. “My parents want me to be someone I'm not.” The flush was hot and oppressive. “I need space to think things through,” I added lamely. “Work out who I really am.”

He just kept on staring, refusing to fill the silence, to help me out.

Turning the wheel again, I saw the whole scene as he would see it –
Rich Fake in Identity Crisis Shock
. I looked at him, sprawled across the boat's wooden panelling, so confident – so comfortable in his own skin.

I shook my head. “You wouldn't understand.” My words came out soft, resigned. “Nobody does.” But deep down, I believed that if I chose my moment carefully, Latif just might. I sighed softly. “I'll tell you everything in the morning, I promise. I'm too tired right now. Deal?”

He stretched his hand out. “Deal.” Then again, that crooked smile.

His hand was warm while mine was reptile cold. As I shook his, I realised how much I wanted to talk to someone who wasn't in my parents' pocket.

I wrapped myself in a blanket, which Latif had found in a cupboard beneath the boat's wheel, and curled up on the floor. It was uncomfortable, but I was too exhausted to care.

I fell asleep to the clink and clank of masts, and dreamed I'd been captured and placed in chains.

Snakes and Ladders

I WOKE with a jump. Someone was shaking my shoulder. Still drowsy, I saw manga-huge eyes staring down at me. Thinking I must be dreaming, I closed my eyes again. Another shake – rougher this time, followed by a husky voice. “We've got to split. It'll be light soon.”

I sat up, and when I saw Latif propped up against the boat's wheel, everything came back to me. Stuck in replay, the events of the previous night spooled through my head, scary as a horror flick. I hit the skip button and shot back into the present.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Why? So you can dump me?” I stood up, stretched and unkinked my spine.

The Thames was at high tide and the boat swayed uneasily beneath my feet.

“Don't give me a hard time, Dash. You know the rules.” Latif was whittling a stick down to a point. Shavings scattered the floor like potato chips. He'd taken off his overalls and was wearing black skinny jeans, an orange T-shirt, and a charcoal-grey hoodie, plus his keffiyeh and his cowboy hat, of course.

“Whose rules? I thought you hated rules.”

He tested the point with his thumb, then, seemingly pleased with his work, said, “Let's munch. There's a live cafe
near here.” He pressed the sharpened end of the stick against my forehead. “We've got a deal, remember?”

“Like you'd let me forget!” I batted the stick away.

This time he prodded the stick into my chest and spoke very slowly, as if talking to a naughty child. “I'm not promising anything, bubblehead.” He gave me another prod. “You seriously cramp my style.” And with that he fished a car-wing mirror from his rucksack and gave it a wipe on his keffiyeh, before attaching it to the whittled-down stick. Then he headed out onto the deck.

I stayed inside and started taking off my overalls, reluctantly, though, as if losing a protective skin. After I'd removed them I stood there for a few minutes, feeling exposed, like a soldier contemplating imminent combat without camouflage. I took a deep, calming breath, trying to psyche myself up for action.

Outside dawn glimmered.

Greys and mauves streaked the skyline.

A solitary seagull squawked.

It was that smudgy time of morning, that hazy hour tinged with sadness, emptiness and missed opportunity, about the time, I guessed, when I used to head home after a night's clubbing at the weekends when I was back from the Academy. Big Stevie would be at the wheel talking football while we cruised along the Embankment, the speedometer hovering at 100 miles per hour, safe in the knowledge that the police wouldn't dream of stopping a car with a GOLD number plate.

Watching a stretch limo streak past, I remembered how I'd found the early-morning journeys over the last month so emotional, how I would slump in the back seat, close to tears as I watched the city slide by, knowing that my birth mother was out there somewhere. I would picture her, as I'd glimpsed her that night, and I'd imagine a million different reunion scenarios. And every time Stevie stopped at traffic lights, I'd try the door in the hope that the central locking system might be switched off, never really believing it would be. When my moods were super-dark, I would wonder why she'd given me up.

“Psst. Quit dreaming, Dasha, and get over here.”

Latif's whisper jumped me back to reality. He was crouching down at the rear of the boat, hacking through the security fence with his bolt cutters. I went over and stood behind him. The dewdrops flashed and flickered in the beam from his head torch, as if a kaleidoscope of tiny butterflies had landed on the fence. When he'd finished he held back a flap of mesh, and as I squeezed through, a dewdrop fell onto the nape of my neck, cold as an Eskimo's kiss. I shivered and pulled up my hood.

We waited by the gate to the tennis court compound for a convoy of sleek, black, chauffeur-driven Mercedes with tinted windows to swish past, and I found myself wondering if I might know the people inside. It could be Scarlet or any one of my friends. It felt good to be on the outside looking in for once. Fascinated, I watched my former life glide out of view.

The streets were empty – lonely somehow. Apart from us, only a few bleary-eyed night workers huddled at a bus stop, staring blankly into space.

“Illegals mostly,” Latif said, following my gaze. “They put London back together again every night. Do Londoners' dirty work. This city would be a dump without them. But nobody gives them the time of day. They were probably doctors, teachers or poets back home before they had to escape because some deranged dictator wanted them dead.”

“They look so sad,” I whispered.

“So would you, if you had to clean up everybody's crap and were a million miles from home.” His voice was clipped, impatient.

I kicked a stone into the gutter, hating his knack for making me feel small.

Up ahead, two girls were rummaging through a clothes-recycling bin, every so often holding up items of clothing that caught their eye. A spiky-haired girl was checking a denim jacket out for size while a short blonde was squeezing herself into a pair of jeans, wriggling her hips as she pulled them up over a pair of leggings. I couldn't take my eyes off them, finding it hard to believe that these girls were so poor that they had to scavenge through bins for clothes.

“Watch out, Dasha,” Latif growled as I bumped into him.

Latif had stopped at the junction of two roads. He gestured for me to move closer to the black railings.

‘What's up?” I asked nervously.

He didn't answer for a minute or two. Instead, he stuck his mirror-and-stick contraption out into the road.

“CCTV.” His eyes flicked skywards.

“How come you didn't use the mirror last night?”

“I use it as a precaution when I'm sussing out new routes. Most places I've checked. Know which cameras are live and which aren't. It's a science.”

He slowly rotated the mirror, so that – bit by bit – we glimpsed a smart stuccoed street with a church and a country-style pub. The leafy street was deserted apart from a magpie strutting down the central road markings. White houses rose up on either side like glaciers.

Uh oh, one for sorrow
, I thought, surreptitiously saluting the magpie.

“See, there's a camera above the pub, another on the offy and one on the church's steeple.” Latif rotated the mirror slowly. “Most of the houses are rigged too.” He tsked. “Paranoids. This city is full of paranoids.”

“Er, talking of paranoid.” I nodded towards his mirror-and-stick. “You're a fine one to talk.”

“Yeah, but I'm paranoid in a good way.” He gave me that crooked smile again.

“Yeah. Right. Silly me. You channel good paranoia.” I rolled my eyes.

He shrugged. “I hate the way there's CCTV everywhere silently filming us going about our everyday lives. It's nuts. That's why I dodge the cameras. It's an obsession.” He paused. “I know this'll sound whack, but I believe that
CCTV cameras steal stuff from you. Spontaneity. Freedom. Your right to be different.”

A smile twitched the corner of my mouth. “They haven't cramped your style yet!”

He shrugged. “Yeah! But I'm ahead of the game.”

For a moment, I thought about telling him that I was a bit obsessive about stuff, too, that I micromanaged my world by counting – stars, steps, cars and magpies; that I wore lucky clothes, chanted calming words, repeated phrases and had a zillion bizarre rituals to help me get through life. But I couldn't bring myself to tell him. My stuff was small – superficial somehow, while his concerns were part of some bigger picture which I was only just starting to think about.

“Guess how many cameras there are in the UK?” Latif asked.

He changed direction, doubling back down the street that we'd just come up.

“A million?”

“Yeah right, and the rest.” He held the mirror up, twisting it back and forth until he snagged my image. He grinned when I looked away. “Eight million last count, but there's probably more. We get caught on film at least three hundred times a day. We're the most watched country in the world. But nobody gives a damn.”

“So? What's the big deal? You're fine as long as you don't break the law.”

I liked the fact my parents' houses and apartments were protected by CCTV and state-of-the-art security. It made
me feel safe. I pictured our mansion in the Billionaires' quarter: the watchtowers, the sentry box, the high walls and the cameras. It had better security than most prisons and, as my mother loved to boast, a better class of guard.

Latif looked at me as if I were a signed-up member of a crackpot, right-wing loony party. “Get real, Dasha…” He trailed off, shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “What's the point? You know nothing.” Then he stalked off, eyes skywards – searching for surveillance.

But Latif's words stayed with me, and got me thinking about how the paparazzi as well as civilians with mobiles were always trying to sneak photos of celebrities and globals to sell to newspapers or post on the Internet; how everything was filmed, photographed, documented and dissected; how nothing was private; how globals and celebrities were always watched, too.

We walked in silence as we crisscrossed the white-stuccoed grid of Georgian houses in a maddening game of snakes and ladders – two streets forwards, three streets back, as if Latif were determining our route by the throw of a dice.

“The houses are rigged because gangs go safari round here,” he said, as we retraced our footsteps once again.

“Safari?”

“When gangs head out of the dead zones to crook the golden postcodes. Since the truce after the last lot of riots, the gangs stopped robbing their own. They hunt big game now. They've got a taste for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The gangs hit the rich now. Their true enemy.”

I knew all about the robbing of rich neighbourhoods. A few weeks ago, a kid in a balaclava had robbed one of my mother's friends at knifepoint outside her house. They'd stolen a £50,000 Rolex, her £100,000 wedding ring and her £75,000 engagement ring. Combined haul – £225,000. Jackpot. I wanted to say how that sucked, but I bit my tongue. I was on a last warning. I had to be careful – or else I'd be history.

We walked on in silence.

After a while, we entered a street with a small parade of shops. Noticing a camera above a newsagent's, I hesitated.

“No film.” Latif saluted the steely eye. “Joe tipped me off. It's a deterrent.”

“Joe?”

“He owns the cafe I was talking about. It's at the end of the parade.”

We'd only gone a few more paces when Latif stopped dead. I crashed into him.

“What the— Dash! That's
you
, isn't it?” He was staring at an info-stop. A large LED screen was playing out ten different news channels.

I gasped, hardly able to believe my eyes, merely whispered, “My God, that's me!”

A technicoloured patchwork of Dashas. My image repeated over and over like a series of Warhol paintings. And standing there in the street looking at my repeated selves, I had the strange sensation that I was more hologram than human.

Latif turned towards me, eyes wide as flying saucers.

Behind him, twenty Dashas smiled in unison.

I touched the GoldRush Media channel and it flicked to full screen – or, more accurately, my smiling face expanded to fill the whole screen.

Next up, photos of me as a little girl, opening Christmas presents, riding, blowing a kiss, swimming, skating and performing ballet. Fast forward. Recent clips showed me posing at a film premiere and a polo match. A montage of magazine covers came next, plotting out my life from a baby in a sequined romper-suit, right up to the last family photo shoot for
Celebrity!