‘The one you’re convinced you saw the answer to somewhere. BB AGM.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, why not think about that? What does B stand for in the property market?’
‘Bricks, bedrooms. Buyers. Er, bad landlords. I don’t know.’
‘What about places?’ Em says. ‘Bedfordshire. Battersea. Balham.’
‘Fuck!’ I shout this a bit too loud. The school trip at the next table give me a look that is 90 per cent delighted (the nine-year-olds) and 10 per cent furious (their teacher). ‘Sorry. Balham. That’s it. It was on one of the bouquets in his office. There was a card saying something about the Balham Brats. That’s the meeting. Balham Brats AGM.’
‘Amazing. OK, let’s look it up.’ She fiddles with her phone. ‘Balham Brats Harcourt … Hey, here’s something.’ She holds it up for me to see – a web story from theSouth London News.
The Balham Brats are not children. They are all blokes, though. They’re a charitable organisation dedicated to inner-city kids. The money they raise goes to supporting underprivileged youths in the borough of Balham. The local news story is from two years ago, almost to the day. It’s a profile of the Brats and what they do. It’s capped by a photo of five men, all roughly Davy’s age and weight class.
One of the men present is Davy himself. He’s in a wood-lined dining room, glowering at the camera from the other side of a table. His cheeks are flushed and his thick white shirt is undone by one button too many, revealing a lily-white slabof chest. Another of the men is his co-founder, Rob Wallace. Two of the men in the photo – the ones nearest the camera – look happy at being snapped. Wallace, our Davy and the fifth man aren’t quite so sure. The table they’re sitting around is awash with bottles and glasses.
‘This is the steering committee,’ says Em. ‘There’s a senior police officer, an MP, DavyandWallace … These are pretty eminent boys.’ She keeps reading. ‘It says here they all come from the area, all grew up poor, and are determined to give underprivileged young men and women the opportunities they wish they could have had themselves.’
‘Very laudable,’ I say. ‘Does it say anything about Davy’s potential involvement in criminal activities that might get him murdered and ruin the lives of four underprivileged young people who just happened to be present?’
‘Oddly, no.’ She keeps scrolling. ‘Hey. Good news. They meet every year at the same pub for a trough. The Bombardier. More Putney than Balham, not that that matters. We have to go along.’
‘Why do I do get the sense that you’re enjoying this a lot more than I am?’
‘I get the sense that I enjoy almost everything more than you do, Al.’
It’s that kind of comment that really gets my back up. ‘Can we stick to talking about what we’re actually trying to work out here?’
‘Al.’ She drops her fork and puts her hand on mine. ‘Don’tbe weird. We’re having fun, admittedly under trying circumstances. And this could be a step forward. Maybe these guys will know something.’
‘But I—’
‘No. Stop. Can’t you just … relax a bit?’
I am about to answer, huffily, that someone’s got to keep an eye on the exits in case the police or Bowling Ball show up, and it’s clearly not going to be someone as slapdash as her, and if it wasn’t for her and her amateur friends we wouldn’t be in this mess, and if they’d only listened to me, we would never have even tried Davy’s place without doing proper checks. In short, I’ve spotted my high horse and I’m just reaching for my stepladder, and then … I just don’t say any of that. It feels unbelievably freeing to not be defending myself all the time.
Looking back, that was probably the moment I properly fell for her. It didn’t last more than a couple of seconds, because her phone rang, but …
Em’s phone rings.
‘Yeah? No, total washout … What? Slow down … Really? You’re kidding. Where are you? … OK, yeah. If we come, can we see them?’ She looks at her watch, which has Mickey Mouse on it. Never noticed that before. ‘About forty minutes if we pace it. You genius, darling. Well done. In a bit.’ She hangs up.
‘That was Elle. While we’ve been doing our little door-to-door act, she’s actually worked something out. Clever girl.Come on.’ She fishes in her wallet, pins twenty quid under her ginger beer, and stands, wiping her mouth with her hand.
‘What’s she found out?’
‘Tell you halfway across Hyde Park.’
The park route is longer, but, as Em points out before I get the chance, there are fewer cameras that way. So across we go. I’d forgotten how nice it is in the spring. I also get to tell her my favourite bit of London history as we walk. It’s true, as well. This is how it goes:
Ann Hicks was an apple-seller in London in the 1830s. Originally she just has a stall selling her apples in the middle of Hyde Park. Tiny shack, you know? Nothing to look at. But Ann is a smart woman. At some point, her cloth awning is replaced with a proper lock-up, and she starts selling cakes and drinks too. Then, without anyone noticing, she tacks a little enclosure onto the back of the shack, a proper building with windows and a door. Then she extends upwards. So now she has a two-storey house with a shopfront. Then, in the course of repairing the roof, a chimney appears too. Soon she manages somehow to fence off the building, and for her next trick, the fence keeps creeping outwards. This is all right in the middle ofHyde Park.
Finally, the authorities notice that there is a brand-new house in the middle of the poshest park in London. Ann’s response is that her family were granted life tenancy in the park after her grandfather saved George II from drowning in the Serpentine at least seventy years before. It’s bullshit, ofcourse, but long enough ago that records are patchy. The authorities are planning the Great Exhibition and they really, really need the space for their great big crystal palace. Eventuallythe Duke of Wellington himselfhas to go over there and promise her a weekly allowance if she promises to leave. Ann Hicks has managed to secure herself a lifetime pension from the most powerful man in the country just by chancing her luck.
As I finish, Em smiles. ‘You’re a romantic, Al.’
I shrug. ‘She’s a personal hero, that’s all.’ And although I would not have admitted it then, and I’m reluctant even to type the words now, sitting in the IT Suite in medium security, I feel a bit warmed to have told her about something I care about, and not to have been knocked back.
