The Chaos (23 page)

The buggy and our bags are left behind.

‘What the hell are you doing? Who are you?’

The man next to me flips a wallet open and flashes his ID at me.

‘Children’s Services. Viv here is from the police. Family support.’

‘Why the hell did you grab me off the street? What sort of country is this?’

The woman the other side of Mia cuts in. ‘We had to come to you because you’ve been running away from us. You
weren’t at Giles Street. No one there knew where you’d gone.’

‘You can track Mia’s chip. You’ve done it before. There’s no need for all this drama.’

‘There’s every need. We’ve charged your housemates with possession of class A drugs with intent to supply. Last night you were staying in a house with the widow of one of west London’s most notorious armed robbers and her great-grandson who is currently suspended from school for a savage and violent attack, and has been interviewed as part of a murder investigation. And who knows where you were going next?’

It doesn’t sound so great when she puts it like that. 

‘Where are we going now?’

‘We’re going to Paddington Green police station, where we will interview you about activities at Giles Street. Louise will be taken to foster carers. We’ve got someone standing by right now.’

‘Take her? Take her? No! No way. I’ll go to the police station. I’ll answer your questions – I’ve got nothing to hide. But I won’t let you take my baby away.’

‘It’s not your choice, Sally. We’ve got a court order. Your baby needs to be in a safe, stable environment.’

‘I’m still feeding her,’ I say. There’s silence, and I think,
I’ve done it. They can’t take her away now.
Then the woman says, ‘We’ll make sure she’s fed and comfortable. They’re very experienced carers.’

And I suddenly realise, as if I didn’t already know, what a cold, cruel world it is and what cold, cruel people I’m dealing with.

You think you can run away, and you can’t. You think you can have some control over your life, and you can’t.

They’ll get you in the end.

The car’s travelling at a steady speed. I’m hemmed in, not even next to a door. I can’t think of any way out of this. All I can do is sit there, and let myself be taken to a place where they’ll take my baby away from me.

We pull off the main road, and down a ramp into an underground car park. I hold Mia’s hand in mine. Part of me still doesn’t believe they’ll actually do this. But they do.

We’re unloaded from the car. I ask to hold Mia one last time, and they let me. She’s fussing after being lifted out of the car seat. I try to talk to her, ‘This isn’t the end, Mia. I’ll see you again, soon. I promise.’ But she’s got her eyes closed and she’s thrashing her head from side to side. And the words don’t come out right anyway: they’re squeaky, blurry, teary words. It’s all wrong. Someone reaches in and puts their hands between my arms and her body, and then they lift her away from me.

All I can see is two people hurrying away; one carrying the car seat, one carrying Mia. The policeman next to me says, ‘This way, please,’ and puts his hand on my shoulder to turn me round. I’m thinking,
‘Get your filthy hands off me,’
but it doesn’t come out in words. It’s a scream, a roar, and I don’t punch him, I raise my hand up and drag my nails down his face, and then he’s screaming too, high-pitched, horrified. He puts his hands up to the five red streaks and I start running.

Across the car park, an engine starts up. It’s the car they’re taking Mia away in. I run towards it. They’ve seen me – the tyres squeal as they accelerate up the ramp. There’s a metal gate at the top, and they have to wait for it to open. I can catch them. The gate slides to one side. I’m almost there. I reach forward and my fingers brush the boot and then the
brake lights flash off, the car moves away and it’s gone, joining the stream of traffic on the Edgware Road. I start following, but I soon lose sight of it. I slow down and stop, leaning forward with my hands on my thighs as I try to catch my breath.

I glance behind me and there are half a dozen cops streaming out of the police station. I watch, almost detached, and then it sinks in that they’re after me.

I’ve got more than a hundred metres’ head start on them, but they’re closing in fast, and suddenly the thought of their hands on me, grabbing me, shoving me, is too much. Anger surges through me again, together with a kick of adrenalin. I don’t know where I’m going to go, but I’m not going to just stand here and let them get me. I start running. My coat is making me too hot, so I shrug it off and drop it. Then I’m away, arms and legs free to stretch, feet pounding into the pavement, splashing through puddles. I run down alleys and passages, cut through a car lot and round the back of a pub. I don’t look back, not once. I just keep going, one foot in front of the other. My chest starts to ache, it’s like my lungs are going to burst, but I’m not stopping. I run through a market, through the smell of wet cabbage leaves and frying burgers, and finally, I find a path down to the canal, a dreary strip of grey water. I keep looking round, but there’s no-one behind. There’s a pile of railway sleepers at the side of the path. I stop running and sink down onto them.

All I’ve got is the clothes I’m wearing. I have nothing else left. When they took Mia away, they were taking my life.
Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!
The only thing in my head is her, the absence of her, how my arms are missing her weight, how my breasts are hot and full with milk she’ll never drink. Being there, sitting there without her, is unbearable. I want
to run again, do something, move – but I can’t. Even sitting down my legs are shaking. They’re not taking me anywhere for a while. And so I have to stay here, alone with my despair.

Unbearably, utterly alone.

Chapter 51: Adam

I
 don’t go straight home when I leave Nelson. I should do. I should go home, pack my bags and get on the first coach out of London, with or without Nan. But at the back of my mind, I don’t want to leave it all to Nelson. I want to try and do something, like the Gherkin thing or the Tower Bridge thing, so I set off into town for a last attempt to wake the city up.

I end up in Oxford Street again, and I can hear this chanting some way off. So I follow the noise. There’s a voice booming through a megaphone, the crowd backing it up. I don’t get what they’re saying to start with, then when I make out the words I realise where I am. This must be Grosvenor Square. It’s the demo we saw on the telly last night.

‘No war, no war, no war.’

The sound echoes off the buildings even in the streets all round. In the square it’s overwhelming. There are uniformed police posted every few metres. I squeeze past and into the crowd. The guy with the megaphone is at the front
somewhere – I can’t see him, but I can hear him all right, and suddenly I know what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to get to him and I’ve got to grab the megaphone. It don’t occur to me to wonder if I can. I just go for it.

It’s a big crowd, but the atmosphere is great. There’s lots of young people, some families, even really young kids and some oldies, even older than Nan. Everyone’s there for the same reason. These are people who think that if enough of you shout loud enough, people will listen.

I make my way through them, getting closer to the centre of the noise, and then I spot him, the man with the megaphone. He’s middle aged, one of those guys who’s in denial about their hair, so it’s thin on top but down to his shoulders. I worm my way between backs and shoulders and arms until I’m right next to him. I could grab hold of the megaphone from here, but that’s Plan B. I’ll try Plan A first.

I tap the guy on the shoulder. He looks round at me, does a double-take when he sees my burn, then releases a button on the megaphone to turn it off. 

‘All right, mate?’ he says. 

‘Yeah, cool,’ I say. ‘Can anyone have a go?’ 

He’s not sure. He don’t like war. He don’t like the Americans. He don’t like the government, but he likes to have control of the megaphone.

‘I wanna be like you, man,’ I say. ‘I wanna change the world.’

A grin spreads across his face.

‘’Course you do. ’Course you do. Okay, young fella,’ he says. He holds the megaphone out towards me. ‘Press the red button and keep it down when you speak into the end. Don’t be shy. Give it some welly. I’ll introduce you.’

He turns away, holds the mouthpiece up to his face and presses the red button.

‘We’ve got a young warrior for peace here. I want you to give a warm welcome to …’ he pauses and leans his head back towards me.

‘Adam,’ I whisper.

‘… Adam. Let’s hear it for Adam.’

The crowd all cheer like crazy. They haven’t got a clue who I am, but they’ll cheer anything – it’s that sort of morning and that sort of crowd. I take hold of the megaphone. It’s heavier than I’m expecting, but I take a deep breath, hold it up to my mouth and press the button.

‘No war!’ I shout. ‘No war!’ I stop, and the crowd chants back at me. I do a couple more rounds of that, until they’re really on my side. Baldy slaps me on the back and then holds his hand out for the megaphone, but I’m not done yet. I’ve only just started.

‘No-one wants this war,’ I shout. The sound booms out across the square and it’s great. ‘No-one wants this war, but in three days’ time London’s going to be flattened. The whole city’s going to be destroyed.’ The crowd’s gone quieter now, there’s even a few jeers. ‘Yesterday’s tremor was just the start. There’s much worse coming. Much, much worse. We need to get out of London. We need to get out by New Year’s

Day.’

There are more jeers now, and booing. 

‘Keep yourselves safe. Keep your families safe. Get out of London. Go today. Go now.’

All around me people are trying to shout me down.

‘No!’

‘Get lost!’

‘No war!’

Baldy tries to grab the megaphone, but I’m holding on tight.

‘People are going to die here. Save yourselves. Save your families. Get out of London.’

There’s other people jostling me now. Someone prises the megaphone out of my fingers and I throw a punch. They’re crowding in on me so I don’t know who I’m hitting, but they’re giving as good as they’re getting, feet and hands flying at me. I hold my arms up around my face but that leaves my body open and someone catches me in the stomach. The air’s punched out of my lungs and I slump forward.

The violence is rippling through the crowd now. People are pushing forward to get to me then being pushed back and there’s panic in the air. I try to keep on my feet. I’ve got to get out. I put my head down and charge through. It’s difficult ’cause we’re packed in so tight, and people are grabbing at me, but in a few minutes I make it to the edge.

In front of me there’s a row of polished boots. I unbend a bit and look up, into a wall of riot shields.

‘Let me out!’ I shout. ‘I’ve got to get out before they kill me!’ The wall doesn’t move. ‘Let me out! Let me out!’

I step forward and hammer a fist onto one of the shields. The shield next to it moves towards me. Great, a gap, I’m going to get out of here. A baton crunches down on my shoulder. One hit and I’m on the ground. They don’t follow up – they don’t need to. The guy steps back and the wall’s solid again. My face scrapes into the concrete, and for a few seconds I don’t know what’s happening, where I am, whether I’m alive or dead. I should move, I should get on my feet, but it’s beyond me. I don’t even know which way is up.

The people behind me, the ones that were punching and kicking me, they’ve changed their tune now. They’re
shouting their heads off, roaring and raging at the police. 

‘Civil liberties!’

‘Police brutality!’

‘Fascists! Take their pictures! Get their numbers!’

There’s hands all over me again, not pulling and pinching like before, but holding me, reassuring me.

‘You all right, mate? Can you hear me?’

I open my eyes slowly. At least half a dozen lenses are pointed at me, with a mass of faces behind them, a jumble of numbers.

‘We got it all on film, mate. They won’t get away with it. What’s your name? How old are you? We’ll get it on the lunchtime news.’

I don’t want all the fuss. I want to get out of here, get home to Nan, but slowly their words filter through.
All on film. Lunchtime news.
And I remember why I’m here.

‘The first of January,’ I say, looking straight into the nearest camera. ‘Get out of London. It’s all going up on New Year’s Day.’

People start trying to shush me. It’s not what they want to hear, but I keep going.

‘London’s in danger. Yesterday was just the start. It will be worse than that. Ten times worse. A hundred times worse. People are going to die here. Get out. Get out of London.’

The cameras are trained on me as I’m helped to my feet. People are firing questions at me. Who hit me? How many times? I don’t answer them, I stick to my own script. Blood trickles from my face into my mouth, but I don’t stop. This is my chance. This is my moment. I’m broadcasting to the nation. Pray to God the nation listens.

They keep us in the square for six hours. They don’t let nobody in or out. You have to pee where you stand. Women
crouch down, while their friends make a barrier round them. We ask for water: they don’t bring it. We ask to be allowed to leave, quietly, without any fuss: they tell us we’re being kept here for our own safety.

From time to time, someone loses it. They start arguing, or try and barge their way out through the wall of shields. They get the same treatment as me – sticks and boots coming at them till they’re down – and then the wall’s back in place.

Once the cameras move away from me, I try talking to people, just one or two at a time. The thing is I like them. Before I’d have taken no notice or scoffed at them – longhaired hippies, thinking they can change the world. But listening to them, I realise they think about things, the big things – the future of the planet, people in other countries going hungry, being oppressed. They care. Makes me feel like I’ve gone through my whole life with my eyes shut.