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PART ONE
JOE. I was supposed to be meeting this girl in Regent’s Park so we could go on a walk or something, I dunno, but when the Bakerloo line pulled in I didn’t want to get off – we’d only been out a few times – so I stayed on, thought I’d go visit my mum instead. I got off ten stops and half an hour later at Willesden Junction. Tapped out and ran into someone I knew –
‘Oi my man! Long time no see.’
We went to school together. I didn’t like him much –
‘What brings you back, man?’
‘You know, visiting my mum.’
‘Fair fair. Oi you know, you should come out wiv us later we’re going to –’
‘Cheers bruv, but I gotta run, nice catching up, man, hope you’re good.’
He thought I was being rude and I guess I was but I couldn’t be bothered, you know? I hate coming back here because you run into all these people you thought you were never gonna see again. The corner shops are run by the same people and the same shit is being repaired. This ain’t London. It’s grey and shit and flat. But it’s actually what most of London is. Places like this.
STEPH. My interview was really weird. I went in and the headteacher, this munter with wrinkly cleavage shook my hand. She smelt like new car and stale cigarettes. Before I even sat down she was like
‘What did you study at Birmingham then?’
‘Geography,’ I say, and I want to seem friendly, you know, so I add – ‘my family always say I chose Birmingham because it was a few miles closer to London.’
It isn’t well received.
‘You have good scores on ITIT and great references, why do you want to work here?’
It wasn’t asked like you would expect a job interview to go, you know? It was all like passive aggressive. I ignored it though.
‘In my opinion, a teacher should help those who are less advantaged than his or herself. Eastbury Comprehensive is a place where I can give back to the community and educate those who are just as worthy of an education as the rest of the country, and yet are often neglected –’
‘Okay. You’re one of those. Fine. Twenty-one starting salary, if you last a year, it will go up.’
JOE. My mum hobbled round the kitchen fixing me something to eat.
(Middle-aged, with any accent indicating she is a first-generation immigrant.) ‘Look I need to tell you something. I don’t want you to shout. I don’t want you to get angry. But… I’m… I’m moving.’
I couldn’t believe it. Mum had lived here for, like, thirty years.
‘This house is too big for me, I’m moving to your aunt’s –’
‘In Wembley? Why it’s a shithol–’
‘Don’t you swear at me, young man. You have your own flat now, you never come round here. With my hip the stairs are hard and –’
She kept going, listing loads of good reasons why she should move. Closer to family. Memory of Dad. Dangerous. House prices in London. It all made sense.
‘You take the Xbox with you today.’
STEPH. ‘No it’s an X, she’s done a tick, they are very anal – I mean fussy – about this stuff. Could you please tell her that? Could you tell her now please? Kabita? Could you translate that for your mum please? Kabita, this is important. She has ticked in the box but she needs to start again and put an X instead.’
It was six thirty on a Tuesday evening and I had been at one of my student’s homes for the past two hours.
‘You said anal!’
There were six kids running about and their mother was sitting next to me looking at me with this desperate look like…
‘You need to start again,’ I say. But she just blinked at me.
‘Kabita… I’ll come back tomorrow with a new form.’
JOE. My dad bought me an Xbox for my eighth birthday. It was one of those gifts which is just as much for the person buying the present as it is for the person they’re giving it to. We played together a lot, almost every day. He’d come home from work and I’d be like – ‘Let’s play let’s play’ and he’d be like
‘One sec let me get changed and see your mum. Hello sweetheart’ – he’d kiss ’er.
‘Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad.’
‘Yeah, alright I’m coming. What game is it tonight then?’.
Our favourite was this racing game – ‘RALLY SPORTS CHALLENGE.’ He was so good at it. I loved that he never let me win. Mum would be like ‘Let him win he’s only young’ and Dad would look at her and say ‘Exactly. He’s young, he’s winning at everything else. Let me win this time.’
And I’d always lose. I don’t remember a time when I beat him, and you would have thought he’d have let me win at least once. We played so much. And when I started school, I’d still make time to play with him.
When he died I couldn’t touch it for ages, maybe six years, I dunno. But one day I thought fuck it and started playing our game.
So I sat down and opened it and I forgot that you have this thing called the ghost driver. It’s a setting where when you race, the fastest lap gets recorded and you play against it to improve, you know it? So cos my dad was so good, all his races were saved. Now this little blob of a car – all see-through and like floating – was my dad.
I played and played till I got good enough to beat him but I paused the game right in front of the finish line so I wouldn’t delete my dad’s score. I go back on it sometimes but I keep pausing it in that second before…
I haven’t moved it to my place in Catford (I know, I literally moved fr...
