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Aphra stands up.

‘Gotta go,’ she mutters, and simply walks off.

Bam
.

I gaze at Larry. Larry gazes back at me. He shrugs, bemusedly. I glance down. She’s left her bloody Tupperware.

‘She’s left her
bag
,’ I tell him, and lean down to grab it.

Larry darts out a restraining hand. ‘From the
waist
down?’ he asks (hungry for confirmation).

‘Yeah,’ I say.

‘
Hairy
?’ he whispers (still holding on, defiantly).

‘Let’s put it this way,’ I say. ‘The closest
that
girl’s ever got to a Brazilian is the time she did the tango with her salsa instructor.’

Larry releases my arm. I grab the bag. We do a spontaneous high five (
Yup
, that’s boys for
ya
), then I dart off, into the crowds, and after her.

Can’t find the girl. Not for love nor bloody money. Guess she must’ve turned a sharp left and headed up the stairs. The crowds are dense, and time is marching, so I head back to work, lugging the bag of Tupperware along with me.

No sooner have I stepped foot back indoors than I’m caught up in the middle of an excited throng of staff in the foyer.

‘Were you
outside
?’ someone asks. ‘Did you actually
see
?’

Uh
?

Wha
?!

I quickly make my way over to the window, as dumpy, ginger-haired Bly from Human Resources burns my ear.

‘I mean it was all getting a little
frantic
for a while,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if you noticed…’

Frantic?
What
? The Gypsies? The
Lift
Music?

‘There was a big
crowd
of them,’ she continues, ‘just making this
huge
racket…’

There was?

‘Right inside the
fences
and everything. And then suddenly this man is climbing the thingummy…’

She points.

‘
What
?’ my jaw slackens. ‘The
Support
Tower?’

‘Yup.’

‘You’re
kidding
me?’

I glance out. I see two Z cars and a frantic cluster of security.

How’d I miss this shit, man?

(How?
How?
! I’ll
tell
you how: fucking
Aphra
!)

‘Nope.’ Bly grimly shakes her head. ‘This guy climbs the tower–and nobody’s even really
trying
to stop him–and when he reaches the top, he’s just standing there, not entirely sure what he’s gonna do next. Pretty soon he starts screaming and shouting. Then he starts hurling all the bottles of water everywhere…’

‘I can’t believe I missed this…’ I wail.

‘Nor can I,’ she murmurs, wide-eyed. ‘It was pretty, bloody
scary
.’

‘Then what?’ I turn back to appraise her. ‘Did they get him?’

‘Eventually, but it seemed to take hours to sort everything out. It was a really serious breach. A totally
calculated
attack.’

She shakes her head. ‘I mean having a bit of fun is
one
thing, but this was just…’

She shrugs. ‘Humiliating. I mean for
us
.’

Us
?

‘The British,’ she continues (obviously spurred on by my blank expression), ‘the
host
nation.’

I turn and gaze out through the window again, but my view of the Illusionist is compromised by a tree.

‘And what was Blaine doing all the while?’ I ask (thinking it best not to embroil myself in a dialogue about National Responsibility, etc.) ‘Was he
shitting
himself or what?’

Her eyes widen. ‘The guy started yanking on his
tubes
, you know? The ones for his urine and
uh
…’ (she pulls exactly the kind of face you’d expect from any well-bred girl under the circumstances).

‘Did they come loose?’

‘Couldn’t see. Maybe.’

‘And Blaine?’

‘He was standing up and kind of
watching
. But very calm. Unbelievably calm. Someone who was out there said he was just looking at the guy and smiling. The guy was going
potty
. Then Blaine waved at him. A friendly wave. Like he was totally unfazed by the whole situation.’

‘Really?’

I hear my own voice, from the outside, and it sounds…well,
almost
disappointed.

‘Yup. That’s what they said.
Totally
unfazed.’

‘And he just waved?’

‘Yeah. The guy was psycho
before
, but the wave sent him
completely
loopy. He was just thrashing around, screaming, making a real tool out of himself. But Blaine was unflappable. The person who saw it all said he was very,
very
cool. He really handled himself. His behaviour was impeccable.’

She smiles up at me.

Uh
. Hang on, now…
Is
that a smile?

(So why’s this ridiculously amiable girl-pudding suddenly
smirking
? And why am
I
the clueless recipient of her unexpected bitcheroony?)

‘Well that’s great,’ I mutter uneasily. ‘I’m
pleased
for him.’

‘Good,’
she says (still the smirk.
Why
the smirk?), then she glances down. ‘By the way,’ she whispers, ‘never really had
you
down as a Christian Radio kinda guy.’

She saunters off.

X-squeeze
me?

I frown. I scratch my head. I look around. I pause. I glance down.

I slowly lift up Aphra’s Tupperware bag to eye level.

Ah
.

Yes. Ha
ha
.

Premier Christian Radio.

Very
funny.

I mean is this girl determined to
massacre
my street credibility?

It was full–the Tupperware. It was actually full of
food
(no, not of the regurgitated variety. I checked). And because I’m obliged to slog my way through lunchtime (Yeah.
Big
surprise), I do the neighbourly thing and try to drop it off at her flat in The Square after work.

Major wash-out. Nobody answers the buzzer, and the porter’s clocked off,
dammit
, so everything’s firmly shutdown and locked up.

I cut my losses and drag the bag (turned neatly inside out–a boy has his pride, doesn’t he?) all the way back home with me.

When Solomon comes in (with his current main-squeeze; a fantastically ferocious, too-skinny, bespectacled, headscarf-wearing poetess called Jalisa–American, originally, but who currently ‘brings rhyme’ to the schoolkids of Bermondsey–
some
body has to,
eh
?) he finds me seated in a deep meditation at the kitchen table.

I am attempting to commune with the culinary Aphra. So who
she
?

Well,
you
tell
me
…

We have the
whitest
, moistest, de-boned, de-skinned, de-everything-ed steamed chicken (flavoured, Solomon later tells me, smacking his lips, joyously, with handfuls of fresh bay). We have an intense green mango and shallot salad, dripping in lemon and dotted in mustard seeds. The most
finely
chopped (this girl must have a
degree
in manual dexterity…
Ho-Ho
) coconut, cucumber and coriander concoction.

Then there’s this–frankly, unbelievable–savoury dish made out of large, fat, fresh gooseberries, a series of chutneys, relishes and salsas–carrot and ginger, tomato and chilli–some tiny multicoloured worm-like slithers of grilled mixed peppers,
two
types of curry created principally out of mung beans, a side dish made from roasted yams, some fat, sloppy, deliciously
singed
tomatoes baked in spice, a huge
tub
of finely grated raw beetroot and lemon juice, another tub filled with the most
delicately
handmade filo triangles packed with spinach, onion and marinaded tofu. A quarter-portion of nut, seed and heavy-
heavy
-herb soda bread.

Then, the desserts: half an apple pie (which Solomon later informs me is made with quince, cinnamon, and sultanas dipped in rum), and a phenomenal rice pudding–cold, thick, imbued with nutmeg, coconut milk and crunchy cashew nuts fried dark brown in butter…

‘Wha tha?’ Solomon asks, pointing at the assortment of plastic bowls which lie colourfully arrayed on the table before me.

‘Aphra,’ I say.

He cocks his head, ‘Oh yeah?’

He turns off the radio (Zane Lowe’s Radio One show, featuring a Strokes interview, which I was actively enjoying) and bangs on a CD by the unbearably tedious tub-thumping mystic Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan instead. Once he’s effortlessly dismantled my angry-pimple-ridden-street-kid-style ambience (you think this shit comes
easy
to a boy from north Herefordshire?), he approaches the table.

‘
Hmmn
,’ he hmmns, picking up one of the containers and sniffing at it, quizzically. ‘Dusty girl she make picnic for we?’

I say nothing. He takes off his coat. Jalisa produces a bottle of wine and goes off to locate the corkscrew.

‘How long you sit here?’ Solomon enquires.

I check my watch.

‘Hour,’ I say (
Yeah
. Two can play at
that
game).

‘So what’ve we got?’ Jalisa asks, returning to the table with the wine and three glasses, setting them down, sitting down herself, pushing her spectacles back up her nose again and leaning greedily forward on her pointy elbows.

‘Feast,’ Solomon opines, removing a stray pistachio from one of the aromatic salads.

‘
Stop
that,’ I say, ‘We
can’t
eat. It’s here for safe-keeping.’

‘Pity,’ Solomon opines.

I glance up, sharply. ‘Why?’

‘Because how better to get to the
heart
of this girl’s messed-up, stalkerish, beaver-baring psychology than through the delicious repast she’s prepared,
eh
?’

‘Really?’

He nods.

I frown. ‘But can’t we do all that simply by
looking
?’

Solomon shakes his head. ‘No
way
. That’d be like singing a song without knowing the melody.’

‘Oh.’

My face drops, disconsolately.

Solomon sighs.

‘Okay then,’ I retract, ‘just a tiny taste. A
tiny
taste.’

(
God
, am I this boy’s
patsy
, or what?)

Solomon pads off to grab a muddle of cutlery–we each select our weapon of choice–and he’s just about to dive in (the yams. He
loves
yams), when I raise a warning hand…

‘One possibility,’ I murmur, ‘worth bearing in mind, is that it was
no accident
she left this behind today.’

‘
Huh
?’

‘Spiked.’

‘Ouch.’

Solomon withdraws, then he whistles, then he peers down, fondly. ‘Bud will know,’ he says, reaching out a tender hand to the savage beast’s muzzle, ‘he’s a
ludicrously
fussy eater.’

‘Talking of hunger,’ Jalisa says, sipping on her wine as Solomon slowly waves tiny portions of Aphra’s food in front of Bud’s twitching snout, ‘I heard someone attacked Blaine today.’

‘They did, too,’ I confirm, ‘climbed right up the Support Tower. Pilfered his water. Tried to yank out his colostomy bag…’

‘
Hard
core,’ Jalisa whistles.

‘I was
there
,’ I continue excitedly, ‘on site, when it happened, but I didn’t actually
see
–’

‘Ah,’ Solomon solemnly interrupts me (Yeah. Try and say
that
in a fast wind), ‘blinded by the stench of pussy, were we?’

I accord this comment all the credit it deserves (none–the mixed-metaphor is a dubious device at the best of times. I mean blinded by a
stench
? I
ask
you) and from here on in I dutifully address all further conversational snippets to Jalisa, exclusively. ‘I was having a chat with this fruit-loop–just a few minutes before the attack,’ I say, ‘who was labouring under the illusion that the whole anti-Blaine thing is actually a mask for widespread anti-
Jewish
feeling…’

‘Anti-schmanti,’ Solomon grumbles.

Jalisa grins. ‘Poor Solomon’s
worried
,’ she goo-goos (almost tickling him under the chin). ‘He guards his Social Oppression
jealously
, in case there isn’t quite enough to go around…’ (Solomon shows his irritation by clucking his tongue at Bud, whose nose–he suddenly decides–has drawn slightly too close to a tub).