“I suppose.” She grins and hops off Robert, but not before giving him a hard wallop on the arse.
“Ah, you bitch!” he half whines, half chuckles. “I’ll get you back.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure you will,” Sasha calls as she saunters from the room and heads downstairs.
I stay standing there, my arms folded in amusement. “I have to say, that was pretty pathetic, Rob.”
He rolls over onto his back, and I can’t help noticing how good he looks lying in bed, his hair all messed up. “What could I have done? It goes against societal rules to fight women, even strong bitches like my sister.”
“Sasha is freakishly strong, isn’t she?” I glance out the door she just exited.
“Oh, Lana, I’m all sore now. Come here and rub me better, will you?”
I give him a cynical look. “Do you honestly think there’s a chance in hell of that happening?”
“God loves a chancer,” he grins.
“So does the devil,” I counter.
“Ah, yes, my old friend. I think we’re scheduled for a dinner date this week.”
“You’re so funny.”
“Thanks.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Are you going to Alistair’s day out on Brighton beach?” he asks, ignoring my previous statement.
“Yeah, if Sasha’s going, then I suppose I will be, too.” I pause, and there’s a moment of silence before I ask hesitantly, “Are you?”
I don’t know why I’m asking him this. I guess I like having him around, in a self-destructive, self-torture kind of a way. Without even realising it, I’ve already forgiven him for what he said to me earlier.
He rubs his hands together. “Of course I am. I can’t wait to see you in a bikini.”
“I don’t wear bikinis.” It’s true. I don’t enjoy having my stomach out, since it’s scattered with needle marks.
“Oh, so you’re a nudist. Even better.”
I roll my eyes just as I hear the theme tune for Eastenders streaming from the telly downstairs. “The soaps are calling. That’s my cue to leave.”
I turn and go down the stairs, with Robert shouting after me, “But the conversation had just gotten interesting!”
I don’t have any shifts at the restaurant the next day, as I only have to work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I plan to go and get one of those public-access bikes and cycle around the city. I also want to pay a visit to the British Museum for a couple of hours.
Sasha gives me her credit card before she leaves for work, because apparently you need a permanent U.K. address to get one of the bikes. It’s a good thing she told me, or I would have been in for a big disappointment. I work out my route beforehand, planning on stopping in Covent Garden for lunch after the museum and then going for a cycle around Hyde Park.
I pack everything I need for the day in a small rucksack and then head off.
I fit in as many works as I can at the museum. It’s a strange, lonely sort of experience. Nobody comes and talks to me directly, but there are people and tourists everywhere. I feel surrounded, but alone. It’s not necessarily a bad feeling, just an unusual one.
I go to a hip little café for lunch, where I have a sandwich and some herbal tea. At Hyde Park I visit the ducks for a while, having brought some stale bread in my bag to throw to them. One gets out of the water and steps right up to me. I can’t decide whether he’s being brave or just brazen. I name him Jeremy (after Jeremy Kyle, of course), and I give him the last scrap of bread in my bag.
When I get back on the bike, I see a big group of people in the distance, maybe a hundred, all gathered in one area. The closer I get, the louder their voices become, all of them talking boisterously to one another. It’s like they’re debating or something, only instead of allowing one person to speak, they’re all going at it at once.
I get off the bike and wheel it over, noticing that there are dozens of smaller groups having individual discussions. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The group I’m standing nearest to sound like they’re debating about something that’s written in the Bible. They all seem very, uh, enthusiastic. One guy is getting a bit over-excited and looks like he might punch the man he’s arguing with in the face.
There’s an old black guy with a long grey beard standing to the other side of me. He’s not taking part in a discussion, just listening.
“What is this place?” I ask him, leaning against the handlebars of the bike.
He glances at me a moment. “It’s Speakers’ Corner, love. You’ve never been before?”
His accent sounds half Caribbean, half London.
“Nope. It’s crazy here. What’s a speakers’ corner?”
He does a nonchalant shoulder shrug. “People come for open-air debate and such. You can speak on any subject. A lot of fools and louts around, though. They tend to drown out the intelligent ones.” He pauses and nods over to the far side of the park fencing, where there’s a homeless-looking guy holding a bottle of cider. “Take this joker, for example.”
I can’t hear what the guy is saying, but the people standing around him are basically just laughing at him. He’s getting angrier (and drunker) by the minute. I feel sorry for him. He’s trying to get some kind of point across, but the people are looking at him like he’s a pile of shit they just stood on.
“I don’t think he’s trying to be a joker. I think he just wants somebody to hear him, but nobody’s really listening,” I blurt out before thinking.
The bearded man glances at me. “Ah, you look on the world with a sympathetic eye, girl. My name’s Fareed.” He holds his hand out to me, and I shake it.
“I’m Lana. It’s nice to meet you, Fareed.”
“So, what brings you here?” he asks, hands gesturing about the park.
“Oh, I was just cycling around. I’m staying in London for the summer with a friend. I’m from Ireland.”