Ned Beauman - Glow

But Cherish is right. He should relax. Even if Lacebark had conquered the whole of the rest of London and driven every other cuckoo out of every other nest, for the next few hours it wouldn’t matter. Tonight this warehouse is a demilitarised zone. ‘I need to say hello to Isaac.’

They swim through the crowd towards the low platform where the decks are set up. Isaac is sharing a spliff with the MC. When he sees Raf, he waves and hops down off the platform. ‘Mate!’ he shouts. ‘You made it!’

‘Of course I made it.’

Isaac looks at Cherish. ‘Is this her?’

‘This is her,’ says Cherish.

Isaac turns to Raf and makes such a diverse and protracted series of gestures and facial expressions signifying ‘Good work!’ that even Cherish giggles.

‘When’s your set?’ says Raf.

‘At three. Assuming the next DJ turns up. Otherwise it’s in twenty minutes.’

‘Make sure you play that track with the harp sample.’

‘Listen, Barky finally managed to get hold of some real glow,’ says Isaac. ‘Do you two want any? I know this is sort of the wrong way round, given where it. . You know.’ He looks at Cherish. ‘Comes from.’

Raf panics. Isaac might as well be wielding a syringe full of sodium thiopental. If Raf gets high with Cherish, the oxytocin will make him feel like nothing in the world could be more pleasurable than spurting out all his secrets. She doesn’t know that he visited the real Win in the training facility, nor does she know about Win and the Serbian mafia. Even if Win is ready to betray Cherish, it doesn’t seem to Raf that he has any right to betray Win after Win confided in him like that.

‘I don’t want to take any tonight,’ he says.

‘Why not?’ says Cherish.

This is especially frustrating because for obvious reasons he is desperate to find out for himself what glow is like. Also, he knows Cherish would look more gorgeous than ever as the drug took its effect on them both — objectively gorgeous because of the bloom of elation it would put in her face and subjectively gorgeous because of the lens of elation it would put in his eyes — the love they’d find in each other until it wore off would be silvery and fathomless like the small universe between two mirrors. A rave like this deserves glow. But he just can’t.

Improvising, he says to her so Isaac won’t hear, ‘When we fuck later, I want to be able to come.’

He’s almost sure he can see a flicker of relief behind her smile, and he realises she probably had just the same worry as him. She has plenty of secrets to keep too. That much he knows for sure.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘I guess if you’re not taking any, I’m not taking any.’

‘So it’s “love is the drug” with you two now?’ says Isaac. ‘All right. More for me.’

‘Let’s get some shots and then I want to dance,’ says Cherish.

Raf gives Isaac a hug. ‘See you in a bit.’

5.26 a.m.

Because Raf wasn’t paying much attention back in the shop, he’s confused to see that all Cherish has brought for the ‘picnic’ is two cans of Guinness, a bottle of Tabasco, and a bag of lemons. When they emerged from the rave into an exceptionally warm and brilliant dawn she said she didn’t want to go back indoors for a while, and as much as he was looking forward to taking her back to his flat and undressing her he couldn’t really disagree. The yard at the back of the warehouse was acrid because of all the people who’d got bored with queueing for the Portaloos and gone outside to piss behind the wheelie bins, so it was a relief to get out on to the street. Now they sit cross-legged in the centre of the derelict tennis court, which was only about half an hour’s wobbly stroll from the warehouse. At this time of the morning the quills of sunlight flaring through the trees at the side makes it feels less like a gravesite and more like a garden. This would be a good place for Linnaeus’s Horologium Florae .

Cherish takes from her bag a foil blister pack containing eight mauve lozenges and passes it to Raf. ‘Put one of these on your tongue and let it dissolve.’

‘I thought we weren’t doing any drugs tonight.’ The ringing in his ears from the rave is like a thin cloudy liquid trapped in his cochlea.

‘Just take one.’

The lozenge tastes fruity. ‘What is this? Flavoured temazepam for kids?’

Cherish uses the edge of the bottle opener on her keyring to saw a lemon into quarters. She passes one to Raf. ‘OK, bite into this.’

‘But it’s a lemon.’

‘Trust me.’

Raf apprehensively does as he’s told. There’s an interval of controversy in his mouth, like when you put your finger in a basin of cold water that you were expecting to be hot, and then he realises that the lemon is delicious.

‘What did you just give me?’ He turns over the blister pack and finds only a quotation printed on the back: ‘?“Again, it is proved that sweetness is not really in the sapid thing, because the thing remaining unaltered the sweetness is changed into bitter, as in case of a fever or otherwise vitiated palate.” — George Berkeley.’

‘They’re made from miracle berries,’ says Cherish. The fruit of a West African plant called Synsepalum dulcificum , she explains, contains a glycoprotein that distorts the shape of the sweetness receptors on the tongue so that they respond to acids instead of sugars. ‘Ko gave me some. I’ve been wanting to try them for so long.’ She opens both the cans of Guinness. ‘Now this.’

Raf takes a swig. ‘Chocolate milkshake!’ And the Tabasco is a piquant syrup. Cherish tries everything after him. Perhaps somewhere in the Concession there’s a shrub that can be fermented into eye drops to make everybody look as beautiful as her. She leans forward to give him a long kiss and he puts a hand inside her top. ‘You taste as sugary as all the other stuff,’ he says afterwards.

‘Yeah, but that’s because all the other stuff is still coating my tongue. I don’t think miracle berries do anything for saliva. Otherwise you’d taste your own mouth. OK, now rinse with Guinness like you were at the dentist.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t want any Tabasco left in your mouth when you go down on me.’ She starts to wriggle out of her skirt. Surprised, Raf looks around like a meerkat. ‘I come here all the time with the Lacebark guys and I’ve never seen anybody else come near here,’ she reassures him.

Raf wishes she hadn’t mentioned Lacebark, because it reminds him that he’s still concerned about Fourpetal. He thinks of Win, there in the lion’s mouth, so cocky but so defenceless. But then it occurs to him that in fact Win would be safe even if Fourpetal got interrogated, because Fourpetal still knows only about the fake Win. Every Lacebark mercenary in London would swoop down on that flat in Camberwell, but the real glow chemist would still be in Lacebark’s blind spot. Which makes Raf think of a question he’s been meaning to ask Cherish.

‘Why were you outside my flat last week? You were in the van with those Lacebark soldiers. But back then I had nothing to do with any of this. So why were Lacebark already watching me?’

‘They put you under surveillance because I told them to.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because you’re so handsome and I wanted some candid shots to take home with me.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’ Part of Cherish’s job as a double agent inside Lacebark, she explains, is to distract their attention. She tries to make sure they keep a lot of people under surveillance who have nothing to do with glow. But she can’t just pick those people at random: to retain any credibility, she has to find subjects who look as if they plausibly might have some connection to Zaya’s network. Raf was basically in the same position as someone who’s hired for a police identity parade because he happens to have the right facial hair. When he gave her that fake glow at the rave in the laundrette, he established himself as a candidate. And after Lacebark found out he worked for Myth FM, they didn’t need any more encouragement.