Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

‘Us,’ he corrects her.

‘No one knows you exist.’

‘Well, maybe so, but they’d have to kill me first.’

‘We fucked up, Leon.’

‘Come on, mate. Snap out of it.’ Leon’s voice is firm.

Harry drinks her coffee and listens to the music barely playing through the speakers. Just too quiet to hear. She hates it when music’s played at that volume. She tries to ignore it but can’t drag her ears away. She turns to her bacon and eggs. Eats tentatively, feeling the food with her teeth as she chews it. Life is on autopilot — too busy getting things done to really think about what’s happening. She stares out, past the car, at the road edging the park, the closed Turkish cafés, the buses packed with workers, even this early. The first joggers pumping their legs around the park’s freezing perimeter, neon and grey bodies, pushing forwards, committed to the idea of a better self.

She finishes her mouthful, wipes the edges of her lips with her napkin. Her stomach waking up to hunger now she’s started feeding it.

‘We’ll have to leave.’

Harry’s voice is gentle and soft. So quiet Leon can hear other people at other tables more easily than he can hear Harry. Leon’s heart pangs for Harry’s panic. He wishes he could think of something. ‘They set us up,’ he tells her. ‘If you can get word to Pico—’

Harry interrupts. ‘Yeah but I can’t though. I don’t know what number he’s on till he contacts me.’

‘Fine, but, if you could . He might be sympathetic.’

They push mouthfuls down towards their gullets. Grind egg and bread and fruit with heavy molars.

‘We got a lot of money in that car. We could go anywhere.’

‘Where should we go?’ Leon scoops blueberries up with his fork. They fall off on the way to his mouth. He tries again. They fall again.

‘We’d have to go careful, with all that cash.’

‘We can sort it out. Change it up slowly. I’ve got a mate in Barcelona could help us out.’

Harry reaches over, takes Leon’s fork and stabs a few blueberries with the prongs and delivers the fork back. ‘It don’t feel right, man. I don’t feel good.’ Harry is dizzy, she feels far away. ‘We took a lot of money,’ Harry whispers, her voice scratching through the hush of the diner. Her eyes wide. Forehead deeply lined. ‘And what we gonna do with all that gear?’

‘Sell it. One time.’

‘To who ?’

‘They don’t know who our clients are.’ Leon’s voice is a low rumble.

The day at the beach is shouting at her. Sat there on the stones. And what about her family? What’s she gonna tell them? Will they be safe if she leaves town?

‘I should have been more careful,’ she whimpers. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’ Her voice is sonorous with sadness. ‘Coz now we’ll have to leave, Leon. We’ll have to fucking leave, mate.’

The thought speeds past them and they sit there in its wake, bobbing away.

‘Come on, dickhead, sort it out,’ Leon tuts. ‘Not so bad, is it? We could have an adventure. Go fucking anywhere.’

Harry eyes him warily, not sure.

Even at this hour of the morning, other people are dotted around the diner. A man, alone, in workman’s clothes, is eating steak and eggs. A group of three eager tourists are looking at photos on their cameras and drinking cups of coffee. A woman and a small boy are eating a giant ice-cream sundae. He has a hospital wristband and Batman pyjamas on. Harry sees all this and feels herself collapsing inwards like a bouncy castle at the end of a fair. To be a person with a normal life .

‘OK, so let’s just think carefully now, right? What do they know about us?’ Leon’s face is drawn in concentration.

‘Hopefully, nothing?’ Harry answers his questions like it’s a quiz show. Trying to get it right.

‘Does Pico know where you live?’

‘No,’ Harry says.

‘No. That’s right.’

‘He’s never been round.’

‘Course not.’

‘They’ll be looking for us though. Right?’

‘We’ll be OK. We just need to keep calm.’ Leon stretches up, holding his hands above him, and brings them back down. ‘We’ve been very careful. No one knows who you are. No one’s seen the car. Everyone we know thinks you work in recruitment.’ Harry looks at the table top, listening hard. ‘Everyone we sell to, all they know is your name and your numbers.’ Leon taps the glass of water with the SIM card and the battery in it. ‘And,’ it occurs to him, ‘to be honest, a lot of the people we deal with think you’re a bloke anyway.’ Harry shrinks visibly. ‘Not being funny,’ Leon backtracks, ‘but they do.’ Harry is flying with tiredness, cruising at great height. ‘Look.’ Leon has found his thinking pace. ‘We fought our way out of a set-up, essentially. You took that money for recompense.’

Harry lets Leon’s cool words soothe her panic. She laps them up like milk. ‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.’ She knocks back a gulp of coffee. Looks up, startled. ‘Think his goons are gonna see it that way though?’

Leon is not flustered. ‘That’s what happened,’ he says flatly.

‘They’ve got guns , Leon, they’re not playing. This is proper dark stuff, man. Some of those boys are fucking ex-military and all sorts.’ She pauses, her thoughts are cold in her head and she shivers. ‘We could die over this.’ Harry’s voice is a broken window, letting the rain in.

Leon holds his friend’s arm across the table. Stares at her intensely. ‘Fairy tales, sis, don’t worry. No one is going to die.’ He looks at her with patience and love. Harry searches his face for a flicker of fear. Finds none. ‘Eat your eggs,’ he tells her.

‘How can you be so calm, you fucking android?’

‘One of us has to be.’ He lets go of her arm and leans back in his chair. His brain feels too big for his skull. His stomach feels strange and he can hear a high-pitched ringing in his left ear.

‘What, am I freaking out?’ Harry asks shyly.

Leon smiles. ‘Little bit, yeah.’

She nods, gets her shit together, eats a mouthful of eggs. Hard to digest. The idea of eggs suddenly occurs to her as monstrous, she puts her fork down.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry, mate.’

He waves it off. He looks up, watches the ceiling, which Harry knows is what he does when he’s thinking. She scrapes the egg off the toast and eats the toast. ‘Pico’s a successful interior designer with a good link in Peru. He’s no gangster. He’s no killer. He’s an opportunist. A clever man. He loves his wife and his home. I don’t think you need to worry about getting bodied or anything like that.’ Harry looks up from her toast and watches Leon’s face with dubious eyes. ‘What?’ Leon asks her defensively. His tone a little edgy.

‘They’ll want this money back.’

‘So what? You think we should give it to them? Pop round, give it all back and carry on like before?’

Harry looks sheepish. Reaches over for Leon’s milkshake and takes a thoughtful slurp. ‘No, course not,’ she mumbles.

Leon’s getting frustrated. What’s happened has happened and now they need to think pragmatically. Harry’s always been too much of a worrier in a crisis. ‘So what do you wanna do then?’ he asks her.

Tired, Harry considers her options. ‘I wanna keep the money.’

Leon nods heartily. Relieved. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

‘Yeah,’ she says seriously, her eyes dry from tiredness. Strained. ‘I want to get out of all this. Stop shotting. Live life.’

‘Well, there you go. That’s what we’re gonna have to do.’ Leon lays his hand on the table for Harry to take. She does. They shake. Grip each other’s hands for a long moment. Leon takes his hand back, wipes his mouth with it. The night before is dragging on, sitting with its arms around them, resting its bleeding head on their shoulders. Leon drinks his milkshake, his eyes closed.