‘No!’

‘A couple of months ago. It was in the press an that, her being famous an stuff. They mentioned all the –’ he squinted at Elliot again and Sam tried to give him the tiniest shake of her head ‘– well, all that shit again. In passing. Would have thought you’d have seen it because of that.’

Brixton, 1995

It was the first time they’d held a formal party in the squat, and the faultlines peeled open. Gaz and Spider were against the idea that any cleaning whatsoever should be done to prepare the space.

‘They take us as they find us,’ Gaz said. ‘We’re not putting on a show of respectability when we ain’t.’

Xanthe countered that this was another manifestation of patriarchal individualism over the communal identity they were attempting to foster.

‘It doesn’t seem to matter what you say your politics are – in here, you’re quite happy to have women skivvy for you.’

Fran said she’d never seen any of the men so much as washing a dish while she lived here, and she was sick of dealing with a sink full of dirt. Spider took a can of lager out of the fridge and pointedly sat down on the new armchair they’d pulled out of a skip last week, the one they’d all been fighting over, smacked his lips loudly as the ring pull cracked and fizzed.

‘Right! That’s me ready for the party, maties. Let the games begin.’

Sammi had been involved at first, but now she was hanging back in the doorway, Mark’s thin arm round her waist keeping the two of them apart from it all. His lips moved up her neck, breathing lightly and deliberately, teasing her.

‘Wanna fuck?’ he whispered, close to her ear.

She tried not to move her mouth too much in reply.

‘Not really the time for it, mate.’

‘Seems like the perfect time for it to me. Just a quick little fuck, that’s all …’

Xanthe was holding forth again, her gestures growing ever-bigger with anger, eyes flashing. Gaz burped showily and she wheeled on him. Mark snorted, grabbed Sammi’s wrist and ran down the corridor with her to the sleeping area, where their zipped-together sleeping bags were crumpled in a heap on the one double mattress. Sammi had begun to paint faces on the wall around their space – not in a way that would denote ownership, just so that she’d have something to look at in the long mornings while everyone else slept and the sunlight filtered in. Across the way were the beginnings of her mural, its letters already sketched out. Over Mark’s shoulder, as he mouthed wet on her nipple, pulled her knickers down, as Xanthe’s scrawny baby whimpered in its sleep, she read it to herself again:

FORM TRIBES. TAKE LAND. LIVE FREE.